The blog
Writing & notes
Essays, notes and reflections on technology, law and life.
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Electronic Onomatopoeia
IEEE Spectrum has an interesting article on the future of high-powered microwave (HPM) weaponry, and its potential impact upon electrical systems and human organisms: An HPM weapon can induce currents large enough to melt circuitry. But even less intense bursts can temporarily disrupt electrical equipment or permanently damage ICs, causing them to fail minutes, days,… Read more →
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News Update
Now that the university semester has finished, great bounties of news should flow unimpeded for the next three months. In order to increase the breadth of coverage, fewer lengthy discourses about the items will be attempted. Instead, I will attempt to publish an article (or three) every few weeks, which will cover issues in more… Read more →
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Packer loses defamation claim
Kerry Packer yesterday lost a defamation case against rival media group John Fairfax Pty Ltd. Packer claimed that a satirical caption appearing in The Sydney Morning Herald on 16 December, 1999 construed him as ‘a power-crazed greedy man.’ Unsurprisingly, Fairfax-owned newspaper The Age was quick to carry the story. The alleged defamatory material was the… Read more →
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Non-Biological Father Seeks Damages
A Melbourne man has sued his ex-wife for over $75 000 in child support payments after DNA testing revealed the child was not conceived by him. However, the Federal Magistrates Court seems to have reservations about granting the step-father a ‘refund’: Asked by the woman’s barrister if he considered himself the child’s father, he said:… Read more →
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Torts
These notes were authored for Torts, November 2003. Lynch v Lynch – Ratio Decidendi.pdf Cattanach v Melchior (2003) 199 ALR 131.pdf Dobson v Dobson – Privacy and Autonomy.pdf Read more →
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Gator isn’t Spyware. No, Really.
Several weeks after Gator Corp filed an action in defamation against PC Pitstop, a prominent anti-spyware software provider, the parties settled out of court. Gator alleged that the defendant misrepresented their advertising plugin software for Internet Explorer as a form of malicious spyware. Instead, Gator claims that its software is “adware”, and PC Pitstop was… Read more →
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The Temptation of iTunes
Apple has met with overwhelming success in their release of the popular iTunes client for x86 architecture, with approximately one million songs (at USD$1 a pop) being downloaded from their online music store in just three days, and marking a new sales record for a music distribution model that was hitherto viewed with scepticism. However,… Read more →
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Trojan Horse Defence Valid
A jury in the Southwark Crown Court, London, has acquitted a teenager of various cyber crimes after his counsel successfully used the ‘Trojan Horse’ defense. Aaron Caffrey, aged 19, was charged with launching a denial of service (DoS) attack from his personal computer against a mainframe computer owned by the Port of Houston in Texas,… Read more →
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The Culture of Mobility
The rapidity of mobile communication technology development has exceeded all expectations, but significant social and legal implications remain unexamined. Five years ago, the first tidings of discontent surfaced in response to the mobile revolution that was about to sweep through Western society – the public/private dichotomy was becoming blurred, and people were afraid of what… Read more →
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A Tale of Two Halves
This week’s raging controversy involves the premature release of source code to a hotly anticipated game into the wild by an unknown cracker. The game, of course, is Half-Life 2, and its developer, Valve. Well, it seems that Valve has sprung a leak, so to speak… See this statement from chairperson Gabe Newell. Apparently, the… Read more →