The Australian Blogging Conference on 28 September will cover a wide range of issues relating to blogs, including creative commons and legal issues. And it’s free.
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Posted 29th August 2007 by David Jacobson in Weblogs
August 29, 2007
Australian Blogging Conference
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Posted 29th August 2007 by David Jacobson in Weblogs
August 28, 2007
Copyright Infringement Notice Scheme
The Attorney-General’s Department has developed draft guidelines for the administration of the infringement notice scheme introduced in 2006 to the Copyright Act.
The scheme is designed to deal specifically
with lower-level copyright crime such as first time offenders, street
stall or market operators,
An infringement notice penalty is 12 penalty units ($1,320).
Comments can be made until 5 October 2007.
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Posted 28th August 2007 by David Jacobson in Legal
August 11, 2007
Channel Nine loses IceTV action
In Nine Network Australia Pty Ltd v IceTV
Pty Ltd [2007] FCA 1172 Nine’s action for breach of copyright against Ice TV for reproducing its
TV schedules in electronic form was dismissed by the Federal Court.
The Court held that Nine owned the copyright to its program guide but dismissed
Nine’s claim on the basis that IceTV "does not reproduce a
substantial part of" Nine’s guide.
Nine provides its schedules to "Aggregators" who integrate the schedule with that of other free to air stations and edit and add to the information for inclusion
in the various public guides and determine the arrangement of that information.
There was no claim by the Aggregators that Ice infringed their copyright.
Ice contended that it did not copy the aggregated guides but created its
templates by watching the broadcast programs and writing down the title of the
programs and the days and times at which they were shown.
The Judge found that Ice did take "slivers of time and title information each day from the
Aggregated Guides. … Ice does not
reproduce a substantial part of the Weekly Schedule in so doing."
Justice Bennett agreed with IceTV that its "electronic program guide" was compiled
independently and ordered Nine to pay IceTV’s costs.
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Posted 11th August 2007 by David Jacobson in Legal
Web 3.0
At the Seoul Digital Forum in May Eric Schmidt (Google) was asked to define Web 3.0.
"My prediction is that Web 3.0 will be seen as applications with
a number of characteristics. They are small, the data lives in in a
cloud, applications will run on any device – PC or mobile, applications
are fast and customisable, distributed virally through social networks
and email…
"That’s a very different application model than we’ve ever
seen in computing – very different from the mainframe era, the PC
industry and likely to be very, very large."
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Posted 11th August 2007 by David Jacobson in Web/Tech
August 4, 2007
Online contracts, eBay and legal enforceability
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Supreme Court of New South Wales has upheld the enforceability of an online sale on eBay (Judgment in Smythe v Thomas now available online here).
The successful online bidder of a vintage WWII plane sued the seller after the seller refused to complete the sale. (The seller had been offered $100,000 more off-line by someone else). The online buyer won the case.
Business 2.0 also reports on an advance in online contracts: Tractis, the first Web platform that lets users create, manage, and execute contracts online from a Spanish startup called Negonation. (via law.com)
For a refresher on the Australian law see my March 2006 post here.
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Posted 4th August 2007 by David Jacobson in Legal
Digital television in Australia
According to a report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Information Technology into the uptake of digital television in Australia lack of certainty regarding analogue switch-off is a key failure in the drive to digital TV take-up.
The key recommendations include:
- Switch off analogue television broadcasting nationwide on 1 January 2010.
- Lift multichannelling programming restrictions for the
national broadcasters as soon as possible and no later than 1 January
2007. - Lift multichannelling restrictions for commercial broadcasters on 1 January 2008.
- The current minimum High Definition broadcasting quota for free-to-air networks will be maintained until 1 January 2011.
- The establishment of a testing and conformance centre for
digital television equipment, with the provision of A$1 million as seed
funding in the first year. - The establishment of a mandatory labelling scheme that will accurately identify television and digital reception products.
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Posted 4th August 2007 by David Jacobson in Web/Tech