Posts Tagged ‘technology law’
Google has given undertakings to the Australian Privacy Commissioner Karen Curtis, after the completion of her investigations into Google’s inadvertent collection of unsecured Wi-Fi data from private residencies around Australia, whilst collecting images for Google Street View.
Google has given the following undertakings:
- That it will publish an apology to Australians for its collection of unsecured WiFi data in its official Australian Blog
- That it will provide a privacy impact assessment (PIA) on any new Street View data collection activities its undertakes in Australia
- This is will provide a copy of these PIAs to the Commoners Office
- That it will regularly consult with the Privacy Commissioner about personal data collection activities arising from significant product launches in Australia.
The undertakings come after the Commissioner was satisfied that the information collected by Google breached the Privacy Act 1988.
The Commissioner was unable to impose a sanction on Google due to having already initiated an investigation. This has prompted the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) to make an inquiry into Australian privacy laws. This may prompt the government into taking action to strengthen the enforcement regime.
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
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.
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
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.
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
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.
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
In what appears to be a systematic global piracy crack down, and hot on the heels of the iiNet case, copyright owners including Warner Bros, MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI are seeking approximately $18million in damages from file sharing website The Pirate Bay in a Swedish Court.
In the claim it is alleged that the website was used in the infringement of copyright, by allowing pirated movies, music, software and computer games to be downloaded.
In their defence, The Pirate Bay (yes a very unfortunate name in this type of matter) claims that no copyrighted material is stored on its servers, and no exchange of files actually takes place on them, that they are not responsible for any copyright infringement.
In addition to the potential damages claim, the four men who operate the site could face up to 2 years imprisonment.
The success of cases like this will do very little to stop global intellectual property infringement, but what is may do is reduce the number of people prepared to take the risk of deriving a commercial benefit from operating these types of file sharing sites.
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
The Australian Newspaper is reporting that Australia’s National Australia Bank (NAB) could lose millions of dollars from the Satyam corporate fraud scandal.
It is reported that as part of its international off shoring program designed to save costs, NAB made significant investments into training, transition costs and redundancy.
The Satyam corporate fraud has rocked India and with admissions of exaggerating assets and profitability on the company’s balance sheets.
It may well turn out that NAB’s disastrous foray into off shoring, will actually cost it more than if they had of kept critical IT support and staff in Australia. Qantas is also reported to have been exposed to Satyam via its USD$135 million in contracts.
This case serves as a good example of what can go wrong with off shoring, and what off shoring legal agreements need to accommodate, in this rapidly developing area of IT Law.
Some things that can be included in off shoring agreements to assist customers are:
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Performance guarantees – such as security deposits, to assist the transition of services to another provider with reduced disruption; and
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Local placement of critical infrastructure in Australia, with some maintenance being provided off shore.
Legal agreements may not provide absolute protection from corporate fraud or failure, but they can go some way to minimising the distruption and loss to business.
Friday, December 19th, 2008
Welcome to our new blog.
Through the use of our blog, Cooper Mills hope to bring you new, tips, and other useful information in a our areas of expertise include IT Law, Telecommunications Law and Domain Law.
We encourage our audience to give us feedback and let us know what they would like to learn more about.
In the meantime we hope you find our new website and blog helpful.
