The blog
Writing & notes
Essays, notes and reflections on technology, law and life.
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Syntactic autocracy and the judicial practice note
These ‘order preparation guidelines’ were recently issued by Judge Robert Kressel of the United States Bankruptcy Court to attorneys responsible for preparing draft orders in bankruptcy proceedings. Given the ardency with which most lawyers defend their grammatical and syntactic convictions, the controversy sparked by the practice note is unsurprising. The guidelines range from the obvious:… Read more →
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Two views of the internet age
An inspiring, if somewhat zealously expressed, thought for the day from Wired magazine’s Kevin Kelly: Three thousand years from now, when keen minds review the past, I believe that our ancient time, here at the cusp of the third millennium, will be seen as another such era. In the years roughly coincidental with the Netscape… Read more →
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More warnings of Chinese ‘cyber spies’
A report produced by the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission suggests that malicious attacks on United States military computer systems increased by 20 per cent in 2008, a figure that is projected to grow by 60 per cent in 2009. Experts attributed much of the increase to attacks originating in China: “A large body… Read more →
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Australian travel agent sues Irish web developer for breach of contract
Australian travel franchise Flight Centre has commenced proceedings against Datalex, an Irish web developer, alleging breach of contract and misleading or deceptive conduct. It’s a pretty standard commercial dispute, with a slight twist. The alleged facts run something like this: developer promises to deliver customised Fancy New Booking System by a certain date, said system… Read more →
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“We’re not copyright police”: iiNet
The iiNet trial continues. During argument yesterday, Cobden SC for iiNet argued that to require internet service providers (ISPs) to forward notices of copyright infringement to their subscribers would impose an unreasonable duty on ISPs to ‘police’ their customers. The issue arises in the context of interpreting the requirements for authorisation liability under ss 36(1A)… Read more →
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Individual to be prosecuted for domain name ‘theft’
A number of news agencies are reporting that a 25 year-old law firm technician is being prosecuted for the ‘theft’ of domain name “P2P.com”: “Attorney Paul Keating told DNN that most cases of domain theft recovery that he has dealt with have been complicated at best. The real problem stems from the fact that domain… Read more →
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Melbourne game pirate convicted of commercial copyright infringement
According to The Age, a fellow University of Melbourne alumnus has been convicted of three counts of commercial copyright infringement and fined $20 000 for running a duplication lab in his parents’ home: Jeffrey Lim, 28, converted the ground floor of his parents’ Doncaster home into a work office that held six hard drives, a… Read more →
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Google wins online defamation case: not a ‘publisher’ of website content
In an eminently sensible decision, Eady J has held that Google is not liable for defamatory material that appears in the extract displayed underneath search results. Stated more precisely, Metropolitan International Schools Ltd v DesignTechnica Corporation [2009] EWHC 1765 (QB) now stands for the proposition that the facilitator of a defamatory imputation who, without human… Read more →
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Senator Conroy criticises ongoing iiNet defence
Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, has issued a stinging attack on iiNet’s position in Roadshow Films Pty Ltd & Ors v iiNet Ltd. Speaking at the CommsDay summit in Sydney yesterday, Senator Conroy described iiNet’s defence as something which ‘belongs in a Yes Minister episode’ — ironic, given that… Read more →