A blog relating to Internet legal issues by Professor John Swinson, University of Queensland
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Last Class
Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo
Facebook, MySpace Messages Are Protected: Judge
A district judge has reversed a magistrate judge's ruling that fashion house Christian Audigier Inc. can subpoena the Facebook Inc. and MySpace Inc. communications of an artist who sued the designer for copyright infringement, finding that messages on the social networking sites are protected information.
Yahoo, Facebook Back Google In YouTube IP Case
Facebook Inc., eBay Inc., IAC/InterActiveCorp and Yahoo Inc. have urged a federal judge to rule against Viacom International Inc. in its copyright lawsuit against Google Inc. over video-sharing website YouTube Inc., arguing that a victory for Viacom in the case would hurt online commerce.
Communications Law to be Reviewed
Break Up Google?
Google is the “arbiter of every single thing on the Web, and it favors its properties over everyone else’s,” said Mr. Reback, sitting in a Washington cafe with the couple. “What it wants to do is control Internet traffic. Anything that undermines its ability to do that is threatening.”
Privacy - Proposed New Law in U.S.A.
Google Says It Collected Private Data by Mistake
"Google said on Friday that for more than three years it had inadvertently collected snippets of private information that people send over unencrypted wireless networks. The admission, made in an official blog post by Alan Eustace, Google’s engineering chief, comes a month after regulators in Europe started asking the search giant pointed questions about Street View, the layer of real-world photographs accessible from Google Maps. Regulators wanted to know what data Google collected as its camera-laden cars methodically trolled through neighborhoods, and what Google did with that data."
Copyright class
Berne Convention
Australian Copyright Council
Copyright Act
There have been a number of interesting Australian cases dealing with copyright infringement, see for example:
Kazaa
MP3s4free
Stevens v Sony
The iiNet case will be discussed in detail in the Liability of ISPs lecture.
We will also discuss how other countries treat piracy:
US - Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and the case of Napster
UK - Ditigal Economy Bill, and the recent case of Newzbin
Patents Class
Some reading for this class:
1. History
Google Keywords
"There is no stopping Google selling trademark terms as keywords. That is the message from the US courts this week. A judge from the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has dismissed Rosetta Stone's case against the search giant, effectively killing off once and for all the conventional method of attacking the AdWords programme.
Rescuecom had already dropped its case against Google (in order to fight a suit on exactly the same issue but where it is the defendant). But the fact that a court has now dismissed this type of case is very surprising, as it shows that they cannot even get to court anymore. The message is that mark owners will be wasting their time suing Google for trademark infringement. The Court of Justice of the European Union recently said the same thing, although it left the door open for mark owners to sue those third-party advertisers that purchase competitors' trademark terms as keywords.
While the Best Buy v Rescuecom case will be tried from this particular angle, it appears that Google is off the hook. Users of the AdWords programme may sue each other, but the view of one US court at least is that there's no point suing Google. If trademark counsel want to stop the sale of their trademark terms to their competitors, they need to switch tactics. Fast."
Source: World Trademark Review
iCyte
Domain name disputes and cyberquatting
What are the common elements of domain name dispute resolution process?
For a good overview of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Process (UDRP), and the factors relevant to each element, see the WIPO website.
The Australian Dispute Resolution Process for domain names (managed by auDA), can be found here.
What are the differences between these two policies.
We will be discussing some of the following cases, which would be good to review before class:
brisbane.com
q1resort.com
"sucks" cases - red bull and bakersdelightlies
personal names
Who should win in this case?
We will also discuss the proposal for new top level domains.
Online Contracting
Online contracting
How do you determine when an electronic communication is sent/received? What are the possibilities?
Vienna Convention on the Sale of Goods (incorporated into
Guidelines for operating websites
Australian Treasury Guidelines for e-commerce
Terms of use
What are the common clauses / differences between these Terms of Use?
Clickwrap / Shrinkwrap agreements
What can you do to try and make a clickwrap agreement enforceable?
How will unfair terms legislation affect these agreements?
Enforcing Click Wrap Agreements
Tiffany v. eBay
EBay Inc did not engage in trademark infringement and dilution by selling counterfeit Tiffany & Co goods on its website, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday, but it ordered further review of the jeweler's claim of false advertising.
Tiffany and other luxury brands have long argued that counterfeit merchandise bearing their names is sold on eBay. The Web commerce company, which does not itself put the goods up for sale, says it has spent millions of dollars to track down counterfeiters and remove such listings.
Who can regulate the Internet?
The DC Circuit court recently vacated the FCC's order imposing sanctions on Comcast Corp. for its network management practices. It held that the Commission failed to tie its assertion of ancillary regulatory authority over Comcast's Internet service to any "statutorily mandated responsibility."
"In this case we must decide whether the Federal Communications Commission has authority to regulate an Internet service provider’s network management practices. ..."
Here is the opinion: http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/201004/08-1291-1238302.pdf
How I Got Sued by Facebook
http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/
How I got sued by Facebook
...Their contention was robots.txt had no legal force and they could sue anyone for accessing their site even if they scrupulously obeyed the instructions it contained.
Pete Warden vs. Facebook: a case of too much data access
... Pete Warden had a really great idea: to map the friendship interactions of Facebook users to aid with geospatial analysis of user relationships. Facebook's lawyers had a different view.
Hot News
"Breathing some new life into the “hot news” doctrine, Judge Cote of the Southern District of New York recently issued a permanent injunction requiring the Internet-based financial news site TheFlyOnTheWall.com (Fly) to delay its reporting of stock recommendations from Wall Street research analysts. ..."
Meta-tags and Google Keywords - TM infringement
ACCC v. Trading Post
Should freedom of speech on the internet prevail over protection of the public interest?
What are the relevant public interests?
Should there by government regulation, or reliance on technology? See NetNanny for example.
Some current issues from around the world include:
China / Google
Venezuela
Nigeria
Australia
United States
Spain
News
"With traditional print circulation declining and advertising revenue weak — both from online and from print — media companies are trying to extract new sources of revenue from online readers, despite the risk that they could alienate some by charging for access.
The Wall Street Journal, also owned by News Corp., The Financial Times and Newsday all charge for access. The New York Times has announced a plan to do so. Each has a payment system developed largely in-house.
News Corp. announced in August that all of its titles would move to charging for Web access. Its chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, threatened last year to remove his publications’ stories from Google's search index to encourage people to pay for content online."
See NYT
Google, China and Content Regulation
What Happens as Google Uncensors Search in China?
Google has stopped censoring results on its Chinese search engine, but many underlying pages are still blocked. Meanwhile, some Chinese say Google risks a government shutdown of its service.
http://s.nyt.com/u/68V
Issues in Creating a Social Website
Google and Copyright
Viacom and Google broke their silence Thursday in their legal battle, as Viacom claimed that Google's YouTube unit had sought to exploit copyrighted works for profit, while Google argued that Viacom itself had secretly uploaded copyrighted clips it later demanded YouTube remove. The claims are among the many divulged as a federal judge and the parties to the case released a slew of documents.
You should review the following for some background understanding (as well as the material referred to in the study guide):
Spam
Spam Act
ACMA
IIA Code
Crime
Australian Federal Police
Costs - UK
On the rise - US
Recent case
Phishing
Anti-Phishing
Westpac
SARS
Is legislation or technology/awareness the solution? Which countries have attempted to combat phishing by legislation?
How should damages be assessed for privacy and cybersecurity breaches
Listen to this podcast where I discuss how damages should be assessed in privacy and cybersecurity lawsuits. The Lawyers Weekly Show host J...
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The United Nations intellectual property agency (WIPO) is the latest front in the US-China trade war. http://www.theage.com.au/world/sad-am...
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The issue of content regulation in China was mentioned in this blog last year . In the last few weeks, this issue has once again pushed into...
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Finally, what is called direct registration of domain names is coming to Australia. See https://www.auda.org.au/statement/australias-interne...