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.

Wikipedia introduction and personal jurisdiction

Sliding Scale Test:

Zippo case

Effects Test:

Calder v. Jones (US Supreme Court)

Application of Effects Test:

Ubid v. GoDaddy

Weather Underground case (and complete court file for this case if interested)

Penguin Group v. American Buddha

Trademark and Calder Test

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:

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:

• 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

• Example
• Google Closing Down Hosted Domains
• Note

IP Addresses

[Student Post]

For those that didn’t know, the world is running out of IP Addresses:

http://technology.inquirer.net/infotech/infotech/view/20110121-315808/World-running-out-of-Internet-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.

Kim Dotcom Interview

The first interview with Mr Dotcom after his arrest is here:

Campbell Live

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)

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)

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)

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.)

Google Goggles

Later this year, Google is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will project information, entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto the lenses. The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly — although Google engineers expect some users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed, with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor. ...


Several people who have seen the glasses, but who are not allowed to speak publicly about them, said that the location information was a major feature of the glasses. Through the built-in camera on the glasses, Google will be able to stream images to its rack computers and return augmented reality information to the person wearing them. For instance, a person looking at a landmark could see detailed historical information and comments about it left by friends. ...


“In addition to privacy, it’s also going to change real-world advertising, where companies can virtually place ads over other people’s ads,” he said. “I’m really interested in seeing how the government can successfully regulate augmented reality in this sense. They are not really going to know what people are seeing behind those glasses.”


See NY Times

Interview with Kim Dotcom Lawyer

Here is an interview from NZ TV with Mr Kim Dotcom's U.S. lawyer.  Can the operator of a file storage system be criminally liable for copyright infringement of its users?  Or is there more to this case than this?

JotForm Shut Down by US Secret Service

The strange case of the US Secret Service having a website taken down, by having the domain name registrar (GoDaddy) block the use of the domain name.
See here and Wired and eWeek.
Maybe a good reason to use a non-U.S. domain name registrar?

China Blogging

A spokesperson for the Beijing Internet Propaganda Management Office announced in a recent press conference that Beijing aims to complete mandatory real name registration for microblog platforms by March 16.  The Office has also established a microblog development expert advisory group composed of experts from Tsinghua University, China University of Political Science and Law, the People's Daily Online's Public Opinion Testing Center, China Labs, and the Data Center of the China Internet (DCCI).

Chinese internet company Sina launched a real name verification function to its user registration form as of January 1, 2012. The new function compares user-submitted data, such as name and national ID card number, and if a user's information does not match comparison records the user can only browse existing posts. In order to be able to post content, users must resubmit correct information. To date, 3 mlllion new users have submitted real name information, and single day registration volume continues to grow. For existing users, Sina will offer additional functionality and privileges to users that submit real name credentials, implement a user trust ratings system, and this week will launch a verified real name ID badge. Sohu previously launched a promotional campaign, offering 20 mln Sohu Video monthly subscription cards and RMB 1 mln worth of mobile phone recharge cards to users who submit real name data early. Online real estate site Soufun offered prizes, including free vacation housing in 13 popular tourist destination cities. Users who do not register by March 16 will lose their posting and reposting privileges.

Regarding user data security, a Sina spokesperson said that users will be notified by mobile phone or other channels if someone logs into their account from a different location. If any anomalies occur, users can lock their account from their mobile phone even if someone else is logged in. A spokesperson for Sohu said that Sohu does not store any user data after authenticating the user's identity.

Source:  Marbridge

Twitter Being Sued For Defamation

Twitter is being sued for defamation by a Melbourne man, Joshua Meggitt, who was wrongly identified as the author of a “hate blog”.
See story here and SMH.

Misleading Online Reviews

A blog entry from the NY Times: Discounting Bad Reviews

"Are reviews of products and services on the Internet believable? Probably not. In the latest case, a merchant offered a rebate in exchange for getting a customer to revise a rating, but it says that is not the way it usually does things."

Advertising Financial Products on the Internet

ASIC has today released RG 234, Advertising financial products and advice services: Good practice guidance, to assist promoters in complying with their legal obligations when advertising financial products and services. See the media release - 14 February 2012, for further information and related material.

It applies to advertising on the Internet, via Twitter and the like.  See section RG 234.115
and following.
What is interesting is that the Guidelines also apply to publishers (such as newspapers), Internet sites, and aggregators and comparison websites.  See Section E and RG234.164 and following.

"While the primary responsibility for advertising material rests with the organisation placing the advertisement, the publisher may also have some responsibility for the content of an advertisement."

Online Privacy

A good comment:  "The piracy of online privacy".

"Online privacy doesn’t exist. It was lost years ago. And not only was it taken, we’ve all already gotten used to it. Loss of privacy is a fundamental tradeoff at the very core of social networking. Our privacy has been taken in service of the social tools we so crave and suddenly cannot live without. If not for the piracy of privacy, Facebook wouldn’t exist. Nor would Twitter. Nor even would Gmail, Foursquare, Groupon, Zynga, etc.  And yet people keep fretting about losing what’s already gone...."

Law firm sues over bad online review about it

A Dallas law firm has filed a lawsuit seeking to learn the identity of a commenter calling himself “Ben” who posted a bad online review.

The Lenahan Law Firm claims defamation and seeks $50,000 in damages, Texas Lawyer reports. Partner Wes Black says the suit will allow the law firm to subpoena Google to learn the commenter’s identity.

Ben wrote in his comments on Google Review: "Bad experience with this firm. Don't trust the fake reviews here.” Ben also gave a bad review to an Oregon cleaning company and may have intended to post the negative review about a different law firm closer to home, the suit(PDF) says.

Black tells Texas Lawyer the Lenahan Law Firm gets most of its clients from searches, and the bad review won’t help. "The issue isn't trying to recover tons of money,” Black tells Texas Lawyer. “We just want the review down.”

See: ABA

New Google Privacy Policy

"We're getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that's a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.

We believe this stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service at http://www.google.com/policies. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012."

See story in Washington Post and CNN

Mr Kim Dotcom Arrested - No Need for SOPA?

With the recent arrest of Mr Kim Dotcom in NZ for online piracy, one wonders why new legislation such as the SOPA in the U.S. is needed.
See SMH and NZ Herald.

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends free speech and digital rights online, said in a statement that the arrests set "a terrifying precedent. If the United States can seize a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, what is next?""

Is it true that the president of Activation visiting Mr Dotcom this month, before his arrest?  Why has it not been reported that members of the Black Eyed Peas were in Mr Dotcom's home when he was arrested, and have attended some of the NZ court proceedings?

New gTLDs

An article on the new top level domain names.

See B&T Magazine.

Faceless Net Giants

A story in the Sydney Morning Herald:  "Faceless Net Giants Writing Own Rule Books."  If you upset Google (or Google Ireland -- the company that Google hides behind), they can just make you disappear.

"Australians use them more than any other websites and to many they have become essential services, oiling the wheels of life and commerce at the click of a mouse. 

But when Google or Facebook no longer wants you, it can be all but impossible to find out why, as internet entrepreneur Mark Bowyer and others have found to their cost.

Advertisement: Story continues below

Earlier this year Google banned ads from his travel website, Rusty Compass, because it said the site "poses a risk of generating invalid activity".

Apple Apps

On Christmas morning, millions of people will unwrap new iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches — and immediately start downloading games and other applications for them. It is the biggest day of the year for app sales, which can mean big money for developers.


Flurry, a mobile analytics firm, estimated that in the period from Dec. 23 to Dec. 26 last year, 240 million applications were downloaded to Apple mobile devices, or about 20 percent of the total downloads for the month.


Source:  NYTimes

Brand xxx marks dot danger

The arrival of a generic top-level domain specifically for the porn industry has worrying implications and likely costs for many well known labels.

There is more trouble for brand owners brewing in cyberspace, with ­fundamental changes to the domain name system being implemented. In March 2011, following successful lobbying from the adult entertainment industry, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) agreed to allow the ­creation of a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) specifically for the adult entertainment industry. A gTLD is represented by the letters that come after the dot in a domain name, such as .com or .net.

The new adult entertainment top-level domain is .xxx and will come online next year.

This has implications for every business because brand names could be used in domain names for adult websites. For example, someone could register the new domain name sportsgirl.xxx or boostjuice.xxx for a porn website.

Full Story in AFR

Metatag Use is Not Use as a Trade Mark

"I do not accept that the use of any of CTI’s Registered Trade Marks in Green Energy’s metatags would constitute a trade mark infringement for the purposes of s 120(1). Metatags are invisible to the ordinary internet user, although their use will direct the user to (amongst other websites) Green Energy’s website. Once at the Green Energy website, then, in the ordinary course, the internet user will be made aware that the website is concerned with Green Energy’s services. It cannot, therefore, be said that the use in a metatag of CTI’s Registered Trade Marks is a use that indicates the origin of Green Energy’s services. Thus, metatag use is not use as a trade mark"

Complete Technology Integrations Pty Ltd v Green Energy Management Solutions Pty Ltd [2011] FCA 1319 (18 November 2011)

Samsung Overturns Apple Injunction in Australia

Samsung was successfully in having an interlocutory injunction overturned today in the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia.  See decision:  Samsung Electronics v. Apple Inc. [2011] FCAFC 156 (30 November 2011).

The case concerned two Australian patents owned by Apple.  Apple asserted that the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 Tablet infringed claims of those two patents.  An injunction was granted by the trial judge to prevent Samsung launching the Galaxy 10.1 in Australia until trial.  Today, Samsung was successful in having that injunction removed.

As soon as the appeal court decision was announced today, Apple asked for the decision to be suspended so that it could appeal to the High Court of Australia.  Apple asked this without even reading the Court's decision.  The judge today suspended the decision until 4pm Friday, in effect keeping the injunction in place until Friday.  Apple now has until 4pm Friday to convince the High Court of Australia to keep the injunction in place -- a hard task.

Law Schools That Teach Little About Legal Practice

From the NY Times:

Law Schools That Teach Little About Legal Practice
By DAVID SEGAL
Law schools have long emphasized the theoretical over the useful, leaving law firms fairly resigned to training their hires how to actually practice law.

Speedo Shuts Down Blogger and Gets Domain Name

A NSW man has been ordered to shut down several pornographic websites featuring Speedo swimwear and using the company's trademark. Speedo Holdings took Central Coast blogger Dave Evans to court claiming he had used the trademark under aliases and without the company's consent. The company claimed the websites and the use of the company's trademark as part of his domain names could damage the "valuable reputation and goodwill associated with the name and trade mark Speedo". In the Federal Court of Australia on Thursday, Justice Geoffrey Flick ordered Evans to stop operating and registering any domain name containing the name Speedo. He was also restrained from operating websites featuring any sign of the Speedo trademark. Evans, who didn't appear in court, was ordered to transfer the domain names to Speedo within 21 days.

See SMH article


Speedo Holdings B.V. v Evans (No 2) [2011] FCA 1227 (3 November 2011)

Amazon Running Sweatshop

Amazon's online store has great prices and service, and is efficient for consumers. But someone has to pick and pack the goods ordered online. Amazon has a number of distribution centres to do this. And according to U.S. newspaper reports, Amazon is running these distribution centres as sweatshops. This is the downside of cheap prices and Internet stores.

See for example: Inside Amazon's Warehouse.

Just Google "Amazon Sweatshop Pennsylvania" and you will find numerous articles about this situation.

Free books from Amazon

"Free books, including New York Times bestsellers, for the Kindle. If you’re an Amazon Prime member.

Free shipping, free movies, free books, for $80 a year. What, exactly, is Amazon up to?

There has to be some master plan, because Amazon is spending itself silly to pull this off. Because the offer is limited to owners of Kindles — it doesn’t work if you use the Kindle service on an iPad, for instance — it is intended to sell more Kindles."

Pogue's Blog

Google Changes Search Algorithm to Make Results More Timely

"Acknowledging that some searches were giving people stale results, Google revised its methods on Thursday to make the answers timelier. It is one of the biggest tweaks to Google’s search algorithm, affecting about 35 percent of all searches.

The new algorithm is a recognition that Google, whose dominance depends on providing the most useful results, is being increasingly challenged by services like Twitter and Facebook, which have trained people to expect constant updates with seconds-old news.

It is also a reflection of how people use the Web as a real-time news feed — that if, for example, you search for a baseball score, you probably want to find the score of a game being played at the moment, not last week, which is what Google often gave you."

Full story in NY Times.

Hyperlinking to articles not publication for defamation

An interesting case concerning defamation on the Internet: see the Supreme Court of Canada decision, Crookes v Newton, 2011 SCC 47.

The defendant operated a website offering commentary on various issues. An comment included hyperlinks to two other pages, both of which contained articles that the defendant conceded were defamatory.

One hyperlink was "shallow," in that it referred to a web page on which the defamatory article was one of several articles posted there.

Another was "deep," in that clicking on the link led a viewer directly to the article.

For different reasons, all judges decided that this hyperlinking was not a "publication" for Canadian defamation law.

Inteflora case - bidding on trademarks as Google keywords

The Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU") has delivered its ruling in the long-running Interflora v Marks & Spencer Adwords case. The CJEU decided that trade mark owners can prohibit the purchase of their trade marks as keywords on web search engines, but cannot do so if the advertisements triggered do not allow users to ascertain the origin of the goods or services referred to in such advertisements.

See Bloomberg and Search Engine Watch

Australian Google AdWords Decision - Google Wins

After an 17 month wait, Justice John Nicholas of the Federal Court of Australia decided today that the ACCC did not make out their claims against Google in the case involving sponsored links and Adwords.

The key findings were that:

• ordinary and reasonable members of the relevant class of consumers are likely to understand that sponsored links are advertisements; and
• Google merely communicated the representations made by advertisers, without adopting or endorsing any of those representations

This is the matter in which one of the sponsored links was for Xbox360, which appeared when users searched for "playstation2". The court held that the publication of the sponsored link was misleading, but that Google was not involved in the contravention.

The court's reasons for decision are published at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2011/1086.html

Patent Case - non-patentable subject matter

Cybersource v Retail Decisions was decided on 16 August 2011. It decided that a certain Internet process was not patentable subject matter.

CyberSource is the owner by assignment of a patent, which recites a “method and system for detecting fraud in a credit card transaction between [a] consumer and a merchant over the Internet.” Claim 3 of the patent recites a process for verifying the validity of credit card transactions over the Internet.

"We are not persuaded by the appellant’s argument that the claimed method is tied to a particular machine because it “would not be necessary or possible without the Internet.” Appellant’s Br. 42. Regardless of whether “the Internet” can be viewed as a machine, it is clear that the Internet cannot perform the fraud detection steps of the claimed method. Moreover, while claim 3 describes a method of analyzing data regarding Internet credit card transactions, nothing in claim 3 requires an infringer to use the Internet to obtain that data (as opposed to obtain- ing the data from a pre-compiled database). The Internet is merely described as the source of the data. We have held that mere “[data-gathering] step[s] cannot make an otherwise nonstatutory claim statutory.”

My Blog is Paying My Bills

Further to the class last night, have a look at:

My Blog is Paying My Bills in the NY Times.

Don't forget to click on the Google Ads here ---->

Last Class!

Next Monday is the last class for this semester.

The reading for this class is the following:

Google Wallet

Google - Oracle patent lawsuit and here

Android Tracking Lawsuit

Limewire settlement

Pharmacies

Free Speech on Twitter

From the NYTimes:

SAN FRANCISCO — What began as seamy gossip about an affair between a famous British soccer player and a reality TV star has quickly become another test over how far the rights to privacy and free speech extend online, where social media operate in countries with vastly different laws.

The soccer player has been granted a so-called super-injunction, a stringent and controversial British legal measure that prevents media outlets from identifying him, reporting on the story or even from revealing the existence of the court order itself.

But tens of thousands of Internet users have flouted the injunction by revealing his name on Twitter, Facebook and online soccer forums, sites that blur the definition of the press and are virtually impossible to police.

Last week, amid growing outrage in Britain over the use of super-injunctions, the athlete obtained a court order in British High Court demanding that Twitter reveal the identities of the anonymous users who had posted the messages. A Twitter spokesman, Matt Graves, said the company could not comment on the court order or how it planned to respond.

Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University, said, “It’s really going to the core of Twitter’s service and trying to balance the speech of its users and the fact that countries have different laws and norms about speech.”

Full story here.

Online contracting, creation of websites

e-commerce
What impact does the Electronic Transactions Act have on e-commerce / online contracting?
In this area you should also look at:
the Queensland legislation
UNCITRAL Model
UN Convention

Standard forms of agreement
Website terms of use - look at a few examples including Great South East; Microsoft. What are the common clauses? Anything strange? What impact does Unfair Contracts legislation have on these contracts?
Click wrap v Shrink wrap - what are the differences?
Case summaries

Setting up a website
What should you be aware of (having regarding to previous lectures)?

Rogue Websites

On May 12, 2011, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sponsored S. 968, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PROTECT IP Act), a bill to deter, prevent and root out websites that profit from trafficking in stolen content.

See MPAA's view and Global Intellectual Property Center

See also FightOnlineTheft

Week 10 - Copyright

Legislation
International treaties - Berne Convention
The law in Australia - Copyright Act, and amendments related to the internet - Computer Programs Act 1999, Digital Agenda Act 2000, US Free Trade 2004

Australian Cases - piracy and copyright
Kazaa
MP3s4free
Stevens v Sony
Newspaper headlines
iiNet

US Cases
Napster
Grokster
Limewire
YouTube

UK
Newzbin

Policy Issues
Balancing interests of copyright owner and users - Electronic Frontiers Australia
Licensing through Creative Commons

End of Voluntary Internet Filtering Program in Australia

See The Australian

THE Gillard government will scrap its voluntary internet filtering grants program to save $9.6 million over three years.

A combination of reasons led to the decision, including moves by Telstra, Optus and Primus to voluntarily block child abuse websites.

"Consultation with industry has identified limited interest in the grants due to the increasing range of filtering technologies readily available to online users, including browser and search engine filters," the government says in the 2011-12 budget papers.

"Savings from this measure will be redirected to support other government priorities."

Labor intends to introduce mandatory ISP internet filtering -- a policy championed by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy -- once a government review is completed.

Treasurer Wayne Swan's fourth budget today is aimed at delivering $22 billion in savings to meet the government's surplus target in 2012-13.

Google News - Copyright Violation in Belgium

The Belgian Court of Appeal has ruled that Google has infringed the copyright of Belgian newspapers, by placing links and portions of articles on Google News. Read more here

Competition Law Issues

Michael Laufert, working with the ABA Communication and Digital Technologies Industries Committee, has put together a website devoted to antitrust and collaboration issues facing tech industries. Common topics are patent pooling, standard setting and the like. His site, "Collaboration and Competition in Technology," is available at the link below or through CDTI's page on the Section's website:

http://apps.americanbar.org/dch/comadd.cfm?com=AT328100&pg=1

Data theft

Sony - Details of more than 100m users stolen; Sony faces US congressional hearing; Claims file "Anonymous" left on server.

Week 9 - Domain Name Disputes and Cybersquatting

What is cybersquatting?

Dispute resolution
What are the 3 elements of a UDRP proceeding?
Is the auDRP identical?

UDRP process
Read the case of simplybusiness.com and jappy.com (in relation to element 3) - which view do you agree with?
Read the cases of sermosucks.com and natwestbanksucks.com (in relation to criticism sites) - which view do you agree with?

Discussion
For this lecture, everyone should be prepared to discuss one case with the rest of the class - search here, or for interesting issues and WIPO's preferred views, here
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the UDRP/auDRP process?

Get Your Data Back

Here is a guiding principle: If a business collects data on consumers electronically, it should provide them with a version of that data that is easy to download and export to another Web site. Think of it this way: you have lent the company your data, and you’d like a copy for your own use.

See full story

Location Tracking

Google said Friday that it collected location data from Android phones, but that it did so anonymously and with user consent. The company said it gathered the data to provide services like maps and searches for shops or restaurants near a person’s location. The company said it also used the information to estimate traffic on various roads.

“Phones know where you are, and they need to for many of the services we offer,” said Mike Nelson, a Google spokesman.

Full Story Here.

Mobile Google

Google said in October that mobile ads were on track to generate $1 billion in revenue in the coming year. Mobile users can call a business from within a Google ad or receive coupons for nearby stores. They can take cellphone photos of movie posters to pull up a trailer. With new technologies like near-field communication, advertisers could reward customers with loyalty gifts for walking into stores, Mr. Temsamani said.

See NYTimes

Poker Play

"IN ANOTHER era, Daniel Tzvetkoff would have been whacked - shot or garroted, buried in a shallow grave or sent to sleep with the fishes. The world's two biggest online gambling companies, Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, which want the $US100 million they believe the former Gold Coast high-flyer took from them, don't work that way.

They send their lawyers. Or they just wait. But Tzvetkoff, incredibly, has used his position from inside a US jail to, first, free himself, and then go on the offensive against the very people who are chasing him.

The Queensland internet entrepreneur, 28, was mysteriously bailed from a US federal prison last August. He has rolled to save his neck.

US federal prosecutors are using Tzvetkoff's unique inside knowledge of how big online gambling companies shift money out of the US in exchange for a sweet deal."

See Courier Mail front page story

"ASSOCIATES of former internet high-flyer Daniel Tzvetkoff have been charged after a flurry of arrests in the US over illegal online gaming following his release last year from a New York prison.

US judges have sealed the files on Mr Tzvetkoff's criminal case, after he was secretly released from prison -- without a bail hearing -- on charges he was involved in a $500 million money-laundering scheme for illegal online poker sites.

Secrecy now surrounds the former Gold Coast-based entrepreneur's movements, with prosecutors refusing to disclose if they are going ahead with the charges that carry a 24-year jail term."

The Australian

The owners of three of the largest Internet poker companies operating in the United States were accused Friday of tricking regulators and banks into processing billions of dollars of illegal Internet gambling proceeds.

Eleven people including the owners of Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and PokerStars were charged with violating anti-Internet gambling laws, according to charges filed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

Prosecutors also filed a civil money laundering complaint seeking to recover at least $3 billion from the companies, which are all based overseas, court documents said.

In addition, according to the government statement, restraining orders were issued against more than 75 bank accounts used by the poker companies and their payment processors. And the Internet domain names of the companies were also seized.

NY Times

Week 8: Internet Patents

Reading for the Internet patent class:

• What should be patented?
• Do Internet patents threaten ecommerce?
• History of software patents
• State Street Bank
• Welcome Real-Time
• Bilski
• CLS Bank v Alice

Social Media Alarm Bells

See The Age

In an age in which one negative online review can destroy brands, social media has become one of the top risks keeping C-level executives up at night, a survey of 446 major Australian corporations and public sector organisations has found.

Hilton Hacked

From an email from Hilton Hotels:

Dear Customer:

We were notified by our database marketing vendor, Epsilon, that we are among a group of companies affected by a data breach. How will this affect you? The company was advised by Epsilon that the files accessed did not include any customer financial information, and Epsilon has stressed that the only information accessed was names and e-mail addresses. The most likely impact, if any, would be receipt of unwanted e-mails. We are not aware at this time of any unsolicited e-mails (spam) that are related, but as a precaution, we want to remind you of a couple of tips that should always be followed:

• Do not open e-mails from senders you do not know

• Do not share personal information via e-mail

List of Cases

The EFF has an interesting list of U.S. Internet law cases. See

https://www.eff.org/cases/

Week 7: Liability of ISPs and Infrastructure Providers

This class deals with liability of intermediaries. For example, is an ISP liable for the conduct of its users? Is a web hosting company liable for the content of others that it hosts? Is TripAdvisor liable for reviews of hotels posted by users? Is Google liable for the content that appears on this blog?

Should such intermediaries be liable for the actions of others?

The main reading for the class is the iiNet case:

• Trial Judge Decision
• Full Court Appeal Decision

Also, read the following:

• Bunt case
• Cooper case
• ACCC v Allergy Pathways and ACCC Press Release
• Stratton Oakmont and follow-up
• Communications Decency Act section 230
• Google's liability for AdWords
• YouTube and note and Summary Judgment
• TripAdvisor: Terms; Restaurant Gives Up; tips; and Findlaw note

Google Buys Nortel's patent portfolio

Bankrupt Nortel Networks Corp. has accepted Google Inc.'s $900 million stalking horse bid to buy an intellectual property lode of some 6,000 patents and patent applications that include wireless, data networking and semiconductor technology, the Internet giant said Monday.

See BBC and Google Blog