Articles Posted in Commentary and Opinion

“For a time, security controls designed to manage spam, viruses, and malware were working. Loud, high-impact attacks abated. But, as a result of this success, the threats they protected against were forced to change. In 2007, many of these threats underwent significant adaptation. Malware went stealth, and the sophistication increased.”

Computerworld Resources, May 26, 2008

To highlight and address these threats and related issues in 2008 and to offer suggestions as to how to cope with them, Cisco and Ironport, two specialists in these areas, have recently published a comprehensive report: 2008 Security Trends: A Report on Emerging Platforms for Spam, Viruses, and Malware.. According to the Introduction to the Report: “This report is designed to help highlight the key security trials in 2008 and suggest ways to defend against the sophisicated generation of internet threats certain to arise in the future.”

“Legislation being carried by the chairman of the [New York] state Senate’s Judiciary Committee would set limits on the Office of Court Administration’s now unfettered authority to allow the mechanical recording of proceedings in any state courts in New York….”

To see complete article, New York Senate Bill S7995 and Sponsor’s Memorandum Click here

From: Stashenko, Joel. “Senate Bill Would Limit OCA’s Use of Court Recording Devices,” New York Law Journal. (May 19, 2008). p. 1,8.

The May 13, 2008 issue of the Library Journal Academic Newswire reports that Harvard University Law School (HLS) has adopted an open access policy for making its scholarly publications available online. Quoting from the Academic Newswire report:

“The Harvard University Law School (HLS) faculty last week followed the lead of their colleagues in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences by voting unanimously to make their scholarly articles available online for free, making HLS the first law school to commit to a “mandatory open access policy” via an institutional repository. ”

“Under the new policy, HLS will require that articles authored by its faculty members be placed in an online open access repository. The measure comes just months after the Harvard FAS approved its landmark mandate, after which, university librarian Robert Darnton, an architect of the policy, said he would be talking to Harvard’s professional schools immediately about adopting similar measure. HLS is the first professional school at Harvard to approve the measure. “That such a renowned law school should support Open Access so resoundingly is a victory for the democratization of knowledge,” Darnton said.”

From time to time we hope to post book reviews on this blog. Philip Blue our Senior Law Librarian has just written a very interesting review of a fascinating book. We hope you enjoy both the review and the book:

TITLE: ON THE LAPS OF GODS

SUBTITLE: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice That Remade a Nation AUTHOR: Robert Whitaker PUBLICATION DATE: June 2008 PUBLISHER: Crown Publishers PAGE COUNT: 400 pp.

The following e-mail was received from Richard Zorza, Access to Justice:

As many of your have heard, in September 2008, the Self-Represented Litigation Network will be launching its leadership package entitled: Court Leadership and Self-Represented Litigation Solutions for Access, Effectiveness, and Efficiency.

Following the model of last years successful judicial conference at Harvard, the launch, to be held at the Court Solutions Conference sponsored by the National Center for State Courts, held in Baltimore on September 8-10 will provide an opportunity for groups of leaders to come together and learn about, and practice the use of leadership tools for innovation for the self-represented.

An Introduction*

David Badertscher

How trustworthy are state-level primary legal resources on the Web? The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) published the State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources (Authentication Report) that answers this very important and timely question. The comprehensive report examines and draws conclusions from the results of a state survey that investigated whether government-hosted legal resources on the Web are official and capable of being considered authentic. The survey was conducted by the Access to Legal Information Committee of AALL. For a quick overview, the Authentication Report’s Executive Summary provides an excellent introduction to some of the underlying issues and facts surrounding the pressing and timely issue of the authenticity of state primary digital legal materials.

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