Archive
Category: Weblog
Random assortments, selected for semantic content.
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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 Daniel Goncalves, 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… 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 →
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Facebook as service intermediary: Australian Court allows online service
In the first example of its kind, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory allowed notice of default judgment to be served on a number of defendants via Facebook. According to court reports, Master Harper made an order for substituted service via Facebook, ordering that the defendants could be validly served by sending a… Read more →
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UK internet disconnection scheme unlikely to proceed
According to an interview in The Times with David Lammy MP, the United Kingdom government is retreating from an earlier plan to sever the internet connection of those who repeatedly share or access copyright materials on P2P networks. Instead, rumour has it that the government is considering a download levy — perhaps similar to the… Read more →
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Internet censorship and the politics of control
Harry Lewis, professor of computer science at Harvard University, has authored an interesting opinion piece on the current state of internet censorship. Broadly, Lewis identifies three sources of censorhip: State censorship: public agents filter bits for state purposes as they cross national borders (see, eg, the Great Firewall of China, pro-royalist censorship in Thailand, religious… Read more →
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Largest ever securities fraud rocks Indian outsourcing goliath
This week’s high-tech crime is a new twist on an old favourite: securities fraud. It recently emerged that one of India’s largest outsourcing firms, Satyam Computer, had ‘overestimated’ its cash reserves and asset values by around 50 billion rupees (AUD $1.38bn). According to the company founder and chairman, this was ‘purely on account of inflated… Read more →
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Mobile phone spam targeted by ACMA
The quantity of mobile phone spam never ceases to amaze me. Considering that the medium isn’t free like email, conversion rates must be particularly high given the number of commercial text messages, SMS bait schemes and pre-recorded VoIP calls that seem to be plaguing Australian mobile networks. Now it looks as if the Australian Communications… Read more →