LawFont.com

Who will win the race for Internet dominance? Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! are certainly the key finalists. At this point, however, Google seems to be ahead in creating the computing power necessary to win.

Google is building a massive campus on the shores of the Columbia River, on the Oregon side of the Oregon-Washington border. While the project is shrouded in secrecy, the data center will include two or three large buildings and two cooling plants (to keep all those servers running). The site is at least as large as two football fields. (See the article for an aerial photograph.)

According to The New York Times, this upgrade in computing power is in addition to what is referred to in the industry as the “Googleplex”, a global network of computers that distinguishes Google from the competition. (Strangely, the only references to “Googleplex” I found–with Google’s search engine–were to Google’s corporate headquarters, and not to its computer network.) In contrast to the estimated over 450,000 servers forming Google’s network, Microsoft has approximately 200,000 servers devoted to the Internet, which is expected to increase to 800,000 by 2011.

There is an interesting thought piece in The Australian today about how the Australian digital broadcasting industry will be regulated relatively lightly, compared to the current analog environment.

According to journalist Mark Day, Senator Coonan has defended the current high-regulation regime as necessary because of the scarcity of analog broadcasting spectrum. But digital broadcasting does not have the same spectrum limitations. Accordingly, once the transition to digital broadcasting is complete, much of the current regulatory regime will disappear (including the anti-sihponing list, multi-channeling, and high-definition quotas). (Similarly, Senator Coonan suggested that the current regime would become “outdated” in her call for submissions on the Government’s digital media conversion. ) Where significant regulation is likely to remain is with respect to some content, particularly when that content furthers pornography or terrorism.

I found this article to be particularly interesting because of its overarching argument — namely that markets (and not regulators) are best-placed to select successful digital technologies.

Are Internet telephony companies a good investment? Perhaps not–or perhaps just not yet.

Atlanta-based law firm Motley Rice has filed a class action against Vonage, on behalf of shareholders who bought stock in the Internet telephony provider prior to its intial public offering on 24 May, and have already lost a great deal on their investment. Filed on Friday 2 June in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey, the suit alleges that investors were mislead by the company, its officers, and certain underwriters of the IPO, when they were offered shares in the company. (more…)

Is linking to websites without permission against the law? Generally not. But Apple may not be so far off the mark by demanding that comedy website Something Awful remove a link posted to one of Apple’s own internal service manuals. (The service manual is posted at a third website, which was not authorised to reproduce the manual, and not Something Awful itself.)

However, as pointed out on Out-Law, the truth may be that Apple’s complaint has not put the company in a “tricky and potentially embarrassing situation.” Although in general linking does not violate copyright or other applicable laws, links to infringing material may expose the linking party to contributory copyright infringement. In other words, posting the link, while not a direct infringement of copyright, might be deemed to encourage others to infringe copyright by dowloading the infringing material (in this case, the manual). (more…)

(subtitled: Outcomes of the Fair Use Review Announced).

For the past 12 months, Australia has been going through a major review of its copyright law, and in particular, its exceptions to copyright infringement, with a view to ‘updating’ this material for the digital environment. I note that we are not the only ones: Canada are having an ongoing debate (see Michael Geist on all this), and the UK are having their Gower Review (see here).

Today, the Attorney-General has issued a press release, announcing the results of the review. As yet, the press release does not appear to be online, so I’ll summarise. In essence, the government has decided not to adopt the US ‘fair use’ system – where a broadly worded defence must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Instead, the government will expand, and amend, existing specific exceptions in Australian law. That makes the amendments complicated, but potentially more certain.

The Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, is characterising the reforms as:

‘…significant copyright reforms which make our laws fairer for consumers and tougher on copyright pirates.’

According to the AG:

‘These are commonsense amendments which will maintain Australia’s copyright laws as the best in the world for the benefit of our creators and other copyright owners and for hte many Australians who enjoy their creative works.’

I wonder, though. The government does appear to have caved on the issue of the ‘flexible exception’ – the ‘catch all’ provision to except uses not foreseen at the time of this legislation. In my submission, I supported such flexibility, and I’m very sorry to see it apparently not there. I wonder whether in a few years time we will be saying what Bill Cornish (not an IP radical or copyleftist, by any stretch of the imagination) said in his Clarendon Lecture:

‘With rapid technical shifts on the scale of the Internet, there must be a case for giving judges some more general power to excuse at the edges, along US lines. After all, at the centre, legislation is rapidly providing the mainstays of control. As one who tried in 1988 to persuade Parliament to introduce a concept of fair use, I feel now even mroe acutely that our failure was a major rebuff. ‘ (Bill Cornish, Intellectual Property: Omnipresent, Distracting, Irrelevant? (OUP 2004) at page 65)

The press release maintains principles which Ruddock has stated a number of times:

• 1. That copyright must keep pace with technology and rapidly changing consumer behaviour;
• 2. that ‘reasonable consumer use of technology to enjoy copyright material’ should be recognised – ‘Australian consumers should not be in a significantly worse position than consumers in similar countries’
• 3. reforms should not ‘unreasonably harm or discourage the development of new digital markets by copyright owners’
• 4. The unique Australian system should be maintained – we are not moving to US-style fair use;
• 5. the law should be updated to tackle rising copyright piracy, and to support the copyright industries.

In summary, the AG has announced:

1. 2 new private use exceptions – time-shifting and format-shifting;
2. new exceptions allowing schools, universities, libraries, and other cultural institutions to use copyright material for non-commercial purposes;
3. new exceptions for people with disabilities;
4. a new exception to allow use of copyright material for parody or satire;
5. new enforcement measures

Over the fold, I summarise the announcements, and offer some commentary. (more…)

Oh yes, little flurry in the blogosphere over a story about Telstra buying Ads on Google so that Telstra’s ads would appear when someone searched for their broadband rival AAPT. As usual, the story attracted attention (see the IPKat, the Trademark Blog, Warwick Rothnie, Search Engine Watch Blog, Young PR, and Joshua Gans).

Only Gans points out that this is common practice (with examples! Go have a look). But is it legal? (more…)

The great thing about being an IP professor is that you get to comment on the pressing information technology and information freedom issues of the day.

Like, oh, chefs copying other chefs’ creations. (blogpost here)

And, oh, the BIG issue: will elvis impersonators still have a livelihood in the future? Last night, if you watched closely, you might have seen me spouting forth on ABC news on the issue of whether transactions recently occurring over the Elvis Estate in the US would lead to Elvis impersonators losing their jobs (short version of the story here). Apparently, a new majority holder in Elvis Enterprises is threatening to crack down on ‘unauthorised’ Elvis impersonators. ABC News called me to comment (on my day off!!! Nothing like taking time out from a heavy shopping expedition to do a quick media interview. And nothing like taking a quick stop by the Myer make-up counters to get ready…).

Frankly, I can’t see that there will be a legal issue for the impersonators here. Far more important issues were being ventilated by Cory Doctorow last night in Melbourne (and tonight in Sydney – go if you can!) (more…)

I’ve blogged here, and more extensively here, about a case before the Copyright Tribunal, in which CAL and the Schools are seeking a determination on how much schools should pay for ‘electronic uses’ of copyright material. I’ve been concerned (amazed, appalled) by one of the arguments being made in the case: that where a teacher tells a student to view a website (yes, a freely available, open access website) there should be a payment to copyright owners. I’ve pointed out at length why I think this is a simply unsustainable argument. Now we have a Tribunal decision on what should be done pending determination of that argument. (more…)

Yochai Benkler has followed a trend set by such people as Larry Lessig and Michael Geist, and made his new book, The Wealth of Networks, available under a Creative Commons License. He’s gone further than Lessig or Geist, I think, and has put the ideas in the book – which are all about commons-based and cooperative production – to the test in the real world. It will be of interest to anyone who thinks the whole concept of the Commons, Creative Commons, and ‘social production’ are interesting. Comments on this method of publication, and the book itself, over the fold. (more…)

A colleague asked me the other day: if a US company decides to offer its TV shows for free online, but limits the downloads to US internet users only (blocking out us poor sucker Aussies), are they doing anything illegal?

The question stemmed from Wall Street Journal reports that Disney plans to offer popular tv shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives for free online (see also Michael Geist on this)

I couldn’t think of anything that would make this illegal. Possibly stupid, given the reported levels of TV-show downloading in Australia, but not illegal. But then I thought, well, in recent times, people commenting on this blog, and more particularly on Weatherall’s Law have proven the old blog adage that the comments generated by a post are often more interesting than the post itself – and that commenters collectively are smarter than the blogger.

So help me out here guys. Is there anything illegal going on in that scenario?

Is Internet filtering ever justified?

Australian Labor party leader Kim Beazley has been pushing for Internet filtering at the ISP level, to provide a “clean feed” for Australian families. The idea would be for ISPs to blacklist particular websites that are known to have pornographic content, so that children will not be exposed to objectionable content. (more…)

A little while ago I blogged about a case – and more particularly an argument – that is currently before the Copyright Tribunal. The case concerns the fees schools should pay for digital uses of copyright material; the argument concerns whether ‘telling students to view’ a website should ever be a remunerable act. Reports of the case had elicited a fair bit of commentary overseas. My own post elicited quite a lot of email.

The case itself has gone ‘underground’ a little – no new developments to be reported at this stage. But I did want to note a letter to The Australian newspaper, written by CAL CEO Michael Fraser about the case. I can’t find the letter online, so I’ll quote some of the key parts: (more…)

This issue of “What is…?” provides a brief look at the emerging technology of datacasting, and considers some of the regulatory and legal issues that are raised by this new form of broadcasting. In Australia the ability to datacast is becoming a hot topic, not least because it is expected to be included in the upcoming media industry reforms. (more…)

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has released a report on the performance of Australian Internet services.

Understanding your internet quality of service 2004–05 examines the following issues:

1. download data rates on a major city and regional basis;
2. upload data rates on a major city and regional basis;
3. data rate variation by time of day;
4. Internet service availability;
5. domain name server (DNS) lookup times; and
6. latency (an indicator of the time delay of information to pass through a network).

ACMA found that, in general, Internet download speeds are not as fast as consumers are led to believe, with DSL and dial-up (which serve the majority of users) operating at an average of approximately 83% and 74% of advertised rates or maximum modem speeds, respectively. (more…)

The Internet and blogosphere have been rife, just recently, with a story that first emerged in The Australian. The story went under the headline: ‘Copyright makes web a turn-off’, and came with this as the rather glorious (and alarmist!) first paragraph:

‘Schools have warned they will have to turn off the internet if a move by the nation’s copyright collection society forces them to pay a fee every time a teacher instructs students to browse a website’

What on earth could be going on? Well, I admit it, I’ve been hearing about this for some time, and I really should have blogged it before now. But following comments (and ‘please explains’) from both Michael Geist, and Michael Madison, some commentary on Boing Boing, and by Warwick Rothnie, and the emergence of the story on the Linux Australia listservs, it’s definitely time to weigh in.

Is such a radical argument being made? Oh, yes. The Copyright Agency Limited (CAL), an Australian collecting society isn’t demanding that schools ‘turn off the internet’. But they ARE demanding that schools pay when students are told to look at stuff. claiming that when students are told to look at sites online, that is a remunerable activity, and hence something that should be included in calculating rates that schools pay under the statutory license. The argument is a step in the more immediate question, which relates to what questions are to be put on an electronic use survey. [updated to clarify – Monday, 6 March 2006, 5:30pm]. (more…)