A review of ProView from Thomson Reuters - a clear winner

Today I had an opportunity to get my hands on an iPad with Thomson Reuters' proprietary eBook reader called ProView. After my disappointment with LexisNexis and its BlueFire Reader (see my review here), I was keen to see what the competition was doing.

What is the reading experience like?  In contrast to LexisNexis’ publications, through the control panel in ProView you can choose to either have the pages match the printed book, or you can set it so that the text reflows to eliminate scrolling.  Which mode is better will depend upon personal preference (including how large you want the font to be) and whether your iPad is in landscape or portrait mode, but the flexibility of being able to read it as if it were a printed book, or not, has obvious advantages over the LexisNexis product.

Navigation is relatively easy with a dedicated button that brings up the Table of Contents (as with LexisNexis).  The demonstration used one of Thomson’s annotations of the Corporations Act, and while the Table of Contents divided the text into the different Parts of the Act, only some of the Parts unfolded further to reveal a more detailed Table of Contents for that Part.  For legislation of the size of the Corporations Act this is a major deficiency in navigating the text.  It is possible to go to a particular section through the Act’s Table of Provisions (which is hyperlinked) but as that ranges over 50-odd pages itself, it is not a substitute for a properly-nested Table of Contents.

There is also the ability to go to a particular page.  In ProView the “page” is the same pagination as in the printed copy (including the use of Roman numerals for introductory parts), and is selected by entering the page number you wish to skip to.  This is in contrast to LexisNexis where there is no obvious correlation between the “page” of the Book and the printed book, and page selection is by use of a slider.

The search functionality in ProView has two very distinct advantages over LexisNexis.  Firstly, it allows for complex searches using Boolean operators (although the text does not seem to be usefully divided into particular sections for the purposes of allowing AND searching to be useful, it does allow for proximity searching which achieves a similar end).  LexisNexis only allows single word or phrase searching.  Secondly, it brings up a list of search results by displaying how many times the search terms appear in the various chapters of the book.  This allows you to skip ahead to the search results in a particular chapter.  An update to ProView due at the end of February will allow you to display the results with a line of text providing context.

“Footnotes” can be viewed by tapping on the footnote number, which then brings up an inline pop-up box.  The advantage of this is that you can read the footnote text and the context at the same time, rather than skipping through to the endnotes (which is the LexisNexis method).  Unlike LexisNexis, however, the notes don’t otherwise appear in the text: the only way to view them is via the pop-up box.  The box is currently a fixed size, so that longer footnotes need to be scrolled through.

Bookmarks and annotations operate differently in ProView to LexisNexis.  In LexisNexis, the only way to create an annotation is to add it to a bookmark (which you can do either by selecting text and adding a bookmark to that text, or simply by bookmarking the “page”). Unless you create a text-selected bookmark (which then highlights the text in yellow) the reader does not indicate that the page is bookmarked. The only way to read the annotation is to exit the text and go into the bookmarks (which are then listed either by date or page number, so you need to remember what page you were on in order to locate your notes).

In ProView, things work very differently.  Firstly, bookmarks and annotations are separate functions.  The bookmark is literally a bookmark, providing nothing more than a cross-reference to the page.  Notes are created separately.  Highlighted text to which the annotation is attached becomes yellow, and little marginal box appears to indicate the note is attached.  Tap on the note, and your annotation appears in a pop-up box, without taking you away from the text.

Now, this is where ProView gets funky.  When you buy an eBook you can view it on both an iPad and in a web-browser on your desktop.  You can create annotations on either the desktop or the iPad, and ProView will synchronise them between devices.  Annotations can be created offline, and will then upload and synch when next connected to the internet.

Not funky enough?  How about this.  Your annotations will transfer across to corresponding text of updated editions of the same text.  If there is no corresponding text, you don’t lose the annotations: they continue to be available as “Displaced Annotations”.

There remain some limitations with ProView.  A big one is the unfolding Table of Contents referred to above, although Thomson Reuters are aware of the issue and are considering ways in which to facilitate easier browsing navigation through the text.  While you can copy and paste, you can’t at the moment print from the iPad.  You can’t search through annotations, a functionality that will hopefully be introduced in future versions of ProView.  There is no Back Button, so when you leap forward through the text you can’t leap back.  However, the update to ProView due at the end of February will apparently provide a Navigation History that will allow you to do so. Sharing of annotations is also currently not available, but is something that Thomson Reuters have in development

At present there are only eight titles available: 6 collections of tax and corporations legislation, the Australian Tax Handbook and Miller’s Australian Competition & Consumer Law.  The cost of the printed book or the eBook is the same.  For an additional 30% you can have both as a bundle (and as a special offer, the Australian Tax Handbook can be purchased as a bundle without the 30% surcharge).

It is probably apparent that on the basis of my limited time with each, ProView is a vastly superior eBook reader to the BlueFire reader adopted by LexisNexis. This superiority is apparent in terms of usability, flexibility, and functionality. LexisNexis have a long way to go to catch up to ProView.

DISCLOSURE: Thomson Reuters is the publisher of a law text that I wrote 8 years ago, and which is the process of being updated for a second edition.  

In the High Court: the law week commencing 7 February 2012

The 2012 Law Term in the High Court got off to a slow and tedious start, with some pretty uninteresting cases for the average mum and dad.  Predictably it began with Gummow J asking senior counsel, in a case involving cancellation of the registration of a union, where the registration provisions were to be found in the legislation and how the registration system worked. Equally predictably, senior counsel stumbled over the answer.  We will learn….one day.

Anyway, things picked up towards the end of the week with a late afternoon-evening application by Australia’s richest woman, in effect, for an extension of a suppression regime preventing the disclosure of the details of her internecine family dispute pending an application for special leave to the High Court.  The transcript and judgment can be found here:  Rinehart v Welker [2012] HCATrans 7.  And today sees the appeal in Harbour Radio Pty Ltd v Trad that I blogged about last week.

Next week looks a little more interesting. 

First up on Tuesday, 7 February 2012 is an appeal from the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria in Baiada Poultry Pty Ltd v The Queen.  This is another case arising out of the prosecution of an entity, held to be an “employer”, for breach of occupational health and safety standards.  The grounds of appeal are narrow and technical, but more broadly the case may require an analysis of the extent to which a company can discharge its obligation to do what was reasonably practicable to provide and maintain a safe work site by relying on the expertise of its independent contractors (in this case, a haulage company which transported crates of chickens, and a labour-hire company that provided chicken catchers).  More details are available here.

Then on Wednesday, 8 February 2011 there are several migration cases listed for hearing:  Plaintiffs S10/2011, S49/2011 and S51/2011 and Kaur.  Common to each of the cases is the question of whether or not (and if so, to what extent) the Department of Immigration and Citizenship is required to afford procedural fairness in inviting comment on internal DIAC advice to the Minister where applications have been made to the Minister to exercise certain non-compellable powers, either to allow a person refused a protection visa to make a further application (under s48B), to substitute a more favourable decision than a decision made by either the Migration Review Tribunal (under s351) or the Refugee Review Tribunal (under section 417).  More importantly, the cases will test the boundaries of the High Court’s decision in Plaintiff M61/2010E which dealt a fatal blow to the government’s processing scheme for offshore asylum seekers.  More details in relation to these cases are available here.

In the High Court - first appeal hearings for 2012

Next week sees the commencement of the 2012 Law Term for the High Court of Australia.

Tuesday, 31 January 2012 kicks off with the Australian Education Union v General Manager Fair Work Australia.  This is essentially a demarcation dispute between two unions, the Australian Principals Federation and the Australian Education Union, which raises an issue of statutory construction (whether section 26A of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009 operates to validate the registration of the APF in circumstances where the Full Federal Court had already determined that the registration was not valid) and an issue of constitutional law (whether, assuming section 26A had that effect, it was an invalid usurpation of or interference with the judicial power of the Commonwealth).  Truly, one for the law nerds.

Wednesday, 1 February 2012 is a taxation case, with the hearing of Commissioner of Taxation of the Commonwealth of Australia v Bargwanna.  The question in this case is whether, in determining an application by a charitable trust for endorsement as an income tax exempt entity, the fact that the application of some of the trust funds is for purposes other than public charitable purposes results in the trust not being entitled to tax exempt status. A related question is what are the factors to be considered in determining an entitlement to that status.

Thursday, 2 February 2012 sees the appeal in ALH Group Property Holdings Pty Ltd v Chief Commissioner of State Revenue, raising issues relating to the operation of the NSW Duties Act 1997, and whether or not a Deed of Consent an Assignment constituted an assignment of the benefit of a contract for the sale of land, or a novation of that contract.

Finally, on Friday 3 February 2012 an interesting appeal in Harbour Radio Pty Ltd v Trad.  This defamation case arises out of a rally in Hyde Park following the Cronulla riots in December 2005.  Keysar Trad addressed the rally in the course of which he made various allegations against Radio 2GB including of whipping up fears, that it was racist, that it was a predominant cause of the suffering of many of Australia’s Muslims, and that it ought to have sedition laws applied against it.  This provoked a response by Jason Morrison on Radio 2GB the following day, in a broadcast that a jury found conveyed various defamatory imputations about Trad, including that he incited people to commit acts of violence and to have racist attitudes, he was a disgraceful and dangerous individual, was widely perceived as a pest, and deliberately gave out false information about the Islamic community.  Radio 2GB then relied on various defences, including truth, contextual truth, the “response to attack” qualified privilege at common law, and comment.  They relied upon comments publish by Trad in relation to homosexuality (including that it was analogous to cancer, that homosexuals were no more civilised than dogs and were sub-human, and that lesbianism was little different to shared masturbation), his endorsement of anti-Semitic websites, his defence of comments by Sheikh Hilali suggesting women were responsible for sexual violence by likening them to “uncovered meat”.  It is the upholding of those defences by McLelland J (and their reversal by the Court of Appeal) that gives rise to the appeal.

Further details are available on the High Court’s website.

A review of eBooks from LexisNexis

Shortly before Christmas I realised my long-lost copy of Cross on Evidence would not be returning to my chambers, and so I took advantage of the LexisNexis sale to order a new copy.  I decided to get it bundled with an eBook so I could carry it with me to court on my iPad.  For reasons I am yet to understand, I did the same with Pearce & Geddes Statutory Interpretation in Australia.

I have been underwhelmed by them.

It is not clear to me whether the problem lies with LexisNexis, with the Bluefire Reader software LexisNexis has chosen as its eBook software for the iPad, or both.  But there are problems aplenty.

Let's start with Statutory Interpretation in Australia. This is the how the top of the title page appears.

This is how it appears in portrait mode.

If a publisher can't even format the title page properly, there is something seriously wrong.

Turning to more functional aspects of the book, I was expecting to be able to read it as if it were the hardcopy. At least, I wanted the ability to do so if should I so desire.  But you can't. There is no way to paginate the eBook as it is paginated in the hardcopy. This is what it looks like.

Personally, I find the page markers visually distracting, but perhaps that's just me.  I did try and force it to paginate in the same way as the hardcopy by reducing the font size.  This is where I ran into the next problem. Using the Bluefire Reader settings to make the font size smaller did not change the font size at all. I tried again, and still the font size remained stubbornly the same.  Only the "lorem ipsum" text in the settings dialogue box changed font. I persevered, until this happened:

The footnote marks are hyperlinked, and so tapping on the footnote number takes you to the text of the footnote (not instantly...there is a lag).  The footnotes are in fact endnotes, and so the context is lost when you go to the text of the note.  There is no "back" button, and returning to the main text is achieved by tapping on the footnote number.

The absence of a  "back" button is not a difficulty with footnotes.  But it is a massive headache for other parts of the book that are hyperlinked.  For example, the table of cases at the front of the eBook has hyperlinks to take you to the passage of the book where the case is referred to.  However, there is no way of getting back whence you came, other than by going back to the table of contents and starting again. Quite frankly, that is bonkers.

It becomes even more bonkers when you click on a hyperlink in one part of the text that then takes you to another part of the text.  Unless you remember where you were in the book before you tapped the hyperlink, there is no way of getting back. None.  At least none that I could see, and none referred to in the user guide.

The Bluefire Reader allows you to copy text, but pasting it seems to lose the formatting, an irritation if the text includes case names that are italicised.

It allows you to select text and create a bookmark.  The selected text then appears yellow.  Somewhat laboriously, you cannot tap the highlighted text to pull up the notes attached to the bookmark. You have to go out of the book to the list of bookmarks, then find the relevant bookmark to read the notes. The bookmarks cannot be tagged, and the notes are not searchable. This is a serious limitation on what ought to be a useful function.

Finally, one thing you can't do, despite the permissions on the eBook allowing you to, is print. You can't print from this book on the iPad, and instead have to copy and paste into another program and print from there.

Now to Cross on Evidence. This is what page one (and part of page two...this book has the same problem in not being able to read it as if it were the text) looked like.

Seriously, what is going on here? For some reason LexisNexis has decided to publish this text in a sans serif font.  Yes, you can go into the settings and turn off the publisher's formatting and then set the font yourself. But why change the default font from that used in the hardcopy? At least in this eBook the settings function that allows for a change in font size worked

You may notice that the text itself has some serious issues.  Firstly, can you see the word "inadmissibleat" and "ayear"? The absence of a space so words run into each other is not isolated.  There were three examples in the first three paragraphs.  It goes the other way as well, with "climacter ic" appearing instead of "climacteric".

Footnotes work in the same way.  However, for some reason they are formatted in a way that increases the linespacing where they appear, creating a visual awkwardness that cannot assist in reading the text.  I also noticed an issue with this book that I did not experience with the other, and that is frequently, tapping on the footnote number to return to the main text in fact resulted in the book turning to the preceding page. The footnote marks themselves were often more difficult to tap precisely enough for the hyperlink to activate.

Within the text and in the footnotes for some reason case names, legislation and latin phrases were mostly, although not always, not italicised. 

The same issues in relation to hyperlinking within the text appear in Cross on Evidence as in Statutory Interpretation in Australia.  But not all of the internal cross-references were hyperlinked: again, there appeared neither rhyme nor reason for why some were and some were not.

All in all, I was underwhelmed by the eBook implementation of both texts on the iPad, with serious flaws in the formatting of the text (presumably by LexisNexis) and serious limitations in the Bluefire Reader software. Sorry LexisNexis, but these are not worth the outrageous prices you're charging.

A different perspective on SOPA/PIPA

I have not had the time to comprehensively demolish the more hysterical aspects of the criticism being levelled at SOPA/PIPA.  I have read the proposed bills, and they are far from perfect.  But they are far from warranting much of what has been said about them.

Without endorsement, and in the absence of an opportunity to write my own response to the critics of SOPA/PIPA, I simply offer this comment from Thomas Carpenter form the American Federation of TV & Radio Artists.

The misinformation about this bill is akin to "WMDs in Iraq." The more you repeat the lies, and the louder you shout, the more people start to believe them. The content industries employ millions of people, many of whom have good-paying middle-class union jobs, and it's one of the few industries where the US actually has a trade surplus. But law enforcement doesn't have the same tools available to stop the trafficking of stolen content abroad, that they have stateside. This legislation would fix that.



An important provision of the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act allows only the Department of Justice to go to federal court to obtain an order for a search engine to stop linking to a foreign criminal website. Then—and only if ordered by a judge—will search engines simply be required not to return search results that include links to a specified foreign rogue site.



Removing foreign criminal websites from search results is crucial to preventing their access to the American market. Search engines serve as the portal to foreign criminal websites. Anyone looking for free movies or illegal prescription drugs can find them within seconds on search engines like Google. Even U.S. consumers seeking legitimate products or content are often unwittingly directed to criminal sites through the results provided by search engines, which was highlighted in a 2010 study by McAfee regarding the risks associated with visiting piracy sites. Requiring search engines not to direct users to these criminal websites will help protect consumers and preserve the marketplace for legitimate American companies, whose products and creative works today are often buried in search results below those for rogue sites.



Companies opposed to the legislation that rely on search engines for much of their revenue, especially Google, have objected to the provisions requiring them not to direct users to foreign sites found to be illegal by a federal court. First, they argue that such requirements would be ineffective because users would find alternate ways to find rogue websites. But this argument cannot withstand scrutiny. In fact, a frequently noted conventional wisdom among many in the Internet community is that if a website is not listed on the first or second page of Google search results, it simply “does not exist.” Consumers use search engines to find products they want. If the foreign criminal websites, which often appear legitimate, are no longer listed, then consumers will be much more likely to visit safe, legitimate websites and purchase goods from law-abiding American companies. Of course, no single tactic is 100% effective and some dedicated users will still find their way to free stolen content. But, as with all crime, just because it cannot be completely eradicated does not mean we should abandon the fight.



Second, companies opposed to the bills claim that court orders not to link to websites, even if they are engaged in wholesale illegal activity, constitute “censorship.” However, this ignores the fact that Google and other search engines already alter their search results every day, with no effect on free speech. In fact, Google boasts that through November 2011 they “have processed takedown notices for nearly 5 million items,” all without a court order in response to DMCA notices from copyright owners or requests from trademark holders. To argue that it would be “censorship” to engage in similar action for foreign websites, where there exists the additional safeguard of a federal judge determining whether the entire site is illegal and thus subject to an order, is without merit. Google makes more decisions about website and search blocking than any other company or country in the world, and free speech has not suffered from existing compliance with search result takedown notices.



Congress needs to act now on these bills. The failure to pass meaningful legislation will result in overseas websites continuing to be a safe haven for criminals stealing and profiting from American creativity. As the Obama Administration stated on January 14, "Online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, and threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation's most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs."

When is a crime not a crime? When it's a breach of bail

The Sunday Telegraph spectacularly announced yesterday that the “Crime rate on bail is soaring in NSW according to new data.”

Except, it is not.

The data being referred to is the data freely-available on the website of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR).  What that data shows, in summary, is that the number of breach of bail conditions has increased from 26,278 in the 12 month period to September 2010 up to 31,002 in the 12 month period to September 2011.

There are numerous problems with the article, beginning with the headline.  The statistics do not record an increase in the rate of crime committed by persons who are on bail.  They record an increase in the number of breaches of bail conditions that have occurred.  The first point to note is that breaching a bail condition is not a crime.  The only relevant offence is failing to appear in accordance with a bail undertaking. Breaching a bail condition renders you liable to arrest, but only for the purposes of bringing you before the court for reconsideration of your bail status. And so an increase in the number of breach of bail conditions says nothing about an increase in crime.

Still less does it say anything about an increase in the crime rate…a change in the rate could only be determined by knowing how many people were on bail during the relevant periods being compared, a matter about which the article provides data for person subject to bail conditions at the time their matter was finalized, and then only for the 2010 year. It is far from clear that even that number is a relevant one for the purposes of determining an increase in the rate (the relevant number would seem to be the number of people subject to a bail condition at any time during the relevant 12 month period).

But I digress: the headline is hopelessly misleading.

The article is worse.

The first paragraph asserts that “Not even the threat of lengthy jail time is enough to deter them with the number of breaches soaring by almost 20 per cent in the past 24 months.” As noted above, breaching bail conditions is not a crime, and so there is no “lengthy jail [sic – read “gaol”] time” that poses a threat.  At worst the existing bail could be revoked and further bail refused.  Sensationalism is the only excuse for writing “almost 20%” instead of just saying “18%”.  Somewhat ironically, the increase that was recorded is over a 12 month period, not a 24 month period as reported…surely that’s MUCH more spectacular.  A course in statistics would pay handsomely for Sunday Telegraph journalists.

The second paragraph suffers from an odious failure to identify the so-called experts who proffered a view on the reason for the increase in breaches of bail conditions. If it is Don Weatherburn, subsequently referred to in the article, then why not say so.  And if there are others (implied by the use of the plural) who are they and how are they qualified to comment?  Is it the “spokesman for acting NSW Attorney-General Chris Hartcher” later referred to?

The third paragraph repeats the sins of the headline in even more egregious fashion,   which makes it difficult to blame the sub-editor. It is simply lazy, ill-researched reporting.  It is internally inconsistent, referring initially to a surge in “breach of bail offences”, but then to the number of “charges laid against offenders who committed further crimes while on bail.” It bears repeating that both these statements are wrong: there is no offence for breaching bail; and the statistics say nothing about the commission of “further crimes” while on bail.

The fourth paragraph repeats the sin of referring to “charges” for “breach of bail offences”.

The sixth paragraph asserts: “The offences committed on bail ranged from serious violent crimes to small breaches, including not reporting to police at a designated time or breaking a court ordered curfew.”  This is curious, because the statistics available on the website don’t show that at all, and BOCSAR informs me that this data is provided by the NSW Police and from that data it is not possible “to characterise the nature of these breach of bail incidents nor whether they were committed in conjunction with a further offence.”

Then, at long last, we get an explanation of the increase from Don Weatherburn, crime statistics guru.  What is interesting about this explanation for the increase in the statistic is that it is not related to an increase in criminality, or the wrong people being given bail…it is simply a result of changes to the application of the law by Courts which result in a larger number of people having conditions attached to their bail, and changes to the policing of bail conditions. 

Who’d have thought!!!

A word about legal doublets

A certain law firm has been undertaking a letterbox drop, exposing the supposed evils of the Succession Act and offering (no doubt for a fee) to assist you to prevent middle-aged drug-addict delinquent children getting their hands on an estate you'd rather leave to your cat. But I digress.

The Estate Defence Lawyers website contains the following endnote:

"A legal will is sometimes called a last will and testament or will and testament because the law sometimes uses the Norman and the English words together as a legacy of the Norman conquest of England. In fact will and testament are synonymous, like devise and bequeath, nook and cranny, cease and desist, hue and cry, goods and chattels and null and void."

This, and similar assertions, are often made particularly in the halls of schools of legal practice encouraging the use of so-called "Simple English". 

However, let there be no mistake: whatever their etymology, the first and second word in each doublet ARE NOT SYNONYMOUS.

A will and a testament are historically different things. Historically, a will referred to a disposition of real property and a testament referred to a disposition of personal property. So "Last Will and Testament" was used to describe the instrument by which the whole of one's estate (consisting of both real and personal property) could be disposed of as a consequence of one's demise. 

Going through the roll-call of supposedly synonymous legal doublets:  

• "hue" referred to the use of a horn whereas "cry" referred to shouting;
• "devise" referred to the disposition of real property whereas "bequeath" referred to the disposition of personal property (and for completeness, neither included a gift of money, hence the traditional use of the triplet "give, devise and bequeath");
• "nook" generally refers to a corner (or at least a small, partially enclosed area of a larger room) whereas "cranny" refers to a crack or similar crenellation (it is not clear that this is a legal doublet at all);
• "cease" required someone to halt an activity, whereas "desist" required them to not take up the activity again at a later time;
• "goods" refers to moveable property whereas "chattels" includes not only moveable property but also refers to intangible (and therefore immovable) property such as choses in action (particularly negotiable instruments and securities) and money which have never been considered "goods".

Another interesting aspect of the website is their promotion of libertarian thinkers such as Locke, Mill and Bentham in support of their campaign against the family provision sections in the Succession Act, and even call in aid one Elizabeth Tudor who, it is claimed, famously captured "the great principle of liberty" when she said:  "I have no desire to make windows into the souls of men [sic]".  What Elizabeth in fact meant when she said (by traditional attribution) "I have no desire to make windows into men's souls" was that she did not care what the citizenry in fact understood by the formularies of the Church of England, just that they assented to them.  Hardly a "great principle of liberty" at all, but no doubt a sentiment that prevented the heads of many being liberated from their bodies for heresy.