The blog
Writing & notes
Essays, notes and reflections on technology, law and life.
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Electronic Conveyancing Another Step Closer
The New South Wales Department of Lands has announced that its transition to an electronic register of land titles will be complete by December 2006. The transition is a massive undertaking, involving the digitisation of some 66 000 paper certificates of title and issuance of transaction access credentials to several thousand conveyancers and legal professionals. From… Read more →
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User of Lynx Web Browser Found Guilty for Intrusion
Man attempts to make donation to tsunami relief fund, gets prosecuted for cybercrime violation. This is quite astonishing: “Last January, I got an email from a trusted source swearing that a good pal of his had been arrested while making a donation to an online tsunami relief fund because he’d been using a non-standard text-based… Read more →
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Japanese Court: Content Resyndication is Copyright Infringement
The Japanese Intellectual Property High Court has awarded Yomiuri Shimbun, a domestic newspaper, ¥237 700 (AU$2758) in damages for copyright infringement by a website which republished news headlines without its permission. The Court overturned the ruling of an inferior court in March 2004, which held that news headlines ought to be made freely available online and… Read more →
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First Anti-Phishing Law Enacted in California
Phishing is an increasingly common practice employed by fraudsters to procure an individual’s access credentials, typically in relation to an online financial service such as a bank or eBay. It normally involves an e-mail directing users to ‘verify their password’, ‘confirm their account’ or the like, but upon clicking on the link the user is… Read more →
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High Court decision in Stevens v Sony
The High Court of Australia has today handed down judgment in Stevens v Sony, ruling in favour of the mod-chippers. Sony had brought a claim under Australia’s anti-circumvention statutory tort to stop people from modifying the Sony PlayStation to play cheaper overseas versions of games. Specifically, the Court found that: ‘[The] true construction of the… Read more →
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Government Cracks Down on Spyware Operation
According to this article, United States ‘Government regulators are trying to shut down Odysseus Marketing, which they say secretly downloaded spyware onto the computers of unwitting Internet users. The FTC accused Walter Rines and his company of luring computer users with a bogus promise of free software that would make peer-to-peer file sharing anonymous. The… Read more →
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Inducing Dolphin Infringement? Scientists teach dolphins to sing ‘Batman’ theme
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Grokster ruling, many have been speculating about what it means exactly to "induce infringement." Well, leave it to science to be the first to push the boundaries. Professors in Florida have apparently taught a dolphin to sing the theme from the Batman TV show on command. A violation… Read more →
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On Plagues, Real and Virtual
It’s been quite a week for the medical world. Last Tuesday, a biohazard research laboratory in New York reported the accidental loss of three mice infected with a variant of bubonic plague. The Avian influenza is spreading rapidly throughout south-east Asia, confounding (and outpacing) Indonesian authorities. Now several virtual worlds are also finding themselves beset… Read more →
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Chinese Search Engine Liable for Indexing Infringing Copies
Baidu is, broadly speaking, the Chinese equivalent of Google. Last week, a Chinese district court found it liable for copyright violation. The act of infringement? Automatically constructing and maintaining an index of links, some of which were to infringing files. The Court ordered Baidu to pay damages of 68 000 yuan (AUD$8 400). The company now faces… Read more →
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Justice Crennan Appointed to the High Court of Australia
The Honourable Justice Susan Crennan, previously a justice of the Federal Court of Australia, has been appointed to the High Court by Attorney-General Philip Ruddock. Justice Crennan will replace McHugh J, who is due to retire in November. Crennan J will be just the second female appointee in the Court’s history. Announcing the appointment, Mr… Read more →