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Archive for the ‘General’ Category

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman today released its annual report, which highlighted a spike in the number of complaints received, with mobile phone services leading the rise in complaints.

Of particular note there was a 26 per cent increase in disputes about internet charges on a mobile service.

According to the Report:

The TIO received a record number of new complaints in 2010-11, 197,682 or a substantial 17.8 per cent increase compared to the previous year, reversing the 4.6 per cent decrease in new complaints we reported in 2009-10.

The issue with the largest increase in mobile phone complaints was faults, with 56,475 issues raised or a 180.7 per cent increase from the previous year. The two most common complaints in this area include poor coverage (28,634 issues or a 609.6 per cent increase) and dropouts
(6,941 issues or a 482.8 per cent increase).

The TIO figures have been controversial in the past, with critics claiming that the TIO double and triple counts complaints, which results in the high headline number of complaints.

The TIO data will not doubt be seized on my the ACMA, who is looking at reform of the Telco industry following the release of its Reconnecting the Customer report.

Tags: ACMA, ISP Lawyers, telco lawyer, telecommunications law, telecommunications lawyer, TIO
Posted in General, ISP and Telco Law, IT Law | Comments Off

It has been reported that the Carnegie Fund, a fund supported by the Australian Government through the Innovation Investment Fund (IIF) program has invested $3 million in Winged Media.

According to Domain Name Wire, Carnegie Fund provided the investment on the strength of websites such as Protrada operated by Winged Media.

Protrada provides aggregation of domain name auction platforms including Sedo and Godaddy.

This investment highlights the value of the Australian domain industry, which has continued to break records in investment over the past 12 months.

Tags: domain law, domain lawyer, domain name industry, domain name investment, domain name lawyer
Posted in Domain law and domaining, General, IT Law | Comments Off

The Victorian and New South Wales governments have teamed up to open a tender for the application and provision of registry services for new GTLDs including .melbourne and .sydney.

The tender appears to be for a ‘start to finish’ service provider who can apply to ICANN for the GTLDs, manage the process and provider registry services.

There are a number of local players who would be likely to bid in the tender process, including Melbourne IT (who originally managed the .au space) and Ausregistry who currently provides registry services for the .au space (as well as a number of other international TLD and ccTLDs).

Tags: .melbourne, .sydney, domain law, domain lawyer, domain lawyers, domain name law, domain name lawyer, domain name lawyers, technology law
Posted in Domain law and domaining, General, IT Law | Comments Off

The ACCC has announced that it intends to appeal the recent Federal Court decision which found that Google was not liable for misleading and deceptive conduct in publishing Adwords advertisements.

In its recent press release the ACCC said:

The ACCC alleged that Google had engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct by publishing these advertisements on Google’s search results page where a headline of the advertisement comprised a business name, product name or web address of a business not sponsored, affiliated or associated with the advertiser. When a user clicked the words in the heading of the advertisement associated with the competitor’s business or product, he or she was taken to the advertiser’s website.

Justice Nicholas found that although a number of the advertisements were misleading or deceptive, Google had not made those representations. Google merely communicated representations made by the advertiser. As such, Justice Nicholas ruled that Google had not breached the Trade Practices Act.

On appeal the ACCC has indicated that it will be challenging this finding by the Court with respect to 4 advertisements. The ACCC also indicated:

The ACCC takes the view that Google’s key word insertion system, plus the role of Google staff, were fundamental to the representations being made.

This is a significant case as there is a lack of Australian case law on Google Adwords advertisements, which are now one of the most commonly used advertisement methods for Australian businesses, with some businesses spending thousands of dollars per week.

 

Tags: ACCC, Google, Trade Practices Law, Trade Practices Lawyer
Posted in General, IT Law, Trade Practices Law | Comments Off

Cooper Mills was recently quoted in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, IT Pro section 11 October 2011, some quotes from the article entitled ‘Is it legal to send your data overseas’:

Despite their determination to keep hold of their data, however, many companies are still being less than careful with their cloud diligence, says lawyer Erhan Karabardak, director of IT specialist firm Cooper Mills Lawyers.

“It’s amazing how little due diligence people do with cloud services,” he explains.

“People say ‘our data is in the cloud’ but if you ask them where, and in which country, and whether it’s encrypted, they just don’t know. Companies really just need to ask some of the basic questions.”

Such questions become more complicated, Karabardak adds, when a particular cloud service distributes data between servers in different countries to boost the redundancy of data storage;

The full text of the article is viewable here.

Tags: cloud computing, Erhan Karabardak, IT Law, Privacy Law, Sydney Morning Herald, technology lawyer, The Age
Posted in General, IT Law | Comments Off

The ACCC has failed in its bid to have the Federal Court declare that the manner in which Google differentiates sponsored links to organic search results was misleading and deceptive within the meaning of the Australian Consumer Law.

The ACCC had argued that by failing to adequately distinguish advertisements from search results, Google had engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct.

While the Court failed to agree with the ACCC, Google has since changed the labeling of advertisements from ‘sponsored links’ to ‘Ads’ in line with comments by the Court, that the labeling was unclear, but not misleading and deceptive within the sense of the Australian Consumer Law.

Tags: ACCC, Australian Consumer Law, Google, Trade Practices Law, Trade Practices Lawyer
Posted in General, Trade Practices Law | Comments Off

In a sign that the .au domain name market is hotting up investmentproperty.com.au today sold for $125,001 (plus GST) to Mad Cat Pty Ltd, which appears to be the operator of Hunter Valley property development company Vision Homes.

In spirited bidding, initial bids last night were less than $2000. The price  quickly shot up today on the two leading aftermarket domain catching services, fetching $125,001 on Netfleet and $110,001 on Drop.com.au

No doubt the registrant who let the name expire, INVESTMENT PROPERTY SOLUTIONS PTY LIMITED, would have kicked themselves at losing such a valuable domain name.

Cooper Mills Director and Domain Lawyer, Erhan Karabardak said:

These types of record results are pleasing for the domain name industry, and show that business is understanding the critical importance of a good domain name in the success of online ventures.

Tags: domain lawyer, domain name law, domain name lawyer, domain names, Erhan Karabardak, investmentproperty.com.au
Posted in Domain law and domaining, General | Comments Off

Retail internet and voice service providers are about to see the next wave of regulation from the Australian Government. This time, it is the Australian Communications and Media Authority (‘ACMA’) that is driving the changes.

ACMA is demanding a series of major changes to advertising and sales practices, as well as billing and complaint handling.

It is allowing the industry a short time to adopt the changes ‘voluntarily’ via an updated Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code.  If that does not happen, it will enforce its requirements using its own powers.

Quoting ACMA:

The ACMA is giving industry five months in which to develop a revised code dealing with the matters that it considers must be changed. If those changes cannot be made within that time, the ACMA will intervene directly to implement its proposals by way of a standard.

Unless the industry adopts the ‘proposals’ in its Telecommunications Consumer Protection Code (‘TCP Code’) , ACMA will mandate them.  Chris Chapman has now been reported as saying:

“The industry [is] ‘formally on notice’ to reflect the proposed changes in the new TCP code.  If the industry doesn’t develop a code that addresses ACMA’s concerns, the ACMA will mandate changes through direct regulation.”

ACMA’s new ‘proposed’ rules

1. Make telco advertising ‘clear, accurate and honest’
2. Ban certain ‘confusing’ terms, eg ‘cap’ (where it in fact means ‘minimum spend’)
3. Require that network coverage claims can be substantiated
4. Require that broadband speed claims can be substantiated
5. For post-paid plans with minimum monthly spend, all text-based advertising and bills to include ‘unit pricing’ (like supermarkets do)
6. Give prospects a standard form ‘critical information summary’
7. Require providers to report customer service performance using a new standard industry metric, for publication
8. Require providers to report complaint handling performance using a new standard industry metric, for publication
9. Optional:   Providers to adopt ‘Customer Service Charters’
10. Unless service hard-capped or shaped, notify customer at certain usage points
11. Until spend management tools in place, cap total cost at 150% of minimum spend
12. All bills to show service usage (eg as graph) broken into components
13. Providers to comply with AS ISO 10002-2006 re definition of ‘complaint’
14. Providers to comply with AS ISO 10002-2006 re complaint-handling visibility, accessibility, responsiveness, objectivity, charging, confidentiality, being customer-focused, accountability and continuous improvement
15. Providers to adopt benchmarks re timeliness in handling complaints; documenting procedures; and collecting, analysing and reporting complaints information

Comment

Initially, it will be up to the industry (through Communications Alliance) to redesign its TCP Code to satisfy ACMA.  If that fails, a mandatory new industry standard is inevitable.

What should service providers be doing now?

First, it is important to realise that the main points are all locked in – as far as ACMA is concerned.  Consultation on the changes is finished. There is room to refine the details, but the headline elements listed above are not negotiable for ACMA.

Second, you should consider whether you want to engage with Communications Alliance about any changes to the TCP Code.  These changes will affect you and your sales and delivery processes.  If you want to influence the TCP Code process, you’ll need to be prepared.  There are only five months left for Communications Alliance to produce a document that satisfies ACMA.

Third, you should start to think about how your business will comply with requirements along the lines of those outlined above.  What will your marketing / sales / delivery / complaints handling look like in 2012?  Will you be well positioned to prosper in the new environment?  How?

Tags: ACMA, IT Lawyers, technology lawyers, Telco Lawyers, telecommunications law, Telecommunications Lawyers
Posted in General, ISP and Telco Law, IT Law | Comments Off

.au Domain Administrator, auDA, today announced that it had accepted the recommendations of the Secondary Market Working Group, which included the highly controversial prohibition on the resale of newly registered domain names within 6 months of registration.

Among the recommendations of the Board that were accepted by auDA are:

1. mandate a registrant transfer process, along the lines of the registrar transfer process; and
2. publish information for registrants about the registrant transfer process, including the fact that they can choose to transfer their domain name to another registrar prior to processing a change of registrant.
3. The six month prohibition on registrant transfers should be removed.
4. auDA should provide more information to the public about drop catching services, including clearly identifying the registrars that provide these services.
5. AusRegistry should clarify its process for changing the Registry Usage Policy, including timing of changes and communications with registrars.
6. auDA should publish a policy which:

• clarifies that connection sharing between related registrars requires auDA’s prior written consent; and
• specifically prohibits connection sharing between unrelated registrars.

The most noteworthy change was the removal of the restriction on the resale of domain names. This policy was seen to be inconsistent and illogical by many industry players. The restrictions did not apply to domain names transferred but only on new registrations.

Some industry observers say that this decision effectively removes restrictions on the trading of domain names, and brings Australia into line with almost every other jurisdiction around the world.

Other changes included the provision of more information to consumer and registrants about domain name transfers and domain name drop services.

 

 

Tags: auDA, domain law, domain lawyer, domain name law, domain names, IT Law, IT Lawyer
Posted in Domain law and domaining, General | Comments Off

All states and territories of Australia (except for NSW) have agreed to introduce a new adult R18+ category of classification for computer games.

It is anticipated that current M15+ classified games, which are inappropriate for children will be reclassified to a new R18+ rating. Justice Minister Brendan O’Connor today said that the new classification was required to protect children from adult content, and that the existing refused classification system would be maintained to ensure that the most inappropriate content was not classified.

There has been significant debate on the introduction of a new adult category for computer games, with strong lobbying from the computer games industry. The debate has been ongoing for approximately 9 years.

It is expected that NSW will review and consider the agreement reached including amendments included in the draft proposal.

Tags: classification of computer games, computer games, computer law, IT Law, IT Lawyers, technology law, technology lawyers
Posted in General, IT Law, Uncategorized | Comments Off