LawFont.com

The New York Times has has two interesting stories I haven’t been able to post due to pressure of work.

The first is Roche Tells Indonesia That It Can Produce Tamiflu Without a License. Apparently, Roche does not have a patent in Indonesia for the drug; I wonder why? This forecloses the possibility Kim previously noted, of the country compulsorily licensing the patent in the event of a bird flu outbreak, as is its right under international IP law.

The second is a little pure geekiness,
Writing the Fastest Code, by Hand, for Fun: A Human Computer Keeps Speeding Up Chips. If ever a person was aptly named for his occupation, it might be Mr Goto [if you don’t get the nerd joke, perhaps see here]. Mr Goto handwrites optimisation code that speeds up supercomputers, and is currently used by 4 of the world’s fastest 11 supercomputers. Not only that, but his code beats the machine-generated code of his main competitor. Kind of neat, for something started as a hobby about a decade ago. His website is here.

Adam Cohen has published an interesting, and critical, opinion piece on Google in The New York Times, focusing on privacy issues raised by the company’s technology and services.

It’s been a long time coming. The television and Internet industries are working together to offer consumers the ability to download, legally, movies and television episodes. This convergence might be seen as inevitable, particularly since the advent of TiVo, Foxtel iQ, and other services using digital video recording systems (DVRs), as well as the popularity of P2P file-sharing networks. These industry developments reflect an important influence: the power of consumer demand. (more…)

The Sony/BMG rootkit fiasco has advanced to the next stage: Amazon has been flooded with reviews of CDs that contain the rootkit (and possibly some that don’t, but just contain other DRM). These reviews have uniformly been stingingly negative, and award one star (the lowest that Amazon lets you award) out of its one to five star rating system. (more…)

I see that matters have developed quickly in the Sony DRM story that I blogged about earlier. We’ve had a lawsuit filed, viruses developed that take advantage of the Sony rootkit system, instructions proliferating on how to remove the RootKit, and some warnings from US Government officials directed at Sony and others who do this kind of thing. Moreinfo, plus links, plus some thoughts on the legal issues, over the fold. (more…)

Various media are reporting how a British teenager escaped conviction after “mailbombing” his former employer. Mailbombing is a form of denial of service attack – in this case, the teen sent 5 million emails, which overwhelmed the target’s mail server. (more…)

J. Alex Halderman has an interesting post today on Ed Felten’s blog on some new music CD DRM (digital rights management) that actually makes your computer less secure. (more…)

Given the recent attention given to book digitization projects, it is time to step back and consider developments to date. This post will first describe the projects launched by Google and the Open Content Alliance, and the consider some of the legal issues raised by Google Print, which is the subject of two major lawsuits. What follows is somewhat lengthy, but it has taken some space to do this interesting topic justice. (more…)

As expected, earlier this week a the Vastmanland district court in Sweden handed down the nation’s first decision on Internet file sharing. (more…)

Ah, the government submission process. Having finally completed my submission on the inquiry into TPM exceptions being run by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, now I can’t publish it until they decide to publish it. Shame really. I’ll put up a link as soon as it happens…

Oh well, in the meantime, if you’re starved for my views (as if!) there is the submission I made on the Attorney-General’s review of the availability of Safe Harbours under Part V Div 2AA of the Copyright Act. (more…)

This week has had some mixed results for Google Print. The good news: Google Print has rolled out additional efforts to serve European users. The bad news: the Google Print Library Project has attracted another lawsuit in the United States, this time from the Association of American Publishers, objecting to the company’s “opt out” approach for scanning copyright works. (more…)

In the third quarter of the 2005 financial year (July-September), Google earned US$381 million (US$1.32 per share). (At the close of business on 21 October, Google was selling at over US$339 a share—that’s a record high.) That’s seven times more than Google’s earnings of US$52 million (19 cents a share), during the same period in 2004, although last year’s results reflected the cost of settling a patent dispute with Yahoo. (more…)

As the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee hunkers down to think about DRM, they might like to take note of a column just published in the Wall Street Journal, on DRM: (more…)

iTunes? In Australia? I just can’t get my hopes up again…I couldn’t stand the disappointment…

The First Amendment Center has a nice analysis piece on international libel laws and publishing on the internet.

There are a couple of quibbles: the piece notes a number of cases brought against US publishers in a number of jurisdictions, including Australia, and says “In all of these cases, the foreign courts ignored the protections of U.S. libel law and instead applied local law to determine the publishers’ liability.” (more…)