Cyberlaw

Michael Geist: Keepmusiccoming.com Goes From Bad To Worse

"I recently blogged about CRIA's failure to renew keepmusiccoming.com, which it used as part of its 'educational' campaign to convince users to stop downloading. A blog reader has noted that the situation has gone from bad to worse as the site is now owned by a Russian download service offering up thousands of MP3 files it says are legal for nine cents each. Bear in mind, there are thousands of CDs sitting in Canadian stores today encouraging people to visit keepmusiccoming.com."

Google's GDrive

Google revealed last week that it had inadvertently disclosed its closely guarded financial projections and also let slip information about a personal, digital storage service that is in the work, known as GDrive. GDrive would be an online storage service that would give users an alternative to storing data on their personal computer hard drives. Such a service could allow users to get access to their files wherever they are, whether from a laptop, cell phone or personal digital assistant.

Read more here.

Government censorship in Australia?

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Friday that a spoof John Howard website that featured a soul searching "apology" speech for the Iraq war has been shut down under orders from the Australian Government. Read the article here and view a copy of the "speech" here.

Is this censorship? Should the Australian government be allowed to ask Melbourne IT to shut down the site?

EFF: Proposed New Jersey Laws Would Chill Free Speech

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is objecting to a proposed New Jersey law that would require internet service providers to record users' identities and reveal them in any claim of defamation. The EFF believes that this would remove anonymous speech from the internet, thereby chilling free speech protected by the First Amendment.

Read EFF's open letter to three New Jersey congressmen.

US trys to stop internet gambling

Last week a United States House committee approved a bill aimed at stamping out the $12 billion internet gambling industry by stopping businesses from accepting credit cards and other forms of payment. Read the article from the Washington Post (free subscription required).

What dangers are posed by internet gambling? Should internet gambling be banned? How can we regulate internet gambling?

More censorship in China

On Friday a Chinese court jailed a teacher for 10 years on Friday for publishing anti-government views on the internet. Read CNN's report here.

dot.XXX legislation proposed in the US

Two US senators have proposed legislation that would establish a new ".XXX" domain for racy or sexually explicit websites. The bill proposed by senators Mark Pryor and Max Baucus, both Democrats, calls upon the US Department of Commerce to exclude sexually charged content from established website domain names such as .gov, .com, .org, .net, and .edu.

Read more here.

China defends internet censorship

On several occasions this blog has discussed content regulation of the internet in China. Last week, the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, offered a defense of China's internet censorship. Read more here.

ICANN to test non-English domain names

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has outlined a plan for testing domain names entirely in non-English characters, bringing closer to reality a change highly sought by Asian and Arabic Internet users.

Read more here.

France to open up iTunes

France is pushing through a law that would force Apple Computer Inc to open its iTunes online music store and enable consumers to download songs onto devices other than the computer maker's popular iPod player. Under the proposed law it would no longer be illegal to crack digital rights management if it is to enable to the conversion from one format to another.

Read more here.

What might the implications of this proposed law? Should other nations consider implementing a similar law? Why? Why not?