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:
- SAGE (the Sysadmin Guild of Australia) has slammed the artificiality of the methodology used (press release, media report);
- Somebodythinkofthechildren has produced a great summary set of links to other reactions, here (hat tip: Peter Black).
So CAL has had a win in the High Court. In Copyright Agency Limited vs The State of NSW [2008] HCA 35, a unanimous High Court overturned the Full Federal Court’s ruling that Lands and Property Information (formerly the Land Titles Office), part of the NSW Department of Lands, does not have an implied license extending to allow the LPI to scan copies of survey plans, lodged with the office as a necessary element in registering title to land, and pass copies on to LPI staff, government agencies, councils, relevant authorities, information brokers and members of the public. One thing we don’t yet know is how much the NSW government will have to pay. The use will still fall within the government’s statutory license (Div ) – which means the government can make the copies but must pay equitable remuneration, to be determined by the Copyright Tribunal. This judgment presumably means the matter goes back to the Tribunal for determination.
[UPDATE: Catherine Bond has two long and interesting posts at House of Commons: Part 1 (Can’t the government just legislate to allow them to do it free?), Part 2 (but the Constitution!). Inchoate responds here.Nick Gruen has an AFR op-ed, which is re-produced on Club Troppo here – referring to Fitzgerald’s and Anderson’s (pre-High Court decision) article here.]
On one view, this is copyright run a little mad. (more…)
On 28 July, the Australian Communications and Media Authority released its report which sets out the findings of the closed environment testing of ISP-level filters conducted in 2008. The Closed Environment testing report followed hot on the heels of the Developments in Internet Filtering Technologies and Other Measures for Promoting Online Safety report released in February 2008. The latest report shows that the filtering technology has definitely improved in terms of the accuracy of what it blocks and the impact it has on network performance since the NetAlert Ltd trial conducted in 2005. The conclusion, though, is that the filtering technology has not developed sufficiently to be able to tell the difference between legal and illegal and/or inappropriate content carried via non-web protocols (such as peer-to-peer and instant messaging).
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