Cyberlaw

US Child Online Protection Act

In 1998 the US Congress passed Child Online Protection Act. The Act was to impose a $50,000 fine and six-month prison term on commercial Web site operators who publish content "harmful to children',' as defined by "contemporary community standards". However, legal challenges from sexual health sites, the online magazine Salon.com and other internet publishers have kept it from being enforced. The US Supreme Court has twice granted preliminary injunctions that prevent the government from enforcing theAct until the case is tried.

Opponents of the Act contend that not only is it too broad and would therefore stifle free speech, but that advances in technology have made it obsolete. SiliconValley.com summarises the issues plaguing the Act.

Is the Act obsolete? Does the Act unduly infringe upon free speech? How can we protect children from offensive content that is available online?

Judge plans to order Google to hand over data to the US Government

The New York Times reports that as the US Justice Department has sharply cut back its request for search-engine data from Google, a federal judge indicated that he would instruct Google to comply with a government subpoena in the department's defense of the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 law that would impose tough criminal penalties on individuals whose websites carried material deemed harmful to minors..

Read more here (free subscription required). See also CNN.com.

Microsoft in trouble with the European Commission

According to the Associated Press, the European Commission told Microsoft last Friday that it was "still not in compliance'' with a 2004 antitrust ruling that ordered it to share information with rivals to make their software work with Microsoft servers. The EU has already threatened Microsfot with 2 million euros in daily fines, backdated to 15 December, and said it will make its final decision after a hearing for Microsoft to plead its case later this month.

Read the full report here.

US Government sideas against eBay in patent dispute

The US Office of the Solicitor General said in a brief filed with the US Supreme Court on Friday that eBay willfully infringed on patents held by Great Falls-based MercExchange LLC and should be enjoined from using its "Buy It Now" feature, which allows users to buy goods at fixed prices rather than compete in auctions. Goods sold using that system account for about a third of eBay's business. Read more here.

AFP: Hong Kong clamps down on data firms after police leak

From AFP:

Hong Kong authorities said that they would set up a register of data-collection companies after details of 20,000 people who complained about the police were leaked on to the Internet. Roderick Woo, Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, said the companies would have to provide information on what kind of data they collect and why, and who will access to it. Woo said authorities were investigating the leaked data, including names, addresses and criminal records, which apparently came from the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC). The IPCC had denied any link with the website that carried the information but local media quoted unnamed police source saying the council outsourced data processing. Read more here.

Should Australia implement a similar register of data collection companies?

Michael Geist asks "Does the Government Have a Role in Internet Connectivity?"

Michael Geist picks up on Toronto Hydro's announcement of its plans to blanket the City of Toronto with wireless Internet access. He notes that the announcement has sparked an important debate about the
appropriate role for governments and public institutions in providing Internet connectivity. He argues that government cannot adopt a hands-off approach, though it must recognize that its role differs in the urban and rural markets with the urban focus on the competitive environment, while the rural mandate concentrated on establishing connectivity.

Read Michael Geist's comments here.

Do you agree that "Given the Web's importance, government cannot adopt a hands-off approach, though it must recognize that its role differs in the urban and rural markets"?

Google's Brazilian unit in trouble

Google's Brazilian unit has been asked to appear before Brazilian authorities on Friday to explain what the company was doing to curb crimes allegedly being committed through its Orkut chat rooms. According to CNet News.com, Google's Brazil spokesman confirmed that the unit, Google Brasil, had received a summons from the Public Ministry, but he declined to give details.

Read the full story here.

Does this tell us anything about jurisdictional difficulties on the internet?

Internet hate speech in Canada

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has issued an interesting internet hate decision that focuses on the applicability of Canada's Human Rights Act to internet hate materials. The Tribunal ordered fines against several individuals for their role in maintaining several hate websites and newsletters.

You can read the decision here.

IT Today

From today's liftout in The Australian:

Australia's digital content industry was being outpaced by other countries according to a report released by Department of Communication Information Technology and the Arts. Read more here.
The National Australia Bank was able to quickly shut down three sites in China that launched a phishing attack on it. Read the article here.
A feature story on corporate blogging, including why you would and why you wouldn't have a corporate blog. See also the more sceptical view of David Holmes, the managing director of online media agency OneDigital.
A Special Report on Open Source Software (not available online).

Hate speech and the internet

On page 7 of today's The Australian newspaper, an article headlined "Warning of hatred on racists' fantasy website" (the same article is available online under the headline "Racist site wanrings ignored"), referred to "A racist website where extremists fantasise about gassing Arabs has been allowed to operate freely for months, despite warnings sent to state and federal authorities that it breaks laws prohibiting the incitement of racial violence."

The website referred to is a blog titled Patriot Alliance Downunder. You can view the website at http://avoiceofdissent.blogspot.com/.

Does this website breach Australian state and/or federal law? Should a website with this sort of content be allowed to remain online? What does the fact that this website is still online tell you about internet content regulation in Australia?

Japan: the internet and suicide pacts

CNN reports on internet suicide pacts in Japan:

"Internet suicide pacts have occurred since at least the late 1990s and have been reported everywhere from Guam to the Netherlands. But in Japan, where the suicide rate is among the industrialized world's highest, officials are worried about a recent spate of such deaths."

Read the full article here.

Is it possible to stop the internet being used in this way?

EFF Consumer Alert: AdviceBox.com isn't Anonymous Email

From EFF:

EFF is warning the public about a so-called anonymous email service located at Advicebox.com. Advicebox.com's tagline is "Anonymous email made easy" but this service does not provide real anonymity -- it's a trap for the unwary and should not be used by battered spouses, whistleblowers and others who need real protection. Read more here.

Will Google take on Microsoft in the market for office-productivity software?

Google has purchased Upstartle, a small startup that runs a collaborative word processor inside Web browsers. Jen Mazzon from Upstartle blogs about the acquisition for Google here. Business 2.o Magazine believes that this acquisition is the surest sign yet that Google plans to take on Microsoft in the market for office-productivity software. Read more here.

Who do you think will win? Can you think of any legal concerns users may have with an online office-productivity suite?

Amazon to make movies and tv shows available to download

The New York Times reports that Amazon.com is in talks with Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers about starting a service that would allow consumers to download movies and TV shows for a fee and burn them onto DVD's. Read more here (free subscription required).

Internet censorship in Russia

On Friday the Russian government sought to shut down a popular, independent news Web site (http://bankfax.ru/) in Siberia for publishing extremist views of an anonymous reader who insulted Islam. This came the day after the government warned a different website (http://gazeta.ru/) over its decision to post on its site caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper last September and inflamed violent Muslim protests when European and other newspapers reprinted them this year.

New York Times: "Anonymous Source Is Not the Same as Open Source"

From the New York Times:

"Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, currently serves up the following: Five billion pages a month. More than 120 languages. In excess of one million English-language articles. And a single nagging epistemological question: Can an article be judged as credible without knowing its author? Wikipedia says yes, but I am unconvinced."

Read the full article here.

What do you think? Can an article be judged as credible without knowing its author?

European Digital Library

At least six million books, documents and "other cultural works" are to be put online and housed in the European Digital Library by 2010, the European Commission announced last week.

US internet search giant Google triggered an international race to build an online library when it announced plans in December 2004 to digitise books and documents from a handful of big libraries (see Google Book Search). US based internet and software giants Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon have since announced separate plans while France, angry that private companies took the lead, has pushed for the creation of a public digital library.

Read more here.

What copyright issues need to be considered when creating a digital library?

Backspace: 5 March to 12 March

This week this blog covered several important stories and raised a number of interesting issues:

Google continued its attempts to capture the Chinese search engine market (as rumours circulated that China was contemplating creating its own internet), settled its lawsuit against Lane’s Gifts, and saw a new competitor, in Microsoft, enter the search engine business. This blog also asked these questions about Google: Can Google commit libel through its search engine results? What are the the potential privacy implications of Google’s Desktop Search software? Does Google’s image search constitute a breach of US copyright laws? We also saw inside the Googleplex.
Russia was warned that its chances of joining the World Trade Organization this year will fade if the government pushes ahead with new legislation on intellectual property rights
The Electronic Frontier Foundation started its fight against charging a fee for email, and the New York Times weighed in on the debate by posing the question "Are consumers going to start having to spend a lot more to surf the Web?.
Privacy concerns about e-commerce surfaced this week with the news that customers of the online payments service iBill had had their personal information released onto the internet.
Australia was found to be lagging behind other developed nations in terms of broadband internet speed, yet in Great Britain people spend more time on the internet than watching television.
The Browser from Business 2.0 Magazine reported on a scary reminder of the bubble years, criticism of Microsoft's Origami, how an Intel demo turned into a shouting match, and how a Google acquisition could challenge Microsoft Word.
Some of the complexities of e-voting were seen in litigation in North Carolina.
As the US Department of Justice launched in inquiry into allegations of price fixing by top music labels on their charges for digital downloading, other options were being considered around the world. A new online music service aims to offer CDs for $US1 ($1.35) by letting members trade used physical discs and France considered whether 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. Meanwhile, it was reported that “radio podcasting is rapidly moving from the realm of hip and hype into serious media”.
A report by Symantec found that cyber-criminals are focusing less on destroying data and increasingly on attacks designed to silently steal data for profit.
eBay removed 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, only to see the seller set up a personal website to solicit bids on the car at http://www.buykleboldsbmw.com/.
A story involving threats made on a MySpace.com website provoked this question: Is the internet a safe place for children?
Blackberry settled its patent infringement lawsuit filed by NTP
Content regulation in China, a theme considered in this blog last week, resurfaced as Microsoft denied that it had any involvement in the arrest of a Chinese journalist on subversion charges. Some of the inherent difficulties in content regulation also made news this week.
Tuesday’s Australian IT liftout reported on e-healthcare, Google’s profit projections and research by Seccom Networks that suggests up to a third of companies are having information taken from their computers by adware or spyware.
Finally, these questions about blogs were asked: Why do people read blogs? When bloggers comment on issues, should they disclose any potential conflicts of interest? Who should profit from a blog?

For LWB141 Legal Institutions and Method students

The PowerPoint slides used in Peter Black's computer LWB141 tutorials are available here.

Microsoft's search engine is Live

This blog has been following the launch of Microsoft's new search engine. Now we can start using it and see whether it is a serious threat to Google's dominance.

To start searching, go to http://www.live.com/.

Personal information released onto the internet

Wired reports that customers of the online payments service iBill have had their personal information released onto the internet. The information, including names, phone numbers, addresses and email addresses, are now being bought and sold in a black market made up of fraud artists and spammers.

As the report notes, "The breach has broad privacy implications for the victims. Until it was brought low by legal and financial difficulties, iBill was a top credit-card processor for adult entertainment websites."

To read about the details of this story, click here.

Australian IT: "Aust internet crawls along"

According to Australian IT, "A report by the World Bank has Australia well behind other developed nations in terms of broadband internet speed - a key factor in modern-day business and essential to accessing new features on the web such as movie and music downloads and telephone calls." Read more here.

Check out The Browser from Business 2.0 Magazine

The Browser this week has these headlines:

The launch of a new Internet incubator is a scary reminder of the bubble years.
Microsoft's Origami draws criticism.
Intel demo turns into shouting match.
Google acquisition could challenge Microsoft Word.

Can Google commit libel?

MediaBistro's Tool Box asks "Can Google commit libel?"

The question is asked following an article in The Times reporting that Google has been asked by Premiership footballer Ashley Cole's solicitors to explain why his name has been linked to the word “gay” in internet search results.

Read more here and here.

More on the online sale of a car that once belonged to one of the Columbine gunmen

Earlier today this blog linked to a story that eBay pulled from its website an advertisement for a car that was advertised as once belonging to one of the gunmen in the Columbine High School killings.

The Rocky Mountain News is now reporting that the seller has now set up a personal website to solicit bids on the car at http://www.buykleboldsbmw.com/.

Should the seller be allowed to create this website? Although you might find the nature of this website unpleasant, is there any legal justification for banning such a site or closing it down?

Australian IT: Podcasting transcends geek factor

Sheena MacLean in Australian IT notes that "but radio podcasting is rapidly moving from the realm of hip and hype into serious media". Read all about the rapid growth of podcasting here.

The internet beats TV in Britain

The Guardian reports that Great Britain now spends more time on the internet than watching television, according to a survey published by Google. The report showed that British internet users spend an average of 164 minutes online daily, compared to 148 minutes watching television. Read more here.

Does this fact surprise you? Are people spending too much time on the internet?

Google settles lawsuit

According to The Australian, Google has settled a lawsuit filed by Lane's Gifts earlier this year in an Arkansas state court and is designed to settle all outstanding claims against Google for fraud committed using its pay-per-click ad system back to 2002. To read more, click here.

EFF warns: "Google Copies Your Hard Drive"

Commenting on Google's Desktop software, the Electronic Frontier Foundation urges consumers not to use it as "it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password." Read more here.

Are you concerned by the potential privacy implications of Google's Desktop software?

E-voting

Although not covered in LWN117 Legal Regulation of the Internet, this blog did link to developments relating to e-voting in March last year.

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.