IN THIS ISSUE
Smile, you are on web cam - Election reshuffle - Foot Anstey advise planning portal - Masters degree for patent lawyers - Solicitors are predatory - World Online in web traffic dispute - Poor outlook for broadband - US court to consider French Yahoo! case - Encryption - CD piracy - EU to investigate DVD - AIM is issue results - Solicitors code on web - Quorum launch electronic discovery service - Orrick implement Citrix XPS - Rebranding Ahoy! - Next issue - 28.06.2001

SMILE - YOU ARE ON A LAWYER'S WEB CAMERA
Colemans in Manchester now has a web camera covering its St Peter's Square location, one of Manchester's more famous landmarks - which comes complete with trams passing through. Tony Doyle, the firm's practice manager, would be interested in hearing from any other firm's running a web cam. He can be reached at tony@colemans-sols.co.uk while the camera is at www.colemans-sols.co.uk

ELECTION RESHUFFLE
The election is over, the votes have been counted and now Prime Minister Tony Blair has added the final touches to proceedings by reshuffling his ministerial team.

Among the changes of relevance to this market are David Blunkett moving from the Education Department to become the new Home Secretary - he replaces Jack Straw, who has been promoted to the Foreign Office - however Blunkett's department has been stripped of its previous responsibility for freedom of information and data protection, which now fall under the control of the Lord Chancellor's Department. Lord Irvine remains in place as the Lord Chancellor and he is now joined at the LCD by Rosie Winterton, who has just been appointed junior minister. She replaces the hapless David Lock who had the misfortune to lose his Wyre Forest parliamentary seat to an independent candidate. Winterton is joined on the LCD by two other junior ministers - Michael Wills and Baroness Scotland QC.

Elsewhere within the courts and judicial side of the government, the former Attorney General - and a former chairman of the Bar Council - Lord Williams of Mostyn become Leader of the House of Lords. Another former chairman of the Bar Council - Lord Goldsmith becomes the new Attorney General. And Harriet Harman, who only lasted 12 months in the previous administration as social security secretary, returns to the inner circles of government as Solicitor-General. Ms Harman, who actually is a solicitor, was for many years the legal officer for the UK's National Council for Civil Liberties.

Other changes include the departure of Chris Smith - sacked from the Department of Culture, Media & Sport. He is replaced as secretary of state by Tessa Jowell. Her department now has responsibility for the regulation of online gaming and video classification although she is likely to be pre-occupied with the forthcoming Communications Bill, which will introduce a single regulator for the media. Finally, the former minister for e-commerce Patricia Hewitt has become the new Secretary of State for Trade & Industry, while Douglas Alexander, a former Glasgow lawyer, joins the DTi as the new e-commerce minster.

FOOT ANSTEY SARGENT TO ADVISE ON ONLINE PLANNING
The West Country law firm Foot Anstey Sargent has won a contract from the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol to provide legal services in connection with the e-commerce aspects of the Inspectorate's planning portal programme. The portal will include both public advisory services and a casework service providing electronic planning appeal facilities. The contract, which was awarded by tender, will be managed by Ed Probert, who heads the firm's e-commerce group, and Garry Mackay from the company/commercial team.

LLM FOR PATENT AGENTS
Nottingham Law School, part of the Nottingham Trent University, is launching a new two year LLM masters degree course for patent agents, solicitors, barristers and other professionals specialising in patent work. The LLM course, which starts in March 2002, when combined with a post graduate certificate for patent agents, will cater for the requirement of the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents (CIPA) for the award of a litigators certificate.

SURVEY SAYS SOLICITORS ARE PREDATORY
New research conducted by the UK's largest independent network of solicitors Legal Marketing Services reports that the public view solicitors as "predatory" and regard legal services as a "distress purchase". LMS, which has just launched the 121 Legals free personal injury claims service (which includes an online reporting facility) also found that the public's most common fears about using lawyers were: the slow process, poor communications and not being in control.

WORLD ONLINE SAGA HEADS FOR COURT
World Online, the former Dutch internet service whose flotation debacle helped start the European dotcom slump, is now causing legal problems for its new owners the Italian media group Tiscali. According to a writ taken out in London by the online personal finance site Globalnet Financial, World Online substantially inflated its web traffic figures - including claiming it had 700,000 subscribers in Germany yet six months later reporting there were just 2500 business customers, and claiming 16 million page views a month in Denmark, only to revise these down six months later to 2.9 million. Globalnet is now seeking £10 million in compensation from Tiscali, arguing this is the amount of money it wasted investing in operations in Europe on the strength of undertakings and representations made by World Online. Tiscali says it is studying the allegations.

US COURT TO CONSIDER YAHOO! FRENCH DISPUTE
In what looks like becoming a textbook 'conflict of laws' dispute, US District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose last week agreed to consider whether foreign courts can determine what Yahoo! sells on its auction site. The move follows last year's ruling by a French court requiring Yahoo! to block the sale of Nazi memorabilia to French citizens via its site. Yahoo's argument is that while it can block such activities on its French country-specific site, it could not prevent French citizens from accessing objectional material via other sites. Judge Fogel has also rejected a French request to throw out the Yahoo! case.

ENCRYPTION - BANKING AND IP DISPUTES LOOMING
An internal document leaked by the BACS banking clearing service has revealed that the organisation has been concerned about the security of its BACSTEL direct access service for the last five years. BACS says it has not suffered any breaches of security in 30 years of running its systems but admits that it is now considering the introduction of newer technologies, including PKI (public key infrastructure) and digital signatures to further strengthen the security of the system.

Meanwhile in the United States, Princeton University computer scientist Edward Felten has filed a suit, backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, asking the US District Court in New Jersey to declare part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) unconstitutional on the grounds that it constitutes an unwarranted restriction of the right of free speech under the First Amendment. What concerns Felten and others is that a loosely worded provision making it illegal to make or sell and "technology" or "device" that could be used to circumvent copy protection methods may stifle legitimate scientific discussion, including the publication of encryption research.

Felten says he and his colleagues have already been forced to withdraw one research paper, on digital music encryption technologies, from a scientific conference in April after being threatened with legal action by a music industry organisation and had commenced the current court action to clarify the legality of their activities under the DCMA. Another DCMA related case, in which the trial court ruled the DCMA does not violate the First Amendment and ordered a hacker oriented web site to remove a program that allowed users to strip the copy protection from DVD movies, is now awaiting appeal.

PIRACY COSTING $4.2 BILLION IN LOST SALES
The music industry organisation IFPI has published a report suggesting that the market for pirated copies of music recordings last year cost copyright owners $4.2 billion in lost sales. Although Napster-style internet download sites are a growing problem - last year the IFPI and its associate national members closed down over 15,000 web sites containing illegal copies of music files - the illegal copying of CDs remains a major concern. IFPI reckons that two billion pirate CDs changed hands last year, accounting for 36 percent of the total market, by volume, of CD sales.

EU TO INVESTIGATE ONLINE MUSIC AND DVD MARKET
On Monday (11 June) the EU competition commissioner Mario Monti announced that it had begun investigations into the Duet and MusicNet online music download services that was being set up by two consortiums of technology and music publishing companies, including AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, EMI, Sony and Vivendi Universal. An EU spokesman said the Commission was investigating whether the deals involved anti-competitive agreements between the companies because "the music industry is highly concentrated so any co-operation between the five majors is regarded as potentially worrying".

In a related development, Mario Monti also announced that following complaints by consumers he was launching an investigation into the relatively high price of DVD discs in Europe and whether the regional coding of DVDs, to prevent low cost US discs from being played on European players, imposed a "severe restriction of choice" on consumers.

Michael Grenfell, a competition law specialist at Norton Rose, said: "The issue of coding DVDs is right at the heart of one of the most difficult and unresolved areas in competition policy - the interface between protecting intellectual property rights and promoting competition. In this area the correct balance is yet to be agreed between how much protection should be given to innovators, which encourages innovation and hence choice, compared to he need to encourage entry by new competitors."

AIM RELEASES FINANCIAL RESULTS
The UK legal systems supplier AIM has just released its audited financial results for the year ended April 2001. The company's turnover was £8.79 million (not £4.4 million as incorrectly stated in our last issue - that was AIM's interim figures for the first six months) and its operating profit (after deductions for R&D and interest received) was £1.43 million, representing a profitability of 18 percent as a percentage of turnover. The company also has cash reserves of £2.9 million.

SOLICITORS CODE OF CONDUCT NOW ON THE WEB
As part of its programme to make the profession more open and transparent, the English Law Society has published on the internet the many regulations that govern solicitors work. Until now The Guide to Professional Conduct of Solicitors has only been available as a hefty 893-page manual costing £29.95 but now anybody can access the information for free at www.guide.lawsociety.org.uk

QUORUM LAUNCHES ENHANCED ELECTRONIC DATA DISCOVERY
US litigation support systems specialist Quorum has just launched its enhanced Electronic Data Discovery (EDD) services. EDD is a technical solution that allows legal professionals to search, review and easily manage large volumes of electronic evidence produced during the discovery phase of litigation - this includes critical data that may only be available in electronic version of a document, such as meta data such, bcc recipients, opened dates and modification dates that would not be available to litigants working with evidence in a hard copy documents only format.

ORRICK IMPLEMENTS CITRIX XPS PORTAL
International law firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe has become one of the first practices to implement the Citrix XPS XMP portal software system. Working in conjunction with systems integrator and consultancy Baker Robbins, Orrick is using XPS "to create a practice-centric information portal" for the firm's 1300 lawyers and support staff worldwide, as well as its global client base. The portal will replace the traditional PC desktop with an easy-to-use web browser based interface that fuses 26 applications and numerous information sources into a single, secure point of command and control.

REBRANDING AHOY !
Finally, yes we know it is very sad of us but we are indulging in a little rebranding exercise here at Legal News Media. From our next issue Legal Technology News.com will revert back to its original name of New Media Lawyer. The reason is we found the name was confusing to some people who also subscribe to our print newsletter Legal Technology Insider. The content matter of the ezine will remain exactly the same and there is no need for anyone to adjust their subscription details. Thank you all.

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