A blog relating to Internet legal issues by Professor John Swinson, University of Queensland
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Google Play
Email from Google:
Today we introduced Google Play, a new digital content destination available on mobile devices and on the web. With Google Play, users can buy and experience books, music, movies and Android apps, available across their devices. Google Play gives our partners and the ecosystem an integrated entertainment hub for Android and Google users. As part of this launch, Google eBooks and Android Market will become part of Google Play, and users will now get their ebooks from Google Play.
In addition, customers who go to the web ebookstore will be redirected to the Google Play store. While this doesn't change the way consumers read Google eBooks, it does provide a more compelling mobile purchase experience.
We are excited about the opportunities ahead to "play" together.
Google Play team
Helpful Resources:
Google Play overview - http://play.google.com/about
Google Play brand assets - http://www.android.com/branding.html
FAQs - http://support.google.com/books/partner/bin/answer.py?answer=2494942
Today we introduced Google Play, a new digital content destination available on mobile devices and on the web. With Google Play, users can buy and experience books, music, movies and Android apps, available across their devices. Google Play gives our partners and the ecosystem an integrated entertainment hub for Android and Google users. As part of this launch, Google eBooks and Android Market will become part of Google Play, and users will now get their ebooks from Google Play.
In addition, customers who go to the web ebookstore will be redirected to the Google Play store. While this doesn't change the way consumers read Google eBooks, it does provide a more compelling mobile purchase experience.
We are excited about the opportunities ahead to "play" together.
Google Play team
Helpful Resources:
Google Play overview - http://play.google.com/about
Google Play brand assets - http://www.android.com/branding.html
FAQs - http://support.google.com/books/partner/bin/answer.py?answer=2494942
Week 3 - Internet Jurisdiction
The next class is Internet jurisdiction.
Presentation from class is here.
Please read the following:
The relevant chapter in the assigned class text.
Presentation from class is here.
Please read the following:
The relevant chapter in the assigned class text.
Sliding Scale Test:
Zippo case
Effects Test:
Calder v. Jones (US Supreme Court)
Application of Effects Test:
Weather Underground case (and complete court file for this case if interested)
Penguin Group v. American Buddha
Penguin Group v. American Buddha
Australian approach:
Dow Jones v. Gutnick (High Court of Australia)
[Defamation - including Internet cases - background information if interested]
Comment: Determining Internet Jurisdiction
What happens if the Defendant does not show up?
Bell v Steele (No 2) [2012] FCA 62 (7 February 2012) - a case that involves a film made in NY and Australia by Richard Bell from Brisbane, that was uploaded to Vimeo from Australia, and where a person in NY had the film removed from Vimeo.
Could two courts come to an inconsistent result in the same case?
See The Secret litigation:
See The Secret litigation:
Background: The Australian
Australian Trial Judge Decision
Full Court of Federal Court Decision
Note regarding US decision on jurisdiction
Yahoo Facebook Patent War
Yahoo has demanded licensing fees from Facebook for use of its technology, the companies said on Monday, potentially engulfing social media in the patent battles and lawsuits raging across much of the tech sector.
Yahoo has asserted claims on patents that include the technical mechanisms in the Facebook's ads, privacy controls, news feed and messaging service, according to a source briefed on the matter.
Representatives from the two companies met on Monday and the talks involved 10 to 20 of Yahoo's patents, said the source, who was not aware of what specific dollar demands Yahoo may have made for licenses.
See Yahoo and Managing IP
Week 2: The Law of Google
This class will look at Google's business models, and the legal issued raised.
Have a high level look at the following parts of the Google empire:
Reading:
Additional Reading if you have time:
Have a high level look at the following parts of the Google empire:
- Ten Things We Know To Be True
- Google Products
- Google Books
- AdWords and AdWords Help
- AdSense
- New Privacy Policy (and review material linked from this page)
Reading:
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Trading Post Australia [2011] FCA 1086 (22 September 2011), currently on appeal
- Financial Times: Google Privacy Policy Gets Public Airing (2 March 2012)
- Click Fraud
- Advanced Click Fraud
Additional Reading if you have time:
- Official Google Blog
- Google's Inside Search
- 40 Changes for February 2012
- Google Watch Blog
- Prior Blog Posts Concerning Google
- Google's Guide to having your website indexed properly in Google search results
Hosted Domains
IP Addresses
[Student Post]
For those that didn’t know, the world is running out of IP Addresses:
It
has been known for some time that the current structure of IP addresses
is not sufficient for the number of computers/devices
accessing the internet in future. The current structure of IP
addresses, known as IPv4, is structured as xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (e.g.
192.168.0.1) which limits this number of unique addresses to
4,294,967,296.
With the limit of Ipv4 addresses expected to be exhausted soon and the number of internet connected devices estimated to reach
22 billion by 2020 (IMS Research) it is clear a new IP standard is required.
Thankfully
a group known as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has been
developing IPv6 since the early 90’s which provides
for 340 undecillon (that’s 340 with 36 zeros) unique addresses. (e.g.
2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334).
However, proliferation of IPv6
has been slow with Google estimating in 2008 that IPv6 uptake among
users was less than 1%. The need for replacement and/or updating of some
hardware and software is partly to blame for
this slow rate of uptake.
So
it seems a significant burden has been placed on the IETF to ensure the
smooth running of the internet through the adoption
of IPv6. That’s a lot of technical control for how the internet of the
future is run. Interestingly the IETF is a volunteer organisation with
no formal membership. Their work is funded by employers of its
volunteers and sponsors including the US National Security
Agency (NSA).
Questions this raises for me:
-
If IPv6 is developed through volunteers Is the internet controlled and owned by everyone?
-
Although ICANN is
no longer US
Government controlled it seems the IETF may be to some extent. If all
roads lead to the US is the US government in control of the internet?
Another way of thinking about this issue might be “Who has the deepest level of technical control over how the internet is run?”
Maybe that’s the IETF.
Google Search Results Misleading
"In the Statement of Claim, the applicant alleges that, in the period from at least early April 2011 to 21 June 2011, the first respondent established a process by which searches for the applicant’s website by reference to the words “Pacific Boating” on the internet using the Google search engine were diverted to websites controlled by or associated with the first respondent."
See Pacific Boating Group Pty Ltd v Freedom Boating Club Pty Ltd [2012] FCA 72 (8 February 2012)
See Pacific Boating Group Pty Ltd v Freedom Boating Club Pty Ltd [2012] FCA 72 (8 February 2012)
Domain Name - Use as a Trademark?
"Since 1995, Sports Warehouse had used the name “Tennis Warehouse” in Australia and did not change its domain name for its online store. Sports Warehouse, for the first time in closing submissions, (while conceding that reputation in the context of s 60 was that of the mark rather than reputation on some other basis), contended that as a significant number of Australian residents visited the Tennis Warehouse website at the domain names “www.tennis-warehouse.com” or “www.tenniswarehouse.com”, by inference they came to know Sports Warehouse by that word, which did not include a TW device. While acknowledging that, once at the website, the customer would encounter the TW device with the TENNIS WAREHOUSE trade mark, counsel for Sports Warehouse submitted that the court could infer, in such circumstances, a “capacity for confusion” at which s 60 was essentially directed.
While it has been held that a domain name can in some circumstances constitute use of a trade mark (see Sports Warehouse v Fry at [146]-[156]), there was no evidence before the court to establish that, as at December 2006, the TENNIS WAREHOUSE mark had acquired a reputation through use of the domain names amongst any consumers or any significant section of the public."
See Fry Consulting Pty Ltd v Sports Warehouse Inc (No 2) [2012] FCA 81 (13 February 2012)
While it has been held that a domain name can in some circumstances constitute use of a trade mark (see Sports Warehouse v Fry at [146]-[156]), there was no evidence before the court to establish that, as at December 2006, the TENNIS WAREHOUSE mark had acquired a reputation through use of the domain names amongst any consumers or any significant section of the public."
See Fry Consulting Pty Ltd v Sports Warehouse Inc (No 2) [2012] FCA 81 (13 February 2012)
Is Streaming on the Internet a Broadcast?
A recent Australian Federal Court case determined whether whether the scope of the non-exclusive licence of the right to broadcast certain sound recordings granted by a copyright collection agency to radio stations included the right to play those recordings in radio programs transmitted by FM broadcast as a simulcast with transmission of the same program via the Internet.
"The service which transmits the very same radio programs at essentially the same time both to the FM transmitters and beyond and to the web stream servers and beyond is the one service. On the facts before me, the members of CRA who stream their radio programs on the Internet do so only as part of a program package which also simultaneously transmits those programs via frequency modulated radio waves to the consumer’s FM receiver. In truth, the service is but one service being a service which combines various delivery methods or platforms and which delivers the same radio program using the broadcasting services band. It falls within the exception to the exclusion set out in the Ministerial Determination.
Therefore, in my view, the service provided by the members of CRA is a broadcasting service.
That being so, the simulcast transmission of the same radio program via the FM waves and the Internet is also a “broadcast” within the current definition of that term in s 10(1) of the Copyright Act and, for that reason, is within the scope of the licence which PPCA agreed to grant to the members of CRA and which it did grant from time to time to members of CRA upon the terms and conditions set out in the Member Agreement."
See Phonographic Performance Company of Australia Ltd v Commercial Radio Australia Limited [2012] FCA 93 (15 February 2012)
"The service which transmits the very same radio programs at essentially the same time both to the FM transmitters and beyond and to the web stream servers and beyond is the one service. On the facts before me, the members of CRA who stream their radio programs on the Internet do so only as part of a program package which also simultaneously transmits those programs via frequency modulated radio waves to the consumer’s FM receiver. In truth, the service is but one service being a service which combines various delivery methods or platforms and which delivers the same radio program using the broadcasting services band. It falls within the exception to the exclusion set out in the Ministerial Determination.
Therefore, in my view, the service provided by the members of CRA is a broadcasting service.
That being so, the simulcast transmission of the same radio program via the FM waves and the Internet is also a “broadcast” within the current definition of that term in s 10(1) of the Copyright Act and, for that reason, is within the scope of the licence which PPCA agreed to grant to the members of CRA and which it did grant from time to time to members of CRA upon the terms and conditions set out in the Member Agreement."
See Phonographic Performance Company of Australia Ltd v Commercial Radio Australia Limited [2012] FCA 93 (15 February 2012)
Class Timetable
The first class is this Thursday, 1 March, in room Z308. Then, we are changing to Monday nights, so the next class will be Monday 5 March.
Please see the Blackboard announcement, and note:
1) If you are unable to complete the unit on a Monday night, you can with choose an
alternative Semester 1 unit up until Friday 9 March.
2) You can withdraw from Semester 1 units until March 23.
First Class
The first class for LWN117 for semester 1, 2012, is Thursday, 1 March 2012, at 6pm. It appears that the first class is in Z308. (The class was originally scheduled for Mondays. The first class is on Thursday. Later classes may be moved back to Mondays.)
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