A blog relating to Internet legal issues by Professor John Swinson, University of Queensland
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Australian IT: Podcasting transcends geek factor
The internet beats TV in Britain
Does this fact surprise you? Are people spending too much time on the internet?
Google settles lawsuit
EFF warns: "Google Copies Your Hard Drive"
Are you concerned by the potential privacy implications of Google's Desktop software?
E-voting
Some of the legal complexities relating to e-voting are currently being considered by the courts in North Carolina. If you are interested in e-voting and want to know what is being litigated in North Carolina, click here.
If you would like to know more news about e-voting in the US, visit Voters Unite.
Copyright and Google image search
Do you agree with the decision? How do you think the appeal will be decided? Do you agree with Cody's conclusion that, even if the decision is upheld on appeal, "the vitality of Web does not appear in jeopardy as a result of the district court’s decision"?
Russian copyright laws
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
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
Read a summary of the report here. And this is how The Australian reported the story.
"A new twist on online song swapping" ...
Would you share music in this way? Would such a system be legal in Australia?
Microsoft's new search engine
Bloggers as advertisers
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
Is China Creating Its Own Internet?
- "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?
EFF fights against charging a fee for email
- 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
For some background and commentary, see Ben at LawFont.
China and Google
- 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?
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
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
- 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
Can blogs replace the mainstream media?
What do you think? Can bloggers better fulfil these functions? Could the blog hasten the end of traditional media sources?
Inquiry into music downloading
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
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?
What do you think? Who should profit?
Microsoft v Google
Backspace: 26 February to 5 March
- 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"
- 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?
How should damages be assessed for privacy and cybersecurity breaches
Listen to this podcast where I discuss how damages should be assessed in privacy and cybersecurity lawsuits. The Lawyers Weekly Show host J...
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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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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...
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Finally, what is called direct registration of domain names is coming to Australia. See https://www.auda.org.au/statement/australias-interne...