President Kaczynski of Poland died with, among others, his wife in the Smolensk air accident. Death of spouses simultaneously is called Commorientes.

If they had been Irish, probably they would have owned their residence in joint names (in joint tenancy). The effect of this form of ownership is to vest full ownership in the survivor. Significantly, the property never becomes part of the estate of the first partner to die. However, commorientes defeats this process. Which died first?

Under Section 5 of the Succession Act 1965 simultaneous death is presumed in some circumstances.

Under Section 68 of the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2008 a joint tenancy in commorientes is converted into a tenancy in common in equal shares and each share forms part of the estate of the deceased partner.

Cloud computing is rapidly becoming a buzzphrase in IT-reliant businesses. Its proponents include some of the largest technology companies in the world. But while enterprises may be able to save money by moving into the cloud it is difficult to see how they can do so with their customer’s personal information without breaching EU data protection law.

Household names like Google, Amazon and Microsoft are racing each other to create rival global platforms for the storage and manipulation of data. They have sent their marketers out amongst us to proclaim the Good News- Cloud Computing will reduce costs and improve service when compared to the traditional self-built and run server rooms most significant organisations are used to.

McKinsey Consulting helpfully offered a definition of Cloud Computing in a recent report on the topic : “Clouds are hardware based services offering compute, network and storage capacity where; hardware management is highly abstracted from the buyer, buyers incur infrastructure costs as variable OPEX, and infrastructure capacity is highly elastic”.

Or, as the rest of us might understand it, that you get to sub-contract out part, some or most of your storage and information processing requirements to an already vastly tooled up company and you access it as you need it across the internet.

Clouds, being amorphous, fuzzy and everywhere, were chosen as the perfect metaphor for this kind of service. But a metaphor can obscure the reality of what’s being offered- to send data out to external companies and store it in their datacentres across the world, without any transparency as to what jurisdictions the data now resides.

Ireland has a particular interest in the development of cloud computing. Google, Microsoft and Amazon have all located major data centres around Dublin. It has been mooted that having these services available will enable Ireland’s entrepreneurs launch global web-based businesses without having to make enormous capital investment.

The difficulty arises when we apply the cloud computing model, developed in the US, to data relating to people in the EU. There is a gap in privacy standards between the two jurisdictions, with the EU protecting its citizens’ personal data in legislation.

Personal Data is defined by Directive 95/46 as “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person” and processing same as “collection, recording, organization, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, blocking, erasure or destruction”.

Ireland’s Data Protection Acts implement this European law into local legislation. The Irish Data Protection Commissioner helpfully defines a Data Controller so that you might more readily recognise if you are one; “A data controller is the individual or the legal person who controls and is responsible for the keeping and use of personal information.” So, the controllers are the people who have the responsibility for the data as it is being processed, no matter where or by whom. The entities they pass the data on to to be dealt with in a specific way are defined as data processors. Cloud computing providers would fall into this class.

But though Irish enterprises work under these European-wide legislative protections of our personal data, the cloud computing model is less sympathetic to our data controllers’ responsibilities.

The FAQ for Amazon’s Cloud offering, called S3, baldly announces that “Amazon S3 allows customers of Amazon S3 to store their data in the EU; however, it is up to the customers of Amazon S3 to ensure that they comply with EU privacy laws.” Furthermore, their Terms of Service states, in all caps for emphasis, that they do not warrant “THAT THE DATA YOU STORE WITHIN THE SERVICE OFFERINGS WILL BE SECURE OR NOT OTHERWISE LOST OR DAMAGED.”

This ‘as-is’ approach clashes fundamentally with the responsibility of a Data Controller to ensure the security of the data they pass on to a data processor. There is the additional complication that, unlike Amazon, not all the cloud computing service providers will promise to keep the data uploaded from the EU in the EU. The result is the possibility of breaching the laws which prevent EU citizen’s personal data being exported to jurisdictions with less stringent protections.

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s office is under-resourced, having only a handful of investigations officers for the entire country. It is hardly likely that he will prioritise clamping down on cloud computing providers who are creating high-value employment in Ireland. Nonetheless, for Irish entrepreneurs and IT professionals who are considering taking the cloud computing route , it is important that they do so with an awareness of the difficulties it could throw up later in a due diligence situation.

Buying or selling a company is like a house purchase. Before the buyer closes the deal, they’re going to want to be reassured that the last owner didn’t do anything that might see them inheriting a legal headache. It may only be when the first wave of early-adopter companies start to be acquired that we will get a clear picture of the full cost of moving to cloud computing.

The Courts Service in Ireland is an improvement over previous “arrangements” for the delivery of justice.

Inevitably, it being an infant body, it has and will make mistakes. A relatively small but irritating mistake is the installation of “security” in the Four Courts.

Currently,* access by the public to the Four Courts is through a kind of porta-cabin, at what used to be the Morgan Place entrance on the quays. There, one has to pass through a metal detector and put one’s luggage through a scanner. Harmless enough, but expensive, and ineffective to prevent terrorist Muslim attacks.

What Muslim attacks?

There have been none in Ireland.

Of course, they might be launched. Nobody can say they would not be launched.

However, the history of Ireland is replete with times and periods when very real domestic threats of terrorism existed. Frequently, the Four Courts was the scene of forensic points of conflict between the State and an irregular armed power.

There was, effectively, no permanent “security” in the Four Courts during those times.

In the judgment of this writer, the decision to install the current security arose out of a bomb scare in the building which saw the Supreme Court, as a collective, with every other user of the building, walking about on the pavement outside the building and drinking take-away coffee from the back of an entrepreneurial van parked in a loading bay in Chancery Place.

But the solution, the current “security” is not effective. It does not eliminate bomb threats. It is not a proper source of confidence that any bomb threat is a hoax. (It is too easy to circumvent the “security”).

There is an alternative, chilling, explanation; we are aping the US Supreme court. It, too, has closed the front door of the court and is breaking the architectural integrity of its building.

What if terrorist Muslims really are a threat to the Four Courts?

We should spend our money supporting the programme, of Lord Weidenfeld’s Institure for Strategic Dialogue, for a European Muslim Professionals’ Network. That way, at least, Muslim barristers will find a support group to hand when they encounter the dress code of our Rules Committee of the Superior Courts.

Whatever about dress codes, many people would be glad to see the departure of the “security”, including members of the judiciary and at least one senior barrister who, I understand, refuses to produce his electronic pass to gain access to the courts. (Too much; don’t go there).

*(Note; never “presently”, when you mean “at present”. “Presently” means in a “little while” or “shortly” or “in due course”).

Ireland has vetoed the Lisbon Treaty.

Or has it? What is a veto? More particularly, what is a veto in the European Union?

Ireland has previously cast a veto (in the EU Council of Ministers) and it was denied that it had that effect. That is, it was treated as a dissent, not as a block.
See HERE for details.

The defeat of the Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland is not a rejection of the European Union. However, the response of the European Union may indeed lead to a rejection of the EU. Only a Union based on law can attract and hold the allegiance of the people of Europe. The legal basis of the European Union lies in the treaties. Under the treaties Ireland’s assent to the Lisbon Treaty is a requirement to bring it into force.

To say that implementing the Lisbon Treaty was “going to be difficult” as Christine Lagarde the French Finance Minister did in Korea is to imply that the European Union is not an entity built on law.

To press ahead as President Sarkozy and Gordon Brown propose is to subscribe to the same implication. To propose a “two-speed” Europe (see HERE) is a proposal to abandon the European Union, a legally questionable idea.

It is far from obvious what money is.

That the price of gold has risen to an all-time high is evidence of this.

Of what real value is a piece of gold? It has some industrial use, but not much.
It endures over time, but basalt does likewise and, indeed, in the context of a human lifetime the endurance of gold is nothing outstanding; it shares that property with too many other substances. Why should it increase in value relative to any or all national currencies, as it has done?

It is in fact a reference point; the currencies have fallen in value relative to it.

Probably money is an economic notion more than a legal one. That notion is subject to change; consider e-money.
E-money can be encountered in a chip card which has been “loaded�? with “value�? and which can be used to discharge an obligation, limited to the value in the card. The possession of the card is sufficient to get the value of it. Significantly, the State need not, and usually does not, have any involvement in such e-money.

One theory of money, “fiat money�?, bases it on the State control of the monetary system and the issuing of notes and coinage. “Nominalism�? is an essential element of the State theory of money. Nominalism was recognized by Aristotle in the Nichomachean Ethics;

… money has been introduced by convention as a kind of substitute for a need or demand … its value is derived not from nature but from law, and can be altered or abolished at will�?.

It is a principle of Irish (and UK) law that the purpose of the award of compensation by the courts is to, insofar as money can, place the injured party in the same position as if he/she had not been injured.

The State theory of money is, potentially, at odds with that principle because nominalism disregards everything save the attributed value to the currency or State “unit of account�?. Nominalism disregards the changing value of the currency. It takes no account of inflation or depreciation.

The compensation principle is an expression of another principle; the need to do justice. The acceptance of Nominalism is, when it comes to compensation for injury, a breach of the requirement to do justice.

Unadjusted money value may in a period of inflation greatly benefit a wrongdoer. The wrongdoer may deprive a victim of value but, due to the effects of inflation, ultimately be obliged only to make restitution of something of lesser value than the benefit he/she gained.

The Book of Quantum of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board has a similar effect.
It sets out “values�? for some types of personal injury and in doing so clearly accepts the State theory of money and inherently accepts the principle of nominalism. In truth, the “values�? in the Book of Quantum are not fixed values; they change to a greater or lesser degree and the underlying trend historically is to have them depreciate in value, relative to everything other than the attributed value of the currency.

The UK courts have avoided the problem by affirming that the “value�? at the date of judgment is the appropriate value to determine proper compensation – Ascot Midland Baptist (Trust) Association v Bermingham Corporation (1970) AC 874. This approach involves taking account the value of the money; it takes account of the effect of inflation. A Book of Quantum does not.

It is worth noting that the UK Law Commission rejected the idea of the establishment of a “Compensation Advisory Board�? i.e. a UK PIAB.

ANTIGONE

Yes; for it was not Zeus that had published me that edict; not such are the laws set among men by the justice who dwells with the gods below; nor deemed I that thy decrees were of such force, that a mortal could override the unwritten and unfailing statutes of heaven. For their life is not of to-day or yesterday, but from all time, and no man knows when they were first put forth.

(Sophocles)

It pays to be the Chinese Space Agency (or whatever it is called).

It launched a moon probe and published a photo of the moon.

Readers noticed the photo resembled one from NASA, issued in 2005. It not only resembled it; it appeared identical. That, if the photo is the NASA one, is plagiarism. Plagiarism is the passing off of the work of another as one’s own.

What will happen to the Chinese Space Agency? Nothing, probably. Firstly, it claims, the resemblance is a coincidence arising from the use of the same vantage point by the two cameras (is there a moon viewing point?); secondly, new craters in the Chinese photo indicate it is later and recent, they say.

The position of Raj Persaud, psychiatrist is not so easy. He presents BBC Radio 4’s programme “All in the Mind�?. Apparently he quoted, in writing, from the work of others without identifying the source. He is now being investigated by the Fitness to Practice committee of the UK General Medical Council. Confusingly, the GMC confirms he did not attempt to pass off the work of others as his own, simply that he did not identify them.

This is worrying. Many bloggers, it seems, are eliding the authorship of others, or otherwise exploiting their work, in linking to other sites. Some, like Eoin O’Dell of TCD (the Heston Blumenthal of Irish bloggers) often incorporate the logo of the body, the subject of the post, in their blog.

Of course, we might comfort ourselves with the reflection that we don’t mind if the British GMC seeks to foil any intention we have to practice medicine in the UK, there being, generally, none.

More appropriately, we might wonder why the GMC thinks this issue has anything to do with the practice of medicine and why they might not recognise the possible existence of envy towards Dr. Persaud.

Finally, what is the proper utility of a copyright? Certainly to protect the income of the author, but for how long? A lifetime and 70 years, as at present?

According to Rufus Pollack of Cambridge University, 15 years.