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Ordinary citizens, litigants, students of law and lawyers in a civil society have a right to know about the prevailing law of that country. The traditional way of disseminating legal information – on paper – has given way to the electronic format in most of the developed countries. Gradually, this change is also beginning in the developing countries. In India, no one has a copyright to the text of judgments delivered by the courts; however, in the headnotes of judgments, copyright issues are involved. The bigger Internet players have started fee-based legal websites where one can become a member and/or registered user by paying periodical subscriptions. These can run into thousand of rupees every year. Only after paying the access fees can the visitor gain access to the complete headnote or the plain text of the judgment.

The Commonwealth Legal Information Institute (CommonLII – www.commonlii.org – pronounced 'Common-lee'), is a non-profit and free access website for legal information from all countries that are members of the Commonwealth and their territories (more than 60). CommonLII also covers a small number of significant non-Commonwealth countries and territories that have a legal system based on the common law. The main purpose of CommonLII is to provide a comparative law facility by which the laws of all common law countries can be searched and compared. In relation to case law, CommonLII assists in making the ideal of an international common law a reality, by providing the case law collection with the broadest geographical scope, and the only free access international citator (LawCite). In relation to legislation, CommonLII makes it easier to compare legislative developments in the same subject-areas across Commonwealth countries, and can therefore assist in the process of law reform, as well as increasing the transparency of each country's legal system. CommonLII also makes it easier to find commentaries on the law from Commonwealth and common law countries, including law reform reports and some law journals. This paper explains CommonLII's development since its launch in 2005 (its partners, scope and supporters; the range of content from each country; and technical features, illustrated by searches), emphasising the significance of the addition of the English Reports 1220-1873 and the LawCite international citator. It concludes with an outline of likely future developments due to funding provided for 2010-11 by the Australian Research Council, Commonwealth Secretariat and Australian Attorney-General's Department.

The wave of free access to law movement hit Zimbabwe leading to the establishment of the Zimbabwe Legal Information Institute (ZimLII). This was started with the help of African Legal Information Institute (AfricanLII) which sourced funds to kick start the project and then held training workshops to equip the people who will be working with the administrator. There is a steering committee which comprises of academics, lawyers, publishers, information technologists and librarians from various organisations. This board is chaired by the Director of Legal Resources Foundation. This led to the creation of a website and content has been uploaded to populate the site. The website is up and running and an administrator was employed to oversee the day to day running of the website and its maintenance. This paper is an account of the opportunities and challenges that has been faced by the institute. The major challenge was the issue of sustainability in terms of non availability of funds to continuously support the project. The ZimLII project can be regarded as one of the successful initiative towards the availability of legal information to the general public since there are plans to make it a one stop shop for those looking for such information.

This article addresses the question of electronic access to legal resources in Ireland, with special reference to the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) project. The first section of the article explains the origins of BAILII and the Irish resources which it makes available without charge on the web (as well discussing as other free websites). The second section considers official sources of access to Irish legal material (i.e. government sites), while a final section outlines the commercial services currently on offer. An Appendix provides some "Notes on Using BAILII."

Since the mid1990s the Internet's Worldwide Web has provided the necessary technical platform to enable free access to computerised legal information. In many countries the first attempts to exploit the advantages of the web for providing legal information came from the academic sector rather than government, and did so with an explicit ideology of free access provision. Three LIIs played key roles in early developments: the Legal Information Institute (Cornell), AustLII, and LexUM. This paper analyses the development of the Free Access to Law Movement, and its relationship to the broader development of free access to legal information, concluding that it has not yet achieved its full potential, and suggesting some steps forward.

Das Institut für gesellschaftswissenschaftliche Information (INION) in Moskau besteht seit 1969. Es bearbeitet Literatur auf den Gebieten wissenschaftlicher Kommunismus, Philosophie, Ökonomie, Geschichte, Rechtswissenschaft. Seine Arbeit umfaßt bibliographische Erfassung, Erstellung von Referateblättern und "retrospektiven Informationspublikationen" entsprechend den Hauptforschungsrichtungen. Herausgabe eines Bulletins internationaler Kongresse und Veranstaltung sozialwissenschaftlicher Tagungen. Dem Institut angeschlossen ist die seit 1918 bestehende "gesellschaftswissenschaftliche Fundamentalbibliothek der Akademie der Wissenschaften der UdSSR". (WZ)

bk. 1. Homework assignments for workshops -- bk. 2. [Without special title] ; Mode of access: Internet.