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Posts Tagged ‘IT Law’

Cooper Mills guest author, Senior Brand Strategist, James Grant Hay examines the implications of the device on the Australian media industry and publishing sector

Many believe the iPad and iBookstore will do for the publishing industry what the iPod and iTunes store did to the music industry in 2001. Back then, iTunes accelerated the decline of their business model and tore apart the original bundles of records subsequently sold to consumers at unit price. Will our local media industry and publishing sector share the same fate or embrace the iPad as a revolution of the digital age?

So far, the signs have been encouraging. The Australian Publishers Association report that Australian publishers have been in extensive talks with Apple over the last few months in an effort to seal licensing deals for Australia. Although the iBookstore is not expected to be available to Australian users on launch, that date is likely to change quickly as the Australian Publishers Association has confirmed licensing deals are well on the way to being completed this year.

In the US, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has announced eBook deals with five of the world’s leading publishers – Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan.

These talks have been hastened with the arrival of other eReader devices. Amazon (with its Kindle) and Barnes & Noble (with the Nook) have the potential to diminish the importance of publishing companies altogether through the use of self-publishing platforms by authors.

To avoid this, Australian publishers have in the last 12 months been paying a lot of attention to digitisation and preparing for electronic works to ensure plenty of titles are available to Australian consumers. But until a sufficient number of these titles are in place, it will be imperative for the Federal Government to lift the ban on book sellers from buying cheap foreign imports from overseas sellers. Currently, parallel importation rules prevent stores from sourcing books at lower costs from overseas markets. Retailers, such as Borders will need to respond to the growing consumer demand.

REDgroup, owners of booksellers Angus & Robertson and Borders – are already planning 1 million titles that can be downloaded across multiple technologies in Australia.

The challenge for publishers therefore will be the speed with which they can port their back catalogues to digital. Porting books to the digital world is difficult because entire back catalogues must be digitised in different formats and publishers should seek professional legal advice on redrafting and in some cases renegotiating copyright deals with authors and estates for the purposes of digital distribution.

Only two leading publishers have converted Australian print books to digital form in significant numbers – Allen & Unwin has a library of 1500 titles, while Pan Macmillan Australia has 500 titles ready to go digital.

Newspapers and magazines are also planning to sell content on the device through digital apps, but The New York Times is the only publisher to have revealed its offering so far.

News Ltd spokesman Greg Baxter refused to comment to Australian media on its iPad plans last week, but Brian McCarthy, chief executive of Fairfax Media, has been bullish about the prospects for the new device.

The iPad will allow newspapers and magazines to be easily read electronically in a format that many readers will enjoy while also linking pages directly with breaking news and videos on their digital mastheads, such as The Age. Fairfax is reportedly developing apps that could be used on both the iPad and iPhone.

With sales of Amazon Kindle devices outstripping actual print book sales in the US over Christmas, the Apple iPad is sure to be a hot seller amongst Australian consumers.

Among the questions to be contemplated by publishers over the coming months will be the meaning of their brand in a tablet world – to avoid the fate of the music labels, publishers such as Pacific Magazines will need to determine how to maintain individual brands in their overall stable, rather than individual stories; in other industries, companies will need to decide if the most potent expression of their brand is bundling existing free web products with a premium pay-wall subscription, or in the case of Sports Illustrated below, an entirely new multimedia product.

Watch and embed the Sports Illustrated player

James Grant Hay is CEO of Inshot, Branded Content Specialists

Tags: brand strategy, copyright infringement, copyright law, ipad, IT Law, IT Lawyer, IT Lawyers, James Grant Hay
Posted in General, IT Law | No Comments »

To all of our clients and visitors to our blog, we wish you seasons greetings and a safe and prosperous new year.

Thank you for your support in 2009, and we look forward to working with you in 2010.

Our office will be re-open on 11 January 2010.

Stay tuned for our new IT Law, Telecommunications Law, Domain Law and general Commercial Law articles / posts.

Tags: Commercial Law, domain law, domain name law, IT Law, telecommunications law
Posted in Domain law and domaining, General, ISP and Telco Law, IT Law, Podcasts, Privacy, Spam, Trade Practices Law, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Telecommunications Company TeliaSonera has said it is recruiting customers to pilot its new 4G network in Oslo and Stockholm which will be launched in early 2010.

The 4G network is configured around the Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, with data speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, which is significantly faster than existing 3G networks. The 4G roll out has be designed to easily deploy by overlaying existing 3G infrastructure.

Customers will initially connect to the network via a Samsung B3710 USB dongle and a laptop, as no handsets can yet use the 4G network. The Samsung B3710 lets users download at max speeds of 100Mbps. The B3710 is set to be available in the first half of 2010, in time for the first live customer tests. Handsets that can use LTE are expected in mid-late 2010.

Ericsson has constructed the network in Stockholm, Sweden while in Oslo, Norway Chinese firm Huawei is behind the operations. Both networks cover the central regions in both cities.

Most operators have committed to upgrading to the faster system, and TeliaSonera  expects that the advance is speed will drive the use of many novel applications such as gaming and viewing of video on laptops.

Tags: 3G network, 4G network, data network, isp law, ISP Lawyers, IT Law, IT Lawyers, Telco Law, telecommunications law, Telecommunications Lawyers
Posted in General, ISP and Telco Law | No Comments »

We are working on bringing you some more new and interesting IT Law and Domain Law posts and articles shortly.

To assist us to cater to our audience, if you have any specific requests for IT Law, Domain Law or Telecommunications Law articles or information, feel free to drop us a note at info@coopermills.com.au

Tags: domain law, domain lawyer, IT Law, IT Lawyer, telecommunications law, Telecommunications Lawyers
Posted in Domain law and domaining, General, ISP and Telco Law, IT Law, Podcasts, Privacy, Spam, Trade Practices Law, Uncategorized | No Comments »

In a report published by The Australian, it has been revealed that journalists have been using microblogging tool Twitter to provide live updates on the iiNet Case being heard before the Federal Court in Sydney.

According to The Australian, Justice Cowdrey said:

On the basis that Twittering does not distract or interfere with the conduct of my court, I personally have no objection to its use. I believe that the public has a legitimate right to be fully informed of proceedings, particularly proceedings such as (the iiNet case) which have attracted considerable public interest. Twittering can serve to inform the public in a more speedy and comprehensive manner than may be possible through traditional media coverage.

Ordinarily any form of recording device such as a video camera or tape recorder is prohibited in a Court, however, there are times where Judges will all the use of such devices.

This appears to be the first time where a Court has specifically addressed the issue of Twitter use within a Court room.

According to IT Lawyer and Cooper Mills Lawyers Principal, Erhan Karabardak:

This will not come as a surprise to many lawyers, who use laptops with wireless internet to send emails from within the Court during a proceeding.

Tags: Federal Court of Australia, IT Law, IT Lawyer, IT Lawyers, Twitter
Posted in General, IT Law | No Comments »

Google today announced that it had been working on a secret project to build the next generation of Google’s dominant search engine.

The operating development search engine is accessible at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/.

According to Google:

It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results.

Google’s aim at making the developmental search engine available is to gather feedback on the impact the new architecture may have on individual websites.

We have found that the new development search engine ranks our site lower than the existing search engine. The question that naturally arises is whether the next generation of Google’s search engine will rewrite the rules on search engine optimisation – only time will tell….

Tags: IT Law, IT Lawyers, SEO
Posted in Domain law and domaining, General, IT Law, Uncategorized | No Comments »

According to reports on Broadband News website Whirlpool, the iPrimus data centre at 55 King Street Melbourne was crippled over the weekend due to a now all to common data centre blackout.

Whirlpool says:

The power dropped around 3:45PM and caused Victorian and Tasmanian customers from ISPs such as Exetel, iiNet, Internode and Netspace to lose their broadband connections.

Internode was able to route around the problem by 4:15PM, while the other ISPs were back online around 5:30PM.

In a notice to customers, Primus blamed “high tension fuses in the CitiPower substation feeding our Data centre”, which it said was the same issue affecting power in February.

Backup diesel generators “failed to start due to a synchronization processor failure.” According to the notice, works to upgrade the substation that failed were already planned for next weekend.

With a recent outage in February 2009, one would have thought that Primus would have been more proactive in avoiding a repeat of the previous disaster.

The outage provides a timely reminder for companies with critical data centre need to ask their data centre provider simple questions such as:

1. what redundant power arrangements are in place ?

2. how often is the power redundancy system tested ?

3. is there a meaningful SLA to give some level of assurance, and financial compensation if the worst does happen ?

These are some simple yet important questions to ask, if your data centre provider cannot answer these questions satisfactorily, then you should consider whether they are the best provider for your mission critical hosting requirements.

Tags: data centre, ISP Lawyers, IT Law, IT Lawyers, telecommunications, Telecommunications Lawyers
Posted in ISP and Telco Law, IT Law | No Comments »

A United States man has been charged in what is thought to be one of the world’s first cases where a suspected domain name thief has been prosecuted.

The accused allegedly hacked into an online account belonging to one of the owners of the popular P2P.com domain name. He then purportedly moved ownership of the domain to himself and then resold it via eBay.

The man was charged with felony charges of unlawful taking or deception, identify theft and computer theft. Each of the three counts carries a maximum sentence in the United States of 10 years in prison.

A civil suit by one of the legitimate owners of P2P.com is also pending. The owner claims he has spent 30 months and US$500,000 trying to reclaim the domain name. The civil suit is filed against the alleged thief, the group that runs the on-line account system that was hacked and the person who bought the domain name, Mar Madsen. Mr Madsen did not know P2P was stolen when he bought it for US$111,000. He still retains the domain name today.

The case has further raised concerns about specific laws protecting domain name owners and the industry’s failure to provide domain name owners with deeds.

Tags: domain law, domain lawyer, domain name law, domain name lawyer, IT Law
Posted in Domain law and domaining | No Comments »

We had previously written about the conviction of The Pirate Bay operators and the controversy over the trial and the website, now the new owners of The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s largest file sharing websites, is planning to legalise the site.

A spokesperson for the new owners – Global Gaming Factory X – Chief Executive Hans Pandeya, said the site will not become a pure pay site. “For the great majority it will be free of charge, for a minority it will actually make them money, and for a small portion it will cost them,” he said.

Mr Pandeya claims the site will fully address the legal issues that troubled it before because income will be distributed between file sharers, copyright holders and others involved.

In April 2009, four men connected to The Pirate Bay site were sentenced to one-year prison terms and ordered to pay fines totalling US$3.8 million for violations of copyright law. These judgements again highlight the controvery over peer to peer file sharing. Closer to home iiNet is still battling the copyright owners over alleged peer to peer copyright infringement by users of its network.

Tags: file sharing, internet law, IT Law, IT Lawyers
Posted in IT 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 »