Cornell Law Library's InSITE Website Reviews

Reviews published in the February 9, 2009 issue of InSITE:

• Defence for Children International
• English Reports
• Personal Democracy Forum
• WikiPatents: Community Patent Review    [RJ]
  
  
  
  

Defence for Children International
Established in 1979, Defence for Children International (DCI) is a nonprofit international organization that works to protect children’s rights.  Through its national sections and associated members, DCI is active in over 40 countries, addressing issues of child labor, juvenile justice, trafficking, and children in armed conflict.  Based in Geneva, Switzerland, DCI’s International Secretariat (IS) serves as the hub of the organization by providing representation, technical assistance, support, and capacity-building expertise to DCI’s national sections and associated members on both international and regional levels.  DCI’s website encourages advocates of children’s rights to become involved in their mission through donations, internships, employment, or by becoming national sections or associate members, and provides the necessary information and forms to do so.  The site is current with relevant news updates, the most recent of which document the death toll of children in Gaza.  Although the most recent press release posted to the site was dated February, 2007, DCI’s two ongoing newsletters, the Juvenile Justice Newsletter and the DCI Newsletter, are still regularly published on a bi-monthly basis and are available for free in PDF format in English, French and Spanish.  Free archives of a previous newsletter, the Child Labour Newsletter, are available as well.  The site also provides free access to DCI’s Position Statements, which appear to be published on an as-needed basis.  Various other DCI publications include Fact Sheets (available for free in PDF format) and other more in-depth documents that may be ordered through the site for a small fee plus postage.  Most significantly, the site hosts an online database in which a self-described “vast” collection of over 17,000 individually indexed, multilingual publications on children’s rights issues are assembled.  The publications include articles, case studies and reports from journals and serial publications, monographs, magazines, newsletters, newspaper clippings, books and official UN and individual government documents.  Sexual exploitation, child soldiers, child labor, street children, children in conflict with the law, child maltreatment and juvenile justice are a few of the issues addressed.  Unfortunately the site does not currently provide public access to the database, but materials may be accessed by email request through the site, or in person at DCI’s
office in Geneva, Switzerland.   DCI also  provides reports on the United Nations sessions on the Rights of the Child with a Juvenile Justice Focus.  Full reports are available in PDF for free in English and occasionally in French and Spanish.  The most recent report is from October 2008.  Finally, the site also provides links to regional DCI websites around the world, some of which offer an English language option for viewing their content.  These sites are of varying sophistication and currency, but often provide, at a minimum, their organization’s newsletters, and frequently, more substantial publications regarding the rights of children.  Regrettably, each one shares in painting a grim picture of the reality of children’s rights in the world today. [AE]

English Reports
English Reports is a narrow but comprehensive database containing 124,882 English court decisions from the year 1220 through June 26, 1873.  The database is administered by the Commonwealth Legal Information Institute (CommonLII), a nonprofit initiative that seeks to provide “a common technical platform” on which all Commonwealth countries may provide free access to their laws, thereby contributing to the transparency of each country’s legal system.  The CommonLII is a participant in the Free Access to Law Movement through the World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII, reviewed in vol. 8, no. 7 of InSITE, http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/insiteasp/archive/insite153.html),
a collaborative project which seeks to further the goal of maximizing free access to public legal information.  Data contained in the English Reports database is provided by the independent publisher Justis.  Last updated on November 29, 2008, court decisions are provided for free in PDF.  Decisions are accessible through several methods - the most readily apparent is by year.  Within each year, decisions are further organized by month.  Within each month, it is clear that an effort has been made to organize the decisions alphabetically by name; however, not all decisions have been alphabetically incorporated into the list, and users would therefore do well to scroll through the relevant month to be certain the decision sought is not overlooked.  Decisions are also accessible through a hyperlinked alphabet through which users may look up decisions using the first letter of the first name of the decision, which will in turn lead to an alphabetical list of decisions whose names begin with that particular letter.  A third option is provided through a link to a list of “recent” decisions, again organized by year, but this is not an efficient way to locate decisions as the list is very extensive and takes a long time to load.  Finally, there are database and name search options, although both functions appear to take the user to the same search page.  Searchers have the option of searching only the English Reports database, or of searching all CommonLII databases, WorldLII databases, Google, and other broad categories.  The search feature is ultimately rather rudimentary; a simple search by name produces hundreds of results through which to sift.  Although results may be sorted by database, date, relevance, or title, each does little to channel the search.  Ideally, searchers should initially enter the full name of the decision to produce manageable results.  As a result, the site’s best use is clearly for retrieval purposes ­ that is, to enter it with a specific case in mind, then either search for that case by its full name, or look it up directly by date.  According to CommonLII’s Copyright Policy, “subject to permissions being obtained from the holders of copyright in the actual material presented,” users may reproduce up to 30 pages from the CommonLII site "for a noncommercial and reasonable purpose." [AE]

Personal Democracy Forum
Personal Democracy Forum was founded by Andrew Rasiej and is billed as “an annual conference and community website about the intersection of politics and technology.”  Rasiej has a background in Democratic politics, having worked for Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton, and Dick Gephardt, and for Democratic Campaign Committees.  In 2004, he was chairman of the Howard Dean Technology Advisory Council.  The Forum includes others with backgrounds in politics and publishing.  The Forum Manifesto sounds a theme that the Internet has revolutionized broadcast politics by dramatically reducing barriers to entry and encouraging participation.  The Forum seeks to be an integral part of this revolution.  The site features a blog devoted to politics.  Recent postings have covered the American transition in government:  the inauguration, the new Obama administration, and technology’s role in the new administration.  The News and Features section provides expanded content, including a news aggregator, a features section with longer pieces on the relationship between technology and politics, and the Politech Column, written by various contributors.  Of practical interest are the website reviews — sites are judged on six criteria — and the software company reviews.  Also, the Forum offers an e-mail newsletter, which users may get for free by registering. [MM]

WikiPatents: Community Patent Review
WikiPatents is a community patent review site that provides a forum within which the public may evaluate US patents and pending patent applications.  Established in part by Kevin Hermansen of Salt Lake City, Utah, WikiPatents’ purpose is to improve overall patent quality by creating a "crossroads" at which interested individuals such as inventors, engineers, scientists, patent owners, competitors, litigants, IP attorneys, patent examiners, and the general public may engage in a dialog that is relevant and valuable to both furthering its purpose and to serving the user’s own individual  needs.   Specifically, individuals may search  millions of patents, vote on the relevancy of original and use-added references, add prior art references, comment on the relevance of prior art, and vote on the various market and technical merits of patents and patent applications.  Prior art is defined by the site as “the collective knowledge written or practiced by the public previous to a patented invention.”  WikiPatents’
database currently contains HTML text and PDF images of over 7,200,000 US patents.  Published patent applications from recent years, selected Great Britain patents, and selected Canadian patents are also included.  Visitors to the site who are interested in participating may register for free by providing only an email address to establish a username and password.  For those interested, the site further provides a means by which independent inventors may list their patents for license or sale at a complimentary rate or for a flat rate fee depending upon the extent of exposure they are seeking and the length of time the listing will run.  No commission is charged by the site.  WikiPatents’ home page is organized into broad categories including patents available for license or sale, newly issued patents (current to the present week), and groups of patents that have been reviewed or voted upon, including the most reviewed, most popular, most amusing, and most historic, among others.  The site provides a basic search feature that allows searching by patent number, and an advanced search feature that allows searching by multiples terms and in multiple fields at once.  PDF documents are provided for free by simply clicking on the “PDF” link on the floating navigation toolbar of any patent page.  The site also includes a useful "resources" link to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, various other patent agencies throughout the world, top patent law firms and patent attorneys, other general information sites about patents, and do-it-yourself patent tools.  Although the site includes a link to a WikiPatents Blog page, it should be noted that the blog has not been updated since April, 2008, and the additional links provided on the blog page are not currently functioning.  Ultimately, all visitors to the WikiPatents site must remember that anyone can contribute to its contents, and therefore all information should be verified before being relied upon.  WikiPatents is unaffiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. [AE]

InSITE contributors: A. Emerson, M. Morrison, J. Pajerek (editor)

InSITE highlights selected law-related Web sites in two ways: as an annotated publication issued electronically and in print; and, as a keyword-searchable database. The law librarians at Cornell evaluate potentially useful Web sites, select the most valuable ones, and provide commentary and subject access to them. This information can be accessed via the channels below, in addition to this mailing list:

1. Searchable database or by browsing current and archived issues on the web: InSITE home page (http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/insiteasp/)
2. RSS feed (http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/lawlibrary/insiteasp/public/rss.asp)
3. Print format for the Cornell Law School community.