A blog relating to Internet legal issues by Professor John Swinson, University of Queensland
May The Fourth Be With Disney
See NY Times Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/business/star-wars-may-the-fourth-disney.html
X v. Twitter
A case in NSW requiring Twitter to remove posts on a worldwide basis that contained confidential information.
Twitter Being Sued For Defamation
See story here and SMH.
Free Speech on Twitter
From the NYTimes:
SAN FRANCISCO — What began as seamy gossip about an affair between a famous British soccer player and a reality TV star has quickly become another test over how far the rights to privacy and free speech extend online, where social media operate in countries with vastly different laws.
The soccer player has been granted a so-called super-injunction, a stringent and controversial British legal measure that prevents media outlets from identifying him, reporting on the story or even from revealing the existence of the court order itself.
But tens of thousands of Internet users have flouted the injunction by revealing his name on Twitter, Facebook and online soccer forums, sites that blur the definition of the press and are virtually impossible to police.
Last week, amid growing outrage in Britain over the use of super-injunctions, the athlete obtained a court order in British High Court demanding that Twitter reveal the identities of the anonymous users who had posted the messages. A Twitter spokesman, Matt Graves, said the company could not comment on the court order or how it planned to respond.
Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University, said, “It’s really going to the core of Twitter’s service and trying to balance the speech of its users and the fact that countries have different laws and norms about speech.”
Fined For Conduct of Facebook Fans
In his judgment Justice Finkelstein held that: "while it cannot be said that Allergy Pathway was responsible for the initial publication of testimonials (the original publisher was the third party who posted the testimonials on Allergy Pathway's Twitter and Facebook pages) it is appropriate to conclude that Allergy Pathway accepted responsibility for the publications when it knew of them and decided not to remove them. Hence it became the publisher of the testimonials."
In responding to the judgment, ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel said: "Many corporations now use Facebook "Fan" pages and Twitter accounts to promote their businesses. This outcome confirms that any business that decides to leave public testimonials or other comments on their Facebook and Twitter pages will be held responsible if they are false, misleading or deceptive."
ACCC v. Allergy Pathway [2011] FCA 74
New Californian Privacy Law: CPRA to effectively replace CCPA
On U.S. Election Day, 3 November 2020, voters in the State of California overwhelmingly voted in favour of Proposition 24—a ballot measure t...

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The United Nations intellectual property agency (WIPO) is the latest front in the US-China trade war. http://www.theage.com.au/world/sad-am...
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Carly Long, an expert in domain name litigation, will teach the first half of the class this Tuesday evening. You may wish to have a look a...
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This website has some useful links and references: http://www.epiphanysolutions.co.uk/article-index/rights-and-laws-of-the-internet/
