CooperMills

Archive for April, 2009

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) yesterday announced it had rejected Telstra’s undertaking to charge competitors a $30 monthly fee to access ULL in metropolitan areas.

The ACCC expressed surprise that Telstra’s $30 application worked out to be higher than the previous proposal of $30 for metropolitan areas, which was rejected in 2006.

ACCC Chairman, Graeme Samuel, said following an extensive assessment of Telstra’s application the ACCC was not satisfied the $30 charge for metropolitan areas is reasonable.

“The ACCC believes that Telstra’s proposed price is unlikely to promote competition in the broadband and telephony markets. It may also discourage investment in telecommunications infrastructure. The ACCC also considers that a $30 monthly charge would result in Telstra recovering more than is necessary to promote its legitimate business interest in providing this service,” Mr Samuel said.

In rejecting the undertaking, the ACCC also noted Telstra’s proposed monthly charge was significantly above estimates derived from benchmarking against comparable countries.

This is the fourth time Telstra has submitted applications in regards to the ULLS service. One application was withdrawn while three have now been rejected by the ACCC because they could not be satisfied that the undertakings were reasonable. The two previous rejections were affirmed by the Australian Competition Tribunal on appeal.

The next move is with Telstra, one can only assume that being effectively sidelined in the Government’s NBN construction process, has prompted them to take an tough approach against their competitors who in the absence of the NBN rely on the ULL for service delivery for the short to medium term.

Tags: Competition Law, Telco Law, telecommunications law, Telecommunications Lawyers, ULL
Posted in ISP and Telco Law, Trade Practices Law | No Comments »

Claims have emerged that the judge hearing a case involving the website The Pirate Bay which was alleged to have facilitated copyright infringement is a member of The Swedish Association for Copyright.

The revelations emerged during a Court of Appeal hearing over the heavy penalty handed down to the operators of The Pirate Bay website, which we previously reported on.

The applicants are seeking to over turn their convictions and have the prosecution dismissed.

The Court of Appeal decision decision is expected soon, depending on whether the matter is not referred to the European Court of Justice.

Tags: IT Law, IT Lawyers, technology law
Posted in General, IT Law | No Comments »

In February we reported that as part of a piracy crack down the operators of the popular website The Pirate Bay were prosecuted in Sweden for facilitating the P2P exchange of copyright infringing material such as films and music.

On Friday a Stockholm Court found the 4 operators of The Pirate Bay guilty of facilitating copyright infringement and imposed a 12 month prison sentence and a 30 Million krona fine.

As expected the entertainment industry welcomed the verdict, which prompted protests by supporters. The operators plan to appeal the verdict.

The judgment is a blow to P2P operators who are being more aggressively targeted, as part of a piracy crackdown by the entertainment industry.

Tags: computer law, information technology law, IT Law, IT Lawyer, IT Lawyers, technology law
Posted in IT Law | No Comments »

German domain name regulator, DENIC, has taken down the popular website www.wikileaks.de shortly after it published ACMA’s internet filtering trial black list.

Recent reports have emerged of the ACMA internet filtering trial black list having been published on different websites, potentially compromising the Government’s current internet filtering trials. One such website was www.Wikileaks.de.

Wikileaks had been known for its collection of leaked documents, according to ARS Technica:

Wikileaks has built up an impressive portfolio of leaked documents like those from secretive religious organizations, congressional reports, specs for military hardware capable of jamming IEDs used by insurgents in Iraq, and even its own donors list. In doing so, it has found few friends in governments and courts, with one judge even ordering its DNS record be erased after documents from Swiss Bank Julius Baer were uploaded to the site.

ARS Technica have also reported that German police raided the residence of the German domain name registrant Theodor Reppe who denies any involvement in the posting of leaked documents. The raids are reported to have come shortly after the ACMA blacklist was published. It is unknown at this stage, what involvement if any, ACMA had in closing down this website.

Another mirror site of wikileaks.de, which is hosted on a different domain, still shows links to different versions of what they claim is the secret ACMA black list.

Tags: ACMA, internet censorship, internet filtering, IT Law, IT Lawyers, telecommunications law
Posted in General, ISP and Telco Law, IT Law | No Comments »

The TIO’s  recently released December 2008 quarter complaints statistics identify complaint handling as a problem area for ISPs and Telcos.

The TIO statistics show that complaints around complaint handling are increasing across all service segments:

Mobile services:

• Provisioning (an increase of 37.7 per cent, from 297 to 409)
• Customer Transfer (up 40.5 per cent, from 412 to 579)
• Complaint Handling (up 25 per cent, from 4,340 to 5,427)

Landline services:

• Complaint Handling (increasing by 55.1 per cent, from 3,957 to 6,137)
• Phonecard (up 70.1 per cent, from 281 to 478)
• Disability (up 117.4 per cent, from 46 to 100)
• Billing and Payments (up 40 per cent, from 6,999 to 9,796)

Internet services

• Complaint Handling (rising 31.5 per cent, from 2,782 to 3,657)
• Credit Management (up 30.7 per cent, from 1,177 to 1,538).

The statistics are a timely reminder of the Complaint Handling obligations contained in the Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code C628:2007.

Clause 9 of the TCP Code imposes a number of obligations, the core of which are:

1. (clause 9.1.1) having a complaint handling process;
2. (clause 9.1.2) having a documented complaint handling policy;

It is also a requirement under clause 9.1.4 of the TCP Code that:

Suppliers must give the TIO a copy of their internal Complaint handling policy and advise the TIO of any significant changes within 7 days of the change, or as soon as practicable after that time.

The success of compliance can in large part be impacted by staff training and awareness of the procedures and policies. This needs to be addressed to ensure effective TCP Code compliance.

Non-compliance may cause the ACMA to take action by issuing formal directions or taking other enforcement action.

Tags: Code Compliance, isp law, ISP Lawyers, telecommunications law, Telecommunications Lawyers, TIO
Posted in ISP and Telco Law | No Comments »