LawFont.com

There is certainly a value to social networking websites. Some serve professional networking purposes (such as LinkedIn). And others, like Facebook, have proved to be an effective means of connecting with old friends (for me, including ones I’d lost touch with completely).

It’s not news that we use these websites at our own peril. But here’s a couple of more reasons to be wary, both legal and technical.

A new Facebook notification? “You’ve been served!”

In what seems to be a legal first, a judge of the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court has upheld the right of lawyers to serve legally binding court documents and notices by posting them on defendants’ Facebook sites.

Plaintiff MKM Capital applied to Master David Harper of the Supreme Court to use Facebook to serve notice of a judgment on two borrowers who had defaulted on a loan. The defendants had failed to repay a loan of $150,000 they borrowed from MKM last year to refinance their mortgage. After being granted a default judgment for the loan amount and for possession of the house after the couple failed to appear in court to defend the action, MKM then had to locate the defendants and serve them with the papers.

After hiring private investigators and 11 failed attempts to find the couple, the lawyers identified the Facebook profiles of the defendants, convinced the court that those profiles did in fact belong to the couple, and satisfied the court that communication through their Facebook pages was a sufficient means of communicating with the defendants.

Wormholes

It was just a matter of time before social networking websites became infected with computer viruses. And now it’s happened: Koobface, a Trojan worm, has been making its way through Facebook and to other social networking websites. The worm generates profile comments that encourage users to click through to an external website that pretends to offer a video to view, but then says that an upgrade of Adobe Flash is necessary first. Users who click on the “install” button infect their computer with the virus. The result? Enabling identity theft and click fraud.

Wonderful post from Professor Mark Davison on the Australian Trade Marks Blog. ‘Nuff said.

Does this site strike anyone else as, well, just a bit dodgy? “International validity for a lifetime”???

I’m very sad to hear of the death of Sir Hugh Laddie. Tributes are pouring in, of course. I’ll remember him for the 1995 Stephen Stewart lecture, “Copyright, Over-Strength, Over-Regulated, Over-Rated,” 18 E.I.PR. 253 (1996) – I read it the same year I first studied copyright, and it’s influenced my thinking ever since. His Modern Law of Copyright and Designs, too, is a constant standby when I teach: wonderful for its teasing out of the implications of rules through hypotheticals, cases, and more cases. He was a bold thinker, never cowed by IP orthodoxy (or the ECJ for that matter), and never shying away from the need for a strong, sensible IP system. He has been respected by all sides in the IP world – no mean feat in itself. He will be very much missed.

The IPKat has its own tribute; as does the IAM Blog and Howard Knopf, but for a sense of the man, you might want to look at Patry’s older post on his conversation with Sir Hugh after his decision to retire from the bench.

Update: Bill Patry’s heartfelt tribute.

AFACT have a new (I think?) set of resources for teaching copyright to school kids.You can write your own copyright law (results of that might be interesting). You can even make your own anti-piracy ad! yay! (of course, people have been doing that for a while now… and here…. and here….) :)

I’ve yet to have a proper look, but as Tama Leaver comments:

I’ve never read an educational resource before which feels the need to include this disclaimer (p. 4.):

The resource is not a propaganda exercise. It does make clear to students that there are harmful consequences from film piracy, but it does so through educationally valid processes. It is an educational approach that allows students to face a significant civics and citizenship issue: their role in a society where many of them and their peers are breaking the law.

Actually, what this kind of warning tells me is that this area is really fraught, and that it’s really hard to be seen as treading the line between teaching and propaganda. I wonder who AFACT consulted with, and what testing they did, on this material before publication?

ZDNet has some interesting discussion of different ISPs’ policies.

I mentioned yesterday the current debate over internet censorship in Australia. I should, at the same time, have mentioned a free event that UNSW’s Baker & McKenzie Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre is having next Thursday. Full webpage here with speakers/program/etc. Here’s the short version:

The UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre is hosting a forum to explore aspects of the Australian Government’s current Internet filtering and censorship proposals. The aim is to get beyond some of the more heated claims and counter-claims circulating at present and explore the underlying issues and constraints, hopefully giving room for various perspectives and arguments to be considered on their merits. …
Date/Time: Thursday 27 November 2008, 9:30 am for 10:00 to 2:30 pm
Location: Theatre G02, ground floor, Law Building F8, UNSW Kensington Campus, Sydney NSW
Cost: Free, but donations to help cover the cost will be accepted at the door.

As I noted yesterday, a legal action has been launched by some 34 applicants from the television and movie industry against Australian ISP iiNet, alleging that iiNet has authorised copyright infringement by failing to take (adequate) steps to prevent sharing and downloading of films and TV shows via protocols like BitTorrent. A kind little birdie has sent me a copy of the Statement of Claim, so I have a bit more info. It makes for some interesting reading.

There are a number of interesting questions at the heart of this potential case:

1. What, exactly, are ISPs required to do when they become aware that users are potentially infringing copyright? Do they have to terminate people alleged by the movie industry to be ‘repeat infringers’?
2. How much responsibility will Australian courts put on intermediaries for ‘doing something’ about copyright infringement? So far, Australian courts have been pretty ready to impose liability on people they thought were ‘profiting from copyright wrongdoing’ – Kazaa with its P2P network, or Cooper with his ‘mp3sforfree’ website and his ISP host. What about others whose nefarious or infringing purpose is not so obvious? What, in other words, of more ‘ordinary’ service providers?
3. When the legislation requires that ISPs, in order to ‘gain absolution’ or immunity from damages, should ‘adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the accounts of repeat infringers’ – what does that really mean? Is it sufficient to terminate only those found liable for infringement? Is the court allowed to determine whether the policy is real or sufficient?

Politically, there are some equally interesting questions. Will the Internet industry respond to the lawsuit by looking for a settlement deal that goes some way towards creating the kind of ‘notice and terminate’ system that copyright owners have been pressing for? Will the government’s past approach of protecting ISPs from liability in order to further the digital economy hold? Or, has the tide turned: are we now in a climate where the courts, like the government, decide to hold ISPs to a higher standard, just as the government is trying to get ISPs to engage more actively in filtering adult content? And is this all just an attempt to promote a certain filter that purports to filter both porn and copyright infringement…?

More thoughts on the law side of things over the fold. (more…)

and all hell breaks loose, it seems. Sorry for the long radio silence: I’ve been on a research trip and not following things as closely as perhaps I should. A couple of general catch up notes:

1. I would blog about the Internet Censorship material – I simply can’t believe that the Australian government is seriously wanting internet content filtering active in Australia – but to blog it would really be something of a waste – after all, there’s at least two other perfectly good sites for information about developments here: the wonderful Somebody Think of the Children, and of course, Dale Clapperton of the EFA and his Defending Scoundrels site and Irene Graham’s Libertus site. The EFA and others are doing good work on these issues. Want more? Go there!
2. I would also blog about the IceTV case – it is, after all, one of the more significant ones lately to hit the High Court of Australia in copyright. However, it would probably be inappropriate to do so, since I’m a board member of one of the amicae that appeared in the case (the Australian Digital Alliance). I refer you to the AustLII transcripts of the hearing (Day 1, Day 2). I’ll comment once there is a judgment.
3. ACTA developments continue. I was at a trade law conference in Washington last week and was surprised to hear a Deputy of the USTR endorse ACTA as one of the few “trade” agreements that could continue to move forward in this lame duck/pre-Obama time. I’ll have more to say on this in due course.

And of course there’s the new case against an ISP for copyright infringement, noted in my last post. Can’t turn my back on you people, can I?

We’ve been expecting this might happen for a while. Now it has. From the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft media release:

“Today, seven leading film companies and their affiliates and licensees filed a legal action against iiNet, a major Australian internet service provider. The action was filed by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network, the Australian licensee of some of the infringed works. The companies seek a ruling that iiNet infringed copyright by failing to take reasonable steps, including enforcing its own terms and conditions, to prevent known unauthorised use of copies of the companies’ films and TV programs by iiNet’s customers via its network.”

In other words, it’s the argument that an ISP is authorising infringement of copyright. Without seeing the statement of claim, can’t say much more, except this: this is the next ‘upping of the ante’: designed, no doubt, to increase the pressure on ISPs and the Internet Industry Association to negotiate on the so-called ‘three strikes’ proposal for a system for terminating internet access of alleged copyright infringers.

Interesting times. (and yes, I’d love more information if anyone has any…).

On 3 October, Australian Arts Minister Peter Garrett announced that the Australian Federal Government plans to introduce a resale royalty right for works of visual art by 1 July 2009. This right will ensure that visual artists receive a portion of the proceeds from resales of their works. The legislation establishing the resale royalty right scheme has not yet been introduced in Parliament, but is expected bythe end of 2008.

The Government has issued a fact sheet on how the right would be structured. In short, the resale royalty scheme would involve a mandatory five per cent artist’s royalty on resales of artworks, when works are sold for $1,000 or more. The right will apply to works by living artists and for a period of 70 years after the artist’s death. (more…)

Sorry about the outage – had some technical problems for much of today. Lawfont is back and should be fine now (touch wood)… .

Google turned 10 last week, to Microsoft’s 33.

There’s a little comparison of Google and Microsoft here. Both the comparison and the comments it received are interesting.

For one, although both giants in their fields, can the two companies really be compared?

You heard it first … everywhere else. I know. House of Commons has reported it, as have assiduous commenters on this blog.

But for those who didn’t know: IceTV has been granted special leave. More commentary from House of Commons here. My previous commentary here and here; Bill Patry here. For my money, read David Lindsay’s slides from a presentation he gave on the case for the Copyright Society (click on ‘Download Powerpoints’ – immediately below the heading on that page): no one has done the work like he has. Oh, and don’t forget Peter Vogel – one of the men at the centre of the storm.

Fun, fun, fun.

Update: the High Court transcript from the special leave hearing is available here. It makes for some very interesting reading.

On Monday Susanne noted that ACMA had released their internet content filtering report. Well, as you can imagine, there’s been some blogospheric and professional reaction:

1. SAGE (the Sysadmin Guild of Australia) has slammed the artificiality of the methodology used (press release, media report);
2. Somebodythinkofthechildren has produced a great summary set of links to other reactions, here (hat tip: Peter Black).