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Posts Tagged ‘IT Lawyers’

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 »

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 »

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 »

Google has announced the beta launch of  ‘interest based’ advertising on their partner sites and YouTube. Will this lead to better advertising ?

Interest based advertising is where advertising content is targeted at internet users based on current and past web surfing history. Typically this is achieved by using ‘cookies’, which are small files stored on the user’s computer, which contain browsing history data. This method of serving advertisements differs to Google’s traditional ‘keyword’ or ‘content’ based advertising, which relies on the keywords or website content to target advertising.

Google believes that:

“…..there is real value to seeing ads about the things that interest you. If, for example, you love adventure travel and therefore visit adventure travel sites, Google could show you more ads for activities like hiking trips to Patagonia or African safaris.“

Criticisms of online advertising sometimes arise from poor quality leads due to the deficiencies in reaching an advertisers target audience. Google’s new interest based advertising may lead to higher quality leads for advertisers and more relevant advertisements for web surfers.

No sooner than Google’s announcement, many people have come out criticising interest based advertising as a threat to privacy, as it relies on tracking the websites an end user visits.

Google claims that it has taken 3 important measures to ensure user choice and privacy, these are:

• Transparency – Users will able to click on advertisement labels to obtain more information about how advertisements are service and what information is used. Google also proposes to expand this in the coming year;
• Choice – Users will have access to the  Ads Preferences Manager tool which lets them “view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.“
• Control – Users will be able to opt out of interest based advertising. Google have take some significant steps to ensure this by designing a plug in for web browsers to maintain the users choice.

We think Google’s interest based advertising may prove to give advertisers more qualified and better quality leads, while users will now see advertisements which are more relevant to their interests – resulting in a better user experience. Only time will tell, but at least Google has thought through the choice and privacy issues, and it appears to us as IT Lawyers, that they have implemented a sensible and effective process to ensure this.

Tags: Google Advertising, interest based advertising, IT Law, IT Lawyers, online advertising, Privacy, Privacy Law, Privacy Lawyers, technology law
Posted in Domain law and domaining, IT Law, Privacy | No Comments »

According to the Internet Commerce Association (ICA), the US State of New York has incorporated computers within the definition of gambling devices, in a pre-emptive move to avoid legal uncertainty over the definition of ‘gambling device’ in its own gaming laws.

According to the ICA:

The bill, A. 3079, would add a computer used for illegal gambling to the Penal Law’s definition of a “gambling device”.

These changes have been prompted by the long running 141 Domain Names case in Kentucky, that we have eagerly been following. As we reported in our last post on this case, the State of Kentucky had ‘appealed the appeal’ after losing.

Cooper Mills IT Lawyers are in close contact with the ICA who was fortunate enough to be heard by the Court, in the interests of its members, even though it was not directly a party to the proceeding. We hope to bring you more on this case as soon as there are further developments.

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