LawFont.com

…the OECD has just held a major conference on the Future of the Digital Economy. Michael Geist, who attended, has a summary of the ‘big themes: the battle over DRM, and network neutrality.

Yesterday I asked whether anyone knew what was going on in the Kazaa case (you know, the one where the Music Industry is suing Sharman (Kazaa) for providing P2P software and authorising infringement of copyright. In particular, I was asking whether the contempt hearing previously scheduled for Monday 30 Jan went ahead.

My query has been answered! David tells me that the question of contempt has been reserved for the Full Court hearing in the case: an order has been made (available in the ESearch facility of the Federal Court’s database, CaseTrack), to this effect:

So this adds to the long list of things that Branson, Lindgren, and Finkelstein JJ will be pondering in the week commencing 20 February 2006 (soon!).

Ta David!

Because of Chinese government restrictions on the information available to its citizens, access to Google’s main website (www.google.com) has either been prevented altogether or has been very slow. Google’s new Chinese website, www.google.cn, will not suffer the same problems. However, this access comes at a price. In exchange for access to the Chinese market, Google has agreed to censor its search results on the .cn version of the search engine. (more…)

Mark Russinovich, the security researcher who found the Sony Rootkit, posted the results of his analysis of the Windows metadata flaw on his “Sysinternals” blog.

As expected, he concludes that the flaw was an intentional piece of design that turned out to be very poor and insecure–not an intentional, malicious backdoor as has recently been claimed. (more…)

This edition of “What is..?” considers VoIP, otherwise known as Internet telephony or IP telephony. VoIP, which stands for “Voice over Internet Protocol”, refers to the transmission of voice telephone calls over the Internet or any other IP-based network. VoIP systems use packet-switched networks to route and transmit voice calls, rather than the circuit-switching systems used by “traditional” voice telecommunications services.

This article provides an introduction to VoIP, including how it differs from traditional telephony services, and considers some of the regulatory issues raised by providing voice telephony over the Internet. While today VoIP might appear to be a niche product, it is in fact threatening to change the structure of the telephony industry, and is evidence of convergence between the Internet and telecommunications. (more…)

The other day I blogged about what was coming up in Australian IP. Not really predictions – these were more statements about the stuff I knew should be coming.

For a bunch of predictions – focused on the US but of course with more general relevance – see Freedom to Tinker’s list of 23.

2005 was one of those years where the IP developments just kept coming. Kazaa, Fair Dealing/Fair Use, a TPM law inquiry, Stevens v Sony, the occasional patent judgment, another government inquiry. And that’s just the Australian stuff. We also of course had stuff like the Grokster judgment, developments in the Blackberry litigation … more treaty-making. It was hard keeping up. Matt Rimmer has done a run down over here.

Instead of doing my own round up, I thought it might be fun to list up the things that are still to come in Australian IP. Just so I can feel exhausted before we even really start the year. So, over the fold, my round up of developments to expect, and issues to come, in Australian IP law. (more…)

Earlier this month I posted Part 1 of “What is region coding?”, which described the technology, commercial rationale, and economic effects of this system. This posting is Part 2, and considers the legal implications of region coding, with a focus on developments in the United States and Australia. (more…)

Matt Rimmer has a nice round-up of the year’s IT and IP stories at CCH (registration may be required). It has the usual suspects (Grokster, Sony v Stevens, the Sony rootkit) and also a nice summary of a French decision (Stéphane P and Association UFC v Universal Pictures Video France — Court d’Appeal de Paris) about DRM that prevents DVDs being copied to VHS tapes for private use.

Pretty cool: the inventor of the web finally has his own blog. The first post contains this fascinating snippet:

“The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.”

In other words, that web was a wiki. (You can see a screenshot of it.)

This edition of “What is…?” describes the regional coding systems used by the entertainment industry, with a particular emphasis on DVDs. This article will explain the technology behind region coding, describe how the system is enforced, and speculate on the commercial reasons for the system. It will then consider the economic effects of region coding and its possible legal implications, including a discussion of recent litigation in which region coding has been at issue.

This posting contains Part 1, which provides an introduction to how region coding works from both technological and legal perspectives, as well as the commercial justifications for region coding and its possible economic effects. Part 2 considers the legal issues raised by region coding, in the context of both competition/antitrust law as well as the anti-circumvention provisions that have been adopted as part of copyright law in both Australia and the United States. (more…)

I found this while seeing if I could find stats about the results of Harvey Danger’s experiment in allowing their latest album to be downloaded for free (apologies for those who find it monotonous, as I’ve posted about it twice already in the last couple of months, but I find it a great way to try to find hard data behind all the press spin about music and the net). (more…)

Two short stories that illustrate two of my pet theories about the net: MMORPG economies and RSS. The first, in the New York Times reports on Chinese ‘gold farmers’ — people who sit and play MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) all day, to build up virtual gold which they then sell for real money to time-poor players. (more…)

I previously posted about how Harvey Danger released their new album for free on P2P. Well, I have finally had time to listen to it, and I really like it. Enough, in fact, that I’m going to go and purchase the CD to support them in their decision, in the hope they (and others) will do it in future. (more…)

The Australian is reporting that lawyers for MIPI will seek an order from the Federal Court to shut down the Kazaa network, because Sharman has failed to implement keyword filtering that it was required to introduce. (more…)