IN THIS ISSUE
Lawyers warn of election spam - E-book publishers in court - Did Christmas lack of cheer have an impact on web usage - Deltaview in Swedish win - Windows XP set for October launch - Legal Island launches in Ireland - ABA to hold e-commerce meetings in Europe - The LOTIES legal technology awards are back- Legal Week wins prizes - the Legal Hit List of the UK's busiest legal web sites

LAWYER WARNS OF ELECTION SPAM
Well the UK general election campaign may only have been underway for a couple of days but already Kathryn Ward, a lawyer with Addleshaw Booth & Co specialising in data protection and privacy law issues, has warned that electorate risks being spammed by email messages from politicians seeking to win votes. Ward points out that unlike commercial spamming (unsolicited bulk emailings sent to advertise goods and services) where legislation is being planned on both sides of the Atlantic (the EU communications data protection directive should be implemented by mid 2003) to curb the practice, there looks to be nothing the public can do about email for non-advertising purposes, such a political lobbying and campaigning.

According to Ward, as email become an increasingly popular medium "the antispam measures in the pipeline will not prevent the use of email for non-advertising purposes. This means that our inboxes will continue to be inundated with requests for our support or vote on political or environmental issues, and other unwanted propaganda, clogging up our systems and costing time effort and money to dispose of".

E-BOOK PUBLISHERS HAVE THEIR FIRST DAY IN COURT
Yesterday, Wednesday 9th, saw the first day of an application for a preliminary injunction by Random House in its dispute with the specialist electronic publisher Rosetta Books. A full trial of the case is expected to take place in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York later this year.

Rosetta has published eight e-books containing electronic versions of previously published works by three Random House authors - Kurt Vonnegut, William Styron and Robert B Parker. Random House says this is in violation of existing contracts, including non-compete clauses, whereas Rosetta claim the contracts only relate to books printed on paper and that it negotiated separate electronic rights deals with the authors. A further complication is that all the titles in dispute date back to a time before publishers rewrote their standard contracts to including digital publishing rights.

Not withstanding this factor, Random House argues that the phrase "in book form" covers "any means of presentation that faithfully reproduces the author's full text in a fashion that allows the text to be read" regardless of the actual form or technology used. In their court filings Random House point to the fact that over the years books have been produced on stone, papyrus and parchment as well as on paper.

Rosetta dispute this, saying that the phrase "in book form" only covers printed products whereas e-books are not straightforward linear copies but including other features, such as hyperlinks. They also argue that Random House cannot claim that books in an electronic format were a forseeable consequence the authors should have had in mind at the time they signed their contracts "as it is manifestly unreasonable for Random House to advance an argument that Messrs Styron, Vonnegut and Parker were required to be 20 to 40 years further ahead of the technological curve for digital computer programming than Bill Gates."

Two further complications are: firstly, the nearest precedent for an "old licence-new use" dispute - which involved a dispute as to whether Walt Disney could use Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" music when it reproduced its 1940 movie "Fantasia" in video format - was settled out of court. And, secondly, that if Rosetta were to win, the decision would also open the floodgates to recovery of rights disputes from other authors, whose older backlist titles have been subsequently been reproduced in electronic format by their original publishers but without any formal contract revisions.

DID CHRISTMAS LACK OF CHEER HAVE AN IMPACT ON WEB USAGE ?
Elsewhere in this issue we carry the full chart of the UK's 25 busiest legal web sites for the first quarter of this year. However, while the overall increase in traffic reflects the growing usage of the internet within the UK generally and some other sites' figures can be attributed to technical factors or even marketing campaigns - LegalCV is an example of the latter. Why has there been such an increase in traffic for the online divorce advice site Divorce Online?

Could the explanation lie with the fact that the start of survey period coincided with the Christmas/New Year holiday season and that most unfestive of traditions - the great big family argument caused by the strain of having to spend two weeks with the in-laws?.

DELTAVIEW IN MAJOR SWEDISH WIN
Workshare Technology has implemented its DeltaView document comparison system at Mannheimer Swartling Advokatbyra, one of Sweden's leading law firms. The firm purchased DeltaView for its offices in Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Russia and the USA.

Biorn Riese, a partner at Mannheimer Swartling and presently overseeing the various IT projects underway at the firm said the need for DeltaView "arose following our migration in late Autumn 2000 from Word 95 to Word 2000 as part of our standard fee-earner desktop. We had been using the Word redlining document comparison tool on our Word 95 documents, which we thought at the time was good enough. However when using that function within Word 2000 it became problematic. We began encountering major failures and as a result began receiving complaints from our users within the firm.

"We asked our consultants to look into the problem and it was subsequently discovered that Word 2000 was the cause of the problem - a fact later confirmed by Microsoft themselves. Aware that the problems would not be solved easily, Microsoft recommended a number of alternative products, including DeltaView, that would address our document comparison needs. To ensure that we chose the right document comparison tool, we carried out product evaluations for a month. At the end of this period we found that DeltaView appeared to match our purposes and above all our expectations."

OCTOBER 25 IS WINDOWS XP DAY
Microsoft has confirmed that it will launch Windows XP, the next release of the Windows operating system, on Thursday October 25th 2001. Windows XP will be available on new PCs and as a full or upgrade version at retail locations. The new system will be available in two versions: Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional Edition for businesses of all sizes.

LEGAL ISLAND LAUNCHES IN IRELAND
The Irish legal portal Legal-Island officially launched its new web site this week. The site began life four years ago as little more than a collection of a few links to law firms in Belfast and Dublin and legal information on the internet. It now contains over 800 links to sites on the web likely to be of interest to anyone looking for legal materials, advice or representation in either jurisdiction. Visitors to the site can go directly to legislation and case law relevant to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as well as search for law firms with an on-line presence either alphabetically or by region. Future plans include providing direct access to law firms for anyone with a personal injuries query as well as well as expanding on existing information services.
www.legal-island.com

ABA E-COMMERCE MEETINGS IN EUROPE
The American Bar Association Task Force on E-commerce & Alternative Dispute Resolution is inviting interested parties to participate in its next round od European meetings to be held in Paris on 29th May 29 and London on 30th May. The ABA hopes these meetings will encourage interested parties to provide input and commentary on the Task Force's work to date and to exchange ideas more broadly about the role of online dispute resolution in the e-commerce process. The ABA will be circulating a draft of its preliminary report for review shortly.

The meetings are scheduled as follows: Paris meeting at the International Chamber of Commerce, 38 Cours Albert 1er, 75008 and London meeting at the Law Society, Chancery Lane. Both meetings start at 1.30pm and are expected to run through until 5.00pm. Anyone interested in attending either meeting should contact Professor Anita Ramasastry, the Task Force rapporteur, via email at eADR@u.washington.edu There is also background information on the web at www.law.washington.edu/ABA-eADR

THE LOTIE AWARDS ARE BACK
The Longbridge Group, the new publishers of In Brief magazine, have begun the build-up to the 2001 LOTIES - the UK's Legal Office Technology Innovation Awards. As in previous years, readers have the opportunity to nominate legal technology products and services for an award - and then to vote for the winner in each of the ten categories. This year the various categories have been revised to include new awards for the best knowledge management project, the best litigation support project and the best law firm IT department.

The winners of the awards will be announced at the Legal Tech London event in the autumn - the award ceremony will also be covered by Legal Web.tv which is one of the event's sponsors. The closing date for nominations is Monday 25th June - and to obtain a copy of the nomination form email kjones@inbrief.co.uk

LEGAL WEEK WINS PRIZES
Still in the world of UK legal publishing, Legal Week magazine was this week named as the Business & Professional Magazine Of The Year as part of the Publishing & Periodical Association's (PPA) annual awards for Editorial & Publishing Excellence. The PPA awards are the UK magazine industry's equivalent of the Oscars.

THE UK'S BUSIEST LEGAL WEB SITES Q1 - 2001

1. (2) Butterworths LEXIS Direct www.butterworths.com
Page Views 19.77 million - Sessions 1.36 million

2. (1) interactive-lawyer (including LAWTEL) www.interactive-lawyer.com
Page Views 6.07 million - Sessions 168,972

3. (4) Solicitors-Online www.solicitors-online.com
Page Views 3.74 million - Sessions 156,953

4. (3) Legalease/International Centre for Commercial Law www.icclaw.com
Page Views 3.27 million - Sessions 279,735

5. (16) EveryForm www.everyform.net
Page Views 2.66 million - Sessions 109,794

6. (5) The Law Society www.lawsociety.org.uk
Page Views 1.74 million - Sessions 216,325

7. (18) Divorce Online www.divorce-online.co.uk
Page Views 1.54 million - Sessions 281,076

8. (9) Smith Bernal Casetrack www.casetrack.com
Page Views 1.54 million - Sessions 100,472

9. (11) LegalCV www.legalcv.com
Page Views 1.4 million - Sessions 142,918

10. (8) Lord Chancellor's Department www.open.gov.uk/lcd
Page Views 1.15 million - Sessions 99,301

11. (10) Law Gazette Online www.lawgazette.co.uk
Page Views 990,000 - Sessions 100,000 (estimated)

12. (12) Delia Venables Legal Resources www.venables.co.uk
Page Views 898,320 - Sessions 92,654

13. (13) Sweet & Maxwell www.sweetandmaxwell.co.uk
Page Views 811,115 - Sessions 220,647

14. (14) DLA Solicitors www.dla.com
Page Views 752,722 - Sessions 67,335

15. (-) Employment Law www.emplaw.co.uk
Page Views 742,644 - Sessions 52,218

16. (15) Employment Solicitors www.employment-solicitors.co.uk
Page Views 613,933 - Sessions 276,623

17. (18) Desktop Lawyer www.desktoplawyer.co.uk
Page Views 490,000 - Sessions 130,000 (estimated)

18. (19) elexica from Simmons & Simmons www.elexica,com
Page Views 396,407 - Sessions 24,494

20. (-) Norton Rose www.nortonrose.com
Page Views 392,960 - Sessions 56,526

21. (21) Personal Injury Network www.accidentcompensation.com
Page Views 389,236 - Sessions 169,939

22. (-) Semple Piggot Rochez www.spr-law.com
Page Views 373,420 - Sessions n/a

23. (20) Law Careers.Net www.lawcareers.net
Page Views 344,140 - Sessions 87,810

24. (-) Consilio www.spr-consilio.com
Page Views 323,834 - Sessions n/a

25. (23) Legal Technology Online www.legaltechnology.org
Page Views 319,544 - Sessions 46,974

From the publishers of Legal Technology Insider. Click here for the latest legal IT jobs, events diary and additional law reports. Next issue - 17.05.2001