IT Today

Each Tuesday, The Australian newspaper has a special section called IT Today, which includes IT Business. It is worth reading (or at least skimming) this section each week.

Here a few interesting articles from the section published today that touch upon issues we will cover later in the semester:

• "Apple quiet on local music sales" - Apples iTunes Music Store, one of the leading legal alternatives to the illegal downloading of music, has said it will not release local download figures. Why? Does this mean that Australian sales are disappointing to sales overseas?
• "Spam has bolted, despite Gates" - reminding us that two years Bill Gates promised that spam would be gone in two years.
• "Law firms block junk" - Clayton Utz has slashed the number of incoming emails by nearly 40 per cent by restricting spam.
• "Script kiddies cooking up fresh threats" - how amateur hackers are using new programs called rootkits to give the user untraceable control of the compromised computer.

There are also interesting and relevant articles that are not available online, so it was worth buying The Australian each Tuesday just to stay on top of what is happening.

Who owns the Internet?

Following on from the question posed in class last night - who owns the internet? - look at this article from CNN, "Tolls could dot the Internet highway". The article refers to the major telecommunication companies as "the operators of the Internet" and reports that they wish to provide a tiered service whereby consumers pay more for a faster service.

The article is worth reading as it reinforces a number of things discussed last night - how information on the information is carried in packets, the historical origins of the internet, how the internet has evolved, as well as positing that perhaps it is the telecommunication companies that own the internet. What do you think? And if the telecommunication companies do impose what the article refers to as a toll, what would be the implications on internet usage? Also, what privacy issues may this raise?

Cyberlaw at QUT

Let's begin with a posting about QUT ...

A new "open access to knowledge" project hosted by the Queensland University of Technology aims to ensure that anyone can legally share knowledge across the world, whether they be an every day citizen or a top end researcher.

The QUT team, led by School of Law head, Professor Brian Fitzgerald is embarking on a $1.3 million, two year project to develop legal protocols for managing copyright issues in an open access environment.

For more information, see the press release or visit the project's homepage.

What do you think? Is this a valuable project? Should research be available under an open access protocol? What should such a protocol involve?

Welcome to LWN117 Students

Welcome to all the LWN117 Legal Regulation of the Internet students for semester 1, 2006. As well, welcome to anyone else who happens to read and/or wishes to contribute to the posts.

I hope you find this to be a good way of keeping up to date with a wide variety of issues and of contributing to the discussion of the issues we cover in this unit.

Thanks and I hope you enjoy the semester!