Kaplan-Myrth Consulting and Legal Services

CBC Ideas on Intellectual Property

From CBC Ideas:
Who Owns Ideas? When you download music or text from the web, you may be innocently breaking the law. Jim Lebans, a producer with CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks, looks at the tangled world of intellectual property and how the digital age is challenging ideas about who owns our culture. Downloadable from: http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20081013_8080.mp3
full article | Main.CBCIdeasOnIntellectualProperty#disqus_thread

A Frightening Podcast About the Economy

I previously wrote about NPR programs about the financial crisis including the This American Life episode called The Giant Pool of Money explaining the subprime mortgage crisis. In light of more recent events in the financial world — namely the near-complete breakdown of the stock market and banking system — Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson are teaming up again to produce a follow-up to the Giant Pool of Money, this one titled Another Frightening Show About the Economy. I have every reason to think it will be as brilliant as the first episode — a short version appeared on the Planet Money podcast last week and was truly unbelievable. Update: Another Frightening Show About the Economy is being broadcast on NPR stations and will be available online soon — but is already available here through TAL’s secret backdoor mp3 access (ssshhh…)!
full article | Main.AFrighteningPodcastAboutTheEconomy#disqus_thread

Trend Toward Eliminating Grading At Law School

It looks like there is an emerging trend of law schools eliminating grades in preference for pass-fail systems. It started with Yale and Stanford, but Harvard has now announced the same policy. Of course, it is easier for the elite schools to do this than for lower ranked schools, since any passing student at Harvard Law School is likely to be at least pretty good ;-) but it will be interesting to see if second or third rung schools can move in the same direction, or if they are even interested in doing so. They certainly have different incentives, so they may not see pass-fail systems as advancing their interests. Interesting discussion is already developing on Brian Leiter’s blog and on Ann Bartow’s blog.

full article | Main.TrendTowardEliminatingGradingAtLawSchool#disqus_thread

Planet Money Podcast from NPR

Back in May, NPR’s Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg from This American Life teamed up and produced an amazingly clear explanation of the subprime mortgage crisis called The Giant Pool of Money. The episode gives you a unique opportunity to hear some of the actual people all along the chain who bought and sold these worthless mortgages and inflated their value, eventually leading to the mortgage crisis. That episode turned out to be one of the most popular episodes of This American Life, and has led to a new NPR podcast in the same spirit called Planet Money. And we’re going to need it — anybody who, like me, doesn’t really understand why the market is doing what it’s doing will benefit from this podcast.
full article | Main.PlanetMoneyPodcastFromNPR#disqus_thread

Day Cares Struggle with Allergies

I used to sit on the Policy Committee of the Glebe Parents Day Care, and at one point we struggled with how to handle anaphylactic and non-life-threatening allergies within the day care. It is important for the day care to do whatever it can to ensure the safety of the children, which justifies a complete ban on peanuts and tree nuts in the day care. But this gets complicated when a family claims their child has a life threatening allergy to, say, eggs — something that is very difficult or impossible to eliminate completely. In our day care, some of the staff would have been willing to turn away children with allergies that we could not accommodate, and it was lucky that parents on the committee resisted and made the point that by excluding these children from day cares they would be marginalized, and their parents would be put in a very difficult situation. I raised the prospect that it would in fact be a human rights violation to have a policy of turning away children with life-threatening allergies.

full article | Main.DayCaresStruggleWithAllergies#disqus_thread

Jokes About Lost Are Lost on Students

 | Sep 15, 2008

I’m teaching the course Introduction to Law at the University of Ottawa. Last class, the first real class of the term, I lectured on legal theory and philosophical foundations of law. I thought I’d make it interesting with some outside references. When I talked about John Locke, I included pictures of the character John Locke from the TV show Lost. This is a big show, a popular show. But no, I get dead silence from the class.

full article | Main.JokesAboutLostAreLostOnStudents#disqus_thread

Lawyers to Follow on Twitter

It’s always so great to be noticed, and I am honoured to be included on this (expanding!) list of lawyers to follow on Twitter. Thanks JDTwitt!
full article | Main.LawyersToFollowOnTwitter#disqus_thread

The Future of the Internet is Distributed

This story is under development

full article | Main.TheFutureOfTheInternetIsDistributed#disqus_thread

Photoshopping Video

BoingBoing already picked up on this incredible video that basically shows a technique for enhancing video that is similar to what is already familiar in “photoshopped” still images¹

full article | Main.PhotoshoppingVideo#disqus_thread

Hockey Night in Canada Theme Competition

When CBC lost the theme music for Hockey Night in Canada to CTV, they did a smart thing in launching a competition for a new theme. It involves their audience, refocuses the attention from the old theme to the search for a new theme, and feeds into Canadians’ (alleged) sense of ownership of HNIC and its music. But as Fake Ouimet points out, it uses a decidedly old style of contract in its efforts to do so. Read his analysis of the fine print in the competition rules and decide for yourself.
full article | Main.HockeyNightInCanadaThemeCompetition#disqus_thread