Spam Spam has grabbed general public attention over the last few weeks. There may be an SCL member somewhere whose life has been improved by the opportunity to refinance, renew his sceptic tank or enlarge his penis but I think I will risk little controversy by staking my colours to the mast and stating boldly:…
On 19 September 2002, over 400 delegates gathered in London for the e-Summit organised by the Office of the e-Envoy. The e-Summit was presented as the first event of its kind by Jeremy Vine of BBC’s Newsnight, who acted as host for the day. The aim of this meticulously organised and spectacularly staged event was…
I thought Ben Coppin’s article on the online sale of prescription drugs (C&L 13/4) was very interesting but the assertion that the Medicines Control Agency (MCA) has not prosecuted a single case under the Medicines Act 1968 is not correct. The site www.mca.gov.uk/ourwork/enforcemedleg/prosecutions.htm contains details of the recent prosecutions brought by the MCA. The MCA…
RollAroundFriday Some time ago, this column contained an obituary for the pioneering legal bulletin board, ‘Link’. This was a dial-up service on which lawyers exchanged news and views and occasionally met up for a drink. It sank before catching the Web wave. If you want some reassurance that some lawyers at least have a life,…
E-Conveyancing The timing of the publication of the Land Registry’s consultation document on e-conveyancing (www.e-conveyancing.gov.uk) meant that there was little point in this magazine merely reporting the proposals as they had been widely reported in mainstream publications. We have recently included considerable coverage of the general issues involved; indeed this issue looks at PISCES, which…
Thanks for yet another well written piece. We really don’t see enough straight talking in the literature of legal information. Picking up your point on publishers’ long-term commitment to free-access services I thought I would share my trials with Everyform, well-known to SCL members who voted it as the winner of our award for IT…
Pushing the Consultation Process Forward Elsewhere in these pages (see p8), we cover the Court Service’s paper, Modernising the Civil Courts. I was unable there to resist the temptation to urge SCL members to contribute to the consultation process. It is a message that bears repeating. It is tempting to see that Paper as something…
Nostalgia corner Rememberlast year, last century. We had all been awaiting the effect of the date changefrom 1999 to 2000. Law firms had formed task forces and many articles books andWeb sites devoted themselves to anticipating the flood of litigation. Where didit all go and what happened to it? Theconventional explanation is that the world,…
The British are famous for their failure to applaud success, or more accurately for their tendency to applaud success only briefly and then pick holes in the successful for ever after. I have always thought that was a rather healthy national characteristic but have been amused to see it in action in recent weeks, but…