A blog relating to Internet legal issues by Professor John Swinson, University of Queensland
Listen to this podcast where I discuss how damages should be assessed in privacy and cybersecurity lawsuits.
The Lawyers Weekly Show host Jerome Doraisamy speaks with Professor John Swinson, who teaches cyber security law and privacy law at The University of Queensland, about growing awareness of data and cyber security issues and subsequent legal claims.
AUSTRALIAN PRIVACY AMENDMENT BILL. The Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022 has now passed both houses of Parliament, and will be presented to the Governor General for assent. The amendment adds substantial penalties for serious or repeated breaches of the Australian Privacy Act.
With the recent introduction of "direct registration" in the Australian domain name space (e.g. anyone with a connection to Australia can register domain names such as lawprofessor.au or telstra.au), I predict that there will be a sudden uptick of auDRP disputes. Even though .au did not launch until October 2022, as at today, three auDRP complaints have already been lodged: cointre.au, rockypoint.au and magnaflow.au.
Some law firms are specialising in this area, such as Cooper Mills.
A good article about how a NY law firm (Debevoise) attacked a phishing website but attacking the domain name.
Some WIPO decisions regarding Australian law firms:
https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/text/2017/d2017-1721.html
https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2015-1452
Google LLC v Defteros [2022] HCA 27, decided 17 August 2022 by High Court of Australia.
The High Court decided that for the purposes of defamation law, Google is not a publisher of a newspaper article when providing a link to the article in search engine results and a short summary of the article.
"The question which arises here is whether
providing search results which, in response to an enquiry, direct the attention
of a person to the webpage of another and assist them in accessing it amounts
to an act of participation in the communication of defamatory matter. ...
It is not suggested that [Google] itself communicated the defamatory matter in the Underworld article, which appeared on The Age's website. Unlike the defendants in the innocent dissemination cases, [Google] did not do so by selling, distributing or otherwise disseminating the matter complained of. ...
The question of whether the appellant could be said to participate comes down to the assistance provided by the hyperlink to move to another webpage. This is not a strong basis for liability and it finds no support in existing authority in Australia or recent cases elsewhere."
An interesting detailed article about the Facebook data leak:
https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/the-facebook-data-leak-explained/
The leak took place in 2019.
"Initially, attackers offered the data at quite a steep price. As the data began circulating in open and gated cybercriminal forums in 2020, a listing on Russian-speaking cybercriminal forum XSS in August 2020 advertised the sale of this data for “only” USD 25,000 (see Figure 2). Listings were identified across several other forums, such as Raidforums. The sheer size of the data leakage and the wide geography it covered (106 countries) made the data a gold mine for cybercriminals. Therefore, these listings often caught the interest of multiple threat actors."
An Australian senator proposes a Digital Services Act relating to blockchain technology.
https://www.andrewbragg.com/post/address-at-blockchain-week-2022
A decision from Judge Rakoff from the SDNY regarding a motion to dismiss in a case involving NFTs. See https://images.law.com/contrib/content/uploads/documents/389/164932/Hermes-v.-Rotschild.Rakoff-order-on-MTD-1.pdf
The court denied the motion to dismiss.
Mr Rotschild, the defendant, created a digital image of the Hermes Birkin bag, with a baby fetus inside the bag. It sold for $23,500. He also created images of faux fur Birkin bags, and 100 numbered NFTs that sold for about the price of a real world Birkin bag.
Hemmes sued Rotschild for trademark infringement. Rotschild says the NFTs are art that have First Amendment protection. He also said that his use of MetaBirkin for the title of his art had First Amendment protection.
The court said that there were too many factual issues to determine (e.g. is the NFT art?) to dismiss the case against Rotschild without having a trial.
Professor Don Chisum is a leader in U.S. patent law. He has recently written this excellent article:
Fifty Years of Patent Law: The Top Ten Developments
https://chisum-patent-academy.com/wp-content/uploads/ChisumTop10in50Article6July2022.pdf
Well worth reading if you are interested in patent law and the business of patents.
The Age newspaper has this story regarding false reviews of an artificial patents business, that alleged were posted when the business had a dispute with a moving company.
Interestingly, they are suing Google.
Similar story to the Titan Sheds dispute that ended up in the Federal Court in Brisbane a few years back. There are about 3 court decisions. One involved trying to get evidence from Google, but because Google was offshore, this was difficult. See Note
The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) announced this month the outcome of two successful enforcement actions against non-compliant crypto asset trading platforms.
The ACCC is seeking views from consumers, businesses and other parties on options for legislative reform to address concerns about the dominance of digital platforms.
A discussion paper, released today, outlines options for addressing harms to competition, consumers, and business users in a range of areas dominated by large digital platforms, including social media, search, app marketplaces, general online retail marketplaces and ad tech.
Read moreRohingya refugees are suing Facebook over its own admitted failure to stop the spread of hate speech that contributed to violence in Myanmar.
A case has been filed in the USA. Because of s230 of the Communications Decency Act, the plaintiffs are asserting that Myanmar law should apply, not U.S. law.
Commentators have stated it is a difficult case for the refugees.
As experts say the number of cyber attacks being directed at Australia have reached a disturbing level, it can now be revealed that Chinese hackers came within minutes of shutting down two Queensland power stations . Had the attack been successful it could have been lights out for some 3 million homes.
The Australian Government has just released a proposed law to deal with defamation and social media comments.
See Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill.
https://www.ag.gov.au/legal-system/social-media-anti-trolling-bill
The AG's office provides the following information:
"The challenges of responding to anonymous online trolling became clear after the High Court's decision in Fairfax Media Publications v Voller [2021] HCA 27, handed down in September 2021. The Voller decision shows that Australians who maintain a social media page may be exposed to defamation liability for defamatory comments posted on the page by others – even if they are not aware of those defamatory comments.
To urgently address this situation the Australian Government has developed the Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill 2021. To address the implications of the Voller decision, the Bill will protect Australians from defamation liability that could arise if they allow users to comment on their social media page."
See my comments in The Australian blog: "Law professor supports anti-trolling proposals"
In an interesting article about Crypto Exchange regulation in the WSJ.
"The world’s fastest-growing major financial exchange has no head office or formal address, lacks licenses in countries where it operates and has a chief executive who until recently wouldn’t answer questions about his location."
The biggest exchange is Binance, which has no fixed address it seems. Creates interesting internet jurisdiction issues.
An interesting case today from the UK: Lloyd v Google
See note here: https://www.mishcon.com/news/the-developing-law-on-data-protection-group-claims
"This is of course a landmark judgment for data protection claims, but also more generally for consumer actions brought on an "opt-out" basis. The claimant, Mr Lloyd, represented a group of more than 4 million iPhone users, and alleged, on their behalf, that Google's historic deployment of cookies on the Safari browser had been not just unlawful, but that it meant that Google should pay compensation to everyone who had received cookies on that basis."
The court found for Google.
This is a good article. It provides insights on what exactly each carrier collects, a more recent run-down of how long each United States telecom retains certain types of data for, and images of the tool the FBI makes available to law enforcement agencies across the country to analyze cell phone tower data.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vqkv/how-fbi-gets-phone-data-att-tmobile-verizon
A good source of information about cybersecurity risks is the Information Security Forum (ISF).
For example, ISF recently published an interesting report regarding cybersecurity insurance. Is cybersecurity insurance worth the risk? See Report.
An interesting legal decision regarding the domain name pocketbook.com was handed down by a United States district judge this month. The case arose out of this NAF UDRP decision from 2019 that decided for the domain name owner: https://www.adrforum.com/DomainDecisions/1857174.htm
The court reviewed the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) prohibits reverse
domain name hijacking, which occurs when “overreaching trademark owners” interfere with a
domain name registrant’s lawful use of a domain name.
The court decided that the requirement that the domain name “has been suspended, disabled, or transferred” does not include temporary suspension during the pendency of a UDRP case.
See decision here https://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/pocketbook.pdf and case note here.
Listen to this podcast where I discuss how damages should be assessed in privacy and cybersecurity lawsuits. The Lawyers Weekly Show host J...