Cyber-criminals gettting smarter

According to a report by Symantec, cyber-criminals are focusing less on destroying data and increasingly on attacks designed to silently steal data for profit without doing noticeable damage that would alert a user to its presence.

Read a summary of the report here. And this is how The Australian reported the story.

"A new twist on online song swapping" ...

With peer-to-peer file sharing garnering so much attention from the legal community, politicians, the music industry and consumers alike, The Australian reports on a new way to share music. A new online music service aims to offer CDs for $US1 ($1.35) by letting members trade used physical discs. Read more here.

Would you share music in this way? Would such a system be legal in Australia?

Microsoft's new search engine

On Monday this blog linked to a story where the president of Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa, Neil Holloway declared that Microsoft will have a better search engine than google in 6 months. Microsoft has now released the beta version of their new search engine. Read about it here.

Life in the Googleplex

Time has this interesting photo essay inside Google headquarters ...

Bloggers as advertisers

The standards to which we should hold bloggers was briefly referred to in this blog last year. When bloggers comment on issues, should they disclose any potential conflicts of interest? Should blogs be allowed to be set up as appearing independent, when they are really an advertising tool of a company? What legal issues (in the Australian context or elsewhere) may be raise in such a situation?

Some of these issues are covered in this article from the New York Times, "Wal-Mart Enlists Bloggers in P.R. Campaign" (free subscription required).

Microsoft and China

Content regulation in China continues to be major issue. Forbes.com covers a denial from Microsoft that it had any involvement in the arrest of a Chinese journalist on subversion charges following reports that the reporter's 'Hotmail' account was mentioned in the indictment against him.

Is China Creating Its Own Internet?

From the Tech Law Prof Blog:

• "There are conflicting reports as to whether China is considering creating an internal Internet structure that is not governed by ICANN. Reports in the China People's Daily suggested that China would create top level domains using Chinese characters as addresses. A lot of the non-English world wants to extend addresses to their own alphabets, something with which ICANN has been moving glacially slow.
  Reports are that China is working with second-level domains, rather than .cn, .com, and .net as suggested by other reports.
  A report in the Toronto Star by Professor Michael Geist suggests that whether top or second level domains are involved, the prospects of China being used as a model by other countries has the potential to up-end U.S. control of top level domain servers. China is a little different from most countries in that the population of Internet users is large enough that the Chinese government could, indeed, make the split work for that country. Critics believe if China successfully splits from the Internet as it is currently governed, the government there would be able to censor content even more than is possible under current circumstances.
  Stories on this from CIO Today, the Toronto Star, and Xinhua."

Why do people read blogs?

In a light hearted article, Media Guy, Simon Dumenco, attempts to explain why people read blogs. What do you think, can you get lucky reading Media Guy?

EFF fights against charging a fee for email

Last week the blog considered whether email on the Internet should be free:

• Would charging for email be just like a road toll?
• When will email cease to be free?
• Would charging for email introduce a two-tiered system?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has started an open letter to AOL in which it expresses its serious concern with AOL's adoption of Goodmail's CertifiedEmail, seeing it as a threat to a free and open internet. Read the letter and see if you agree with EFF's argument? What are some of the counter-arguments?

End of patent lawsuit against Blackberry

Blackberry has settled its patent infringement lawsuit filed by NTP. Read more about what this means and why there are still detractors of Blackberry's wireless email system from the New York Times (free subscription required).

For some background and commentary, see Ben at LawFont.

China and Google

Content regulation in China was also discussed in this blog last week. There have been some developments this week relating to Google's attempts to capture the Chinese search engine market:

• A United States Congressional Committee has accused Google (and other internet companies) of a "sickening and eveil" collaboration with the Chinese government and of being complicit in the jailing and torture of dissidents. This stems from Google's agreement with the Chinese government to block various politically sensitive terms from their new China specific site, Google.cn. Read more here.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation has called for internet companies to adopt a code of conduct when engaging with authoritarian regimes.
• While all the controversy dominates the media, Beijing News, a Beijing newspaper, indicates it may be academic as Google's new China specific site doies not have a license. Read more here.

Is MySpace.com safe?

Last week in this blog, we linked to a story involving threats made on a MySpace.com website. This week, USA Today reports that the company's Chief Executive Officer has had to reassure users that MySpace is as safe as anyplace in the offline world despite recent reports that sexual predators may be using it to find and lure young victims.

Is the internet a safe place for children? What can the law do to help protect children when they go online? Or is simply something that parents need to monitor?

Legal peer-to-peer file-sharing ... for a fee

In December last year, members of the French parliament voted to legalise peer-to-peer file-sharing through scheme that allowed internet users to download as much as they want as long they paid a small monthly fee. The money from the fee would go to artists' royalties. The bill faced heavy opposition from the government, who withdrew the bil and therefore stopped the bill from completing its way through the legislative process. The government reintroduced an amended version which lighten fines for illegal downloading and to allow people to make private copies of DVDs and CDs. Read more about it here.

What do you think of the original French scheme? Is such a scheme a solution to the problem of illegal downloading? Should peer-to-peer file-sharing be legal? Why? Or why not?

IT Today

From today's liftout in The Australian:

• The federal government's committment to e-health, through HealthConnect, has been called into question by Queensland Health. Read about it here. What role can e-healthcare play in our health system? Is government adequately committed to e-health? Is e-health simply a waste of money? What legal issues would inherently surround e-health? (Think about privacy law?)
• Following on from Google's profit projections mentioned in this blog last week, Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt says he sees no limit to the search engine's ability to increase advertising revenue, allaying investor concerns about slowing growth. Read more here.
• Research by Seccom Networks suggests that up to a third of companies are having information taken from their computers by adware or spyware. The research apparently reveals that about only two in every 100 companies in Australia are able to identify any threat, mitigate it and collect forensic evidence so legal action can be taken. Read more here. What does this mean for Australian businesses? And what does it tell us about the difficulty in collecting forensic evidence in an electronic and digital environment?

Money and the internet

Last week in this blog, we considered whether email will one day cease to be free and the potential consequences that this may have on internet use. This week the New York Times weighs is, posing the question ""Are consumers going to start having to spend a lot more to surf the Web? (free subscription required).

Can blogs replace the mainstream media?

In a column titled "Those Busted Blogs", William Power looks at the role and status of the blog now that the "hype-fueled blog mania" has eased. He believes that the three main functions of the media can be serviced by the bloggers. These three main functions are: "1) convenience (organization of news and information in user-friendly formats); 2) truth-telling (digging up important stories and holding powerful people accountable); and 3) pleasure (the sheer fun of reading, listening, or watching)."

What do you think? Can bloggers better fulfil these functions? Could the blog hasten the end of traditional media sources?

Inquiry into music downloading

The BBC reports that the US Department of Justice has launched an inquiry into allegations of price fixing by top music labels on their charges for digital downloading. The background to these allegations stems from the major record labels being at loggerheads with Apple over what it charges for tracks sold through its iTunes online service. The article observes that "The digital music market has really taken off in the past couple of years, with revenues from digital sales topping the $1bn mark last year. Its growth has come at a time when sales of CDs and other traditional music formats are falling."

For further discussion see the Tech Law Prof Blog.

How should the major music labels respond to this trend?

Some of the difficulties inherent in content regulation

SmartFilter is a system used by corporations, schools, libraries and governments that allows system administrators to monitor and filter their users' access to web sites. Their website states that "By controlling inappropriate Internet use with SmartFilter, organizations can reduce legal liability, enhance Web security, increase productivity, and preserve bandwidth for business-related activities. SmartFilter puts you in control."

However, the New York Times reports (free subscription required) that the relatively innocent site Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things had been blocked by SmartFilter on the basis that a site reviewer from SmartFilter had "spotted something fleshy" and incorrectly (or at the least unfairly) labelled the site with the Nudity characterisation.

As is noted in the article, "There is far too much content on the Internet for one company to review manually, so they have to cut corners. And they're going to fall further behind as the Web gets bigger."

Is there a solution to this problem? Should we just accept that it is impossible to provide effective content regulation for the internet? Should we even go so far to say that there should be no regulation of the internet?

Who should profit from a blog?

If you have a popular blog, should you have the write to sell advertising space on that blog? Or should any advertising space be controlled by the web portal that places the blog online? This is the dilemma being faced by Xu Jinglei, a Chinese actress, who is China's most popular blogger. Read more from the New York Times website (free subscription required).

What do you think? Who should profit?

Microsoft v Google

The president of Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa, Neil Holloway, has declared that Microsoft will have a better search engine than google in 6 months. The new search engine will be introduced in the US and Britain first, before being introduced into Europe, and will be put into Microsoft's widely used communications tools Windows Messenger and Hotmail. Read more here.

Backspace: 26 February to 5 March

The blog began 2006 with a welcome and some news about an exciting new research project hosted by the Queensland University of Technology, OAK Law. Other issues canvassed in the last seven days have included:

• The big copyright story was the release of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs handing down its report on the inquiry into technological protection measures.
• The other copyright story was that Apple iTunes Music Store stated that it would not be releasing local download figures.
• Moving away from copyright, the blog considered whether email on the Internet should be free. Would charging for email be just like a road toll? When will email cease to be free? And would charging for email introduce a two-tiered system? Would a charging for email reduce our dependence on email?
• Phishing continues to be a threat to Australia, while some US states, like Virginia, are fighting back.
• Internet usage continues to grow, as does the google juggernaut.
• Despite the promises of Bill Gates, spam continues to be a problem, forcing companies and law firms to find ways of limiting spam.
• Threats, hackers and cyberviolence continue to provoke further regulation of the internet.
• Content regulation of the internet in China. This is a major legal, technological and political issue that will be considered throughout the semester and warrants more comment and attention.

I hope you found some of these links and issues interesting. Please post your comments to encourage more debate and discussion.

South Korea and "cyberviolence"

CNN has posted this report on cyberviolence in South Korea. The report is interesting for these aspects:

• South Korea is the world's most wired country, boasting the highest per capita rate of broadband Internet connections.
• The term cyberviolence encompasses anything from online insults to sexual harassment and cyberstalking.
• Prosecutors are beginning to respond to the threat posed by cyberviolence.
• Also responding is the government, who plans to introduce a bill that real-name authentication.
• Websites too are responding by actively seeking to filter comments.

There are four questions worthing considering here. First, is given the nature of the virtual environment of the internet is cyberviolence really a threat or danger? Second, are the respective responses of prosecutors, the government and individual websites warranted and proportionate to whatever threat or danger is posed? Will real-name authentication, which would have the effect of removing anonymous online speech in South Korea, be a threat to free speech? Do we, and should we, have a right to anonymous speech?

Did this school do the right thing?

According to this report, 20 school students were suspended after seeing a posting on a MySpace.com website that contained a threat directed toward a girl at the school. Did the school overstep its bounds by disciplining students for actions that occurred on personal computers, at home and after school hours?

Google continues to expand

Google aims to become a $US100 billion company according to Australian IT today. The article also notes that despite Google's new products, 97% of its revenue is from search-related advertising.

More on when will email cease to be free?

This issue was raised in this blog on Wednesday, but I thought it interesting to posit the idea that perhaps that rather than all-free email or all-pay email, we could be seeing the introduction of a two tiered system. This is certainly the allegation that is being levelled at AOL (see this Financial Times article).

Is there anything wrong with a two tiered system? If users are prepared to pay for an email system that guarantees increased speed and authentication, why shouldn't just accept that it is their right to do so? It all comes back to the fundamental questions: should email be free, and why?

Internet performance in Australia

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has also issued a report on the data rates and reliability of internet connections in Australia. Although the report is quite technical, it concludes that Australian internet performance across different technologies and access plans is generally consistent with transmission protocols and the inherent nature of the internet. The report is titled Understanding your Internet Quality of Service 2004-05.

ACMA warning on phishing

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has issued a warning about phishing, a topic we will cover a bit later in the semester. You can read the warning here.

Are we too email dependent?

Are we too email dependent? Joceyln Noveck wonders if that is so in her article "In the age of e-mail and instant messaging, the lowly handwritten note gains currency ..."

Do you agree or disagree? Is the handwritten note gaining currency?

Content Regulation in China

The issue of content regulation in China was mentioned in this blog last year. In the last few weeks, this issue has once again pushed into the international media. The Washington Post recently published an excellent series of stories on this issue, titled The Click That Broke a Government's Grip.

Here are some other recent stories relating to content regulation in China:

• The Chinese government continues to prosecute people for subversion for online writings. For example, on Tuesday the AP reported that a Chinese journalist has been whose reports on rural poverty and unemployment riled local officials has been charged with subversion after posting essays on the internet.
• China is cracking down on spam and piracy.
• Much to the chagrin of the US government, various internet companies have agreed to China's censorship demands.

For a detailed study, see this report from the OpenNet Initiative: Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005.

Of course, the Chinese government defends its right to regulate the internet in the way it does.

There are really two issues here. First, how successful has China's regulation been? And second, assuming the Chinese government's attempts at regulation have been relative successful, should a government be able to regulate what its citizens can access through the internet? So basically, the first is a practical or technical question - does it work? - while the second is the moral or philosophical question on the role of government and the value of free speech? Any thoughts or different perspectives? Who would defend what China is doing?

New Phishing Law Used

America Online has filed three lawsuits under Virginia's anti-phishing law. Read more here.

Do we need such new specialised legislation to combat phishing, or can existing laws be used.