Russian copyright laws

The Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights has warned that Russia's chances of joining the World Trade Organization this year will fade if the government pushes ahead with new legislation on intellectual property rights saying the proposed laws were flawed. Findlaw reports that pirated films, music and software in Russia cost U.S. companies nearly US$1.8 billion (euro1.5 billion) last year and that the laws as proposed do not do enough to counter piracy concerns.

This report reminds us of the important role that intellectual property rights are playing in the promotion of free trade through free trade organisations and agreements, especially in bilateral agreements with the United States.

eBay removes advertisement for car owned by one of the gunmen in the Columbine High School killings

eBay has pulled from its website an advertisement for a 1982 BMW that was advertised as once belonging to one of the gunmen in the Columbine High School killings. According to the Rocky Mountain News, eBay spokesman Hani Durzy said the listing was what eBay officially terms "offensive material," or in this case "murderabilia".

Do you agree that this material should have been removed from the eBay website? Is this censorship, or should eBay be able to decide what is sold through its website?

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.