Monday’s Mix

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from more than 80 recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. National Magazine 2. Library Boy 3. Risk Management & Crisis Response 4. Michael Geist 5. Susan On The Soapbox

National Magazine
CBA submission on the environmental review process

In the tennis match that is the government’s review of its environmental assessment process, the ball is back in the CBA’s court – and the Association is calling a fault on the play. In December, the CBA’s National Aboriginal Law Section and the National Environmental, Energy and Resources Law Section made a joint submission to the expert panel in Vancouver, and followed up with a letter in response to questions asked by the panel. …

Library Boy
Article on Harvard Law’s Anti-Link Rot Tool

This is related to the April 18, 2016 Library Boy post Harvard Law Receives Major Grant to Continue Developing its Anti-Link Rot Tool. The most recent issue of D-Lib Magazine includes the article Scaling Up Perma.cc: Ensuring the Integrity of the Digital Scholarly Record that describes work to continue developing the Harvard Library Innovation Lab’s Perma.cc web archiving service. Perma.cc is a well-regarded too used to fight “link rot”. …

Risk Management & Crisis Response
Nearly three years later, Tesco continues to deal with the fallout from its accounting scandal

In September 2014, prominent British retailer Tesco PLC found itself in crisis following its announcement that it had overstated its profit expectations by £250-million. The company later adjusted this amount to £326-million. Nearly three years later, Tesco continues to deal with the consequences of the accounting irregularities. In April 2017, Tesco subsidiary Tesco Stores Limited reached a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with the UK Serious Fraud Office, under which Tesco agreed to pay a penalty of £129-million. While the DPA settles Tesco’s criminal liability in Britain, other criminal proceedings continue against its former employees, and the prospect of further significant payouts in ongoing civil proceedings continues to loom. …

Michael Geist
Why Copyright Law Poses a Barrier to Canada’s Artificial Intelligence Ambitions

The federal government placed a big bet in this year’s budget on Canada becoming a world leader in artificial intelligence (AI), investing millions of dollars on a national strategy to support research and commercialization. The hope is that by attracting high-profile talent and significant corporate support, the government can turn a strong AI research record into an economic powerhouse. Funding and personnel have been the top policy priorities, yet other barriers to success remain. For example, Canada’s restrictive copyright rules may hamper the ability of companies and researchers to test and ultimately bring new AI services to market. What does copyright have to do with AI? …

Susan On The Soapbox
The Conservative Ideology

“ideology” \ˌī-dē-ˈä-lə-jē, -ˈa-, ˌi-\ a systematic body of concepts, especially those of a particular group or political party—Merriam-Webster

The word “ideology” was coined by the French philosopher Destutt de Tracy. Originally it meant the science of ideas; but shrewd politicians like Napoleon Bonaparte corrupted it to mean something more pejorative, even sinister. This is unfortunate because politicians professing to be free from ideology are in fact admitting that they’re rudderless. For them politics is simply a contest for power which will be won by capturing the issues of the day in catchy slogans and using them to bamboozle citizens to vote for them. The trouble with slogans is that unlike ideologies they’re meaningless and/or misleading and provide no action plan for the future. Speaking of meaningless…

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*Randomness here is created by Random.org and its list randomizing function.