Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Spammer faces prison in US

Can't find a detailed report at the moment, but the plea seems to
relate to fraud, money laundering, rather than breaches of the US spam
legislation

http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-world/accused-us-spam-scammer-pleads-guilty-20090623-cuhr.html

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Facebook landgrab - stake your claim

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130

No UDRP here.

No name-speculation - 'Once it's been selected, you won't be able to
change or transfer it'

IP owners can lodge a complaint here http://www.facebook.com/copyright.php?noncopyright_notice=1

General policy overview here http://www.facebook.com/copyright.php?

Google and the end of free online news

There have been a number of actions arising from Google's (and
other's) aggregation or other use of news providers contents, notably
the actions bought by Agence France Presse against Google, resulting
in a settlement and a licensing agreement between the parties in 2007.

Does the 'atomisation' of news mean the beginning of the end for
online news as we know it?

http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/biztech/atomic-answers-for-the-newspaper-of-the-future/2009/06/10/1244313187327.html

http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/06/charging-for-news-apis-recommendations/

Rupert Murdoch reportedly is quite enamored with the idea of not
giving away free news online anymore.

I read all my news online, and have noticed of late that the
advertising that supports this news delivery is becoming increasingly
invasive - don't know if this is down to a softening up of consumers,
in attempt to develop in us a wilingness to pay to have these
intrusions removed, or is just arising from attempts to develop
products that advertisers can be charged more for.

According to some research, users are becoming more accepting of over
content ads.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=91554

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Textbook Piracy

Was just forwarded this link from a colleague - (thanks Rick):

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=406080&sectioncode=26

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Blog, Podcast, Vodcast and Wiki Copyright Guide for Australia

http://www.copyright.org.au/news/news_items/publications-news/2009-publications-news/blog-podcast-vodcast-and-wiki-copyright-guide-for-australia


The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
and Queensland University Faculty of Law have published 'Blog,
Podcast, Vodcast and Wiki Copyright Guide for Australia'. The guide is
available in printed form and online at:

http://cci.edu.au/content/blog-podcast-vodcast-and-wiki-copyright-guide-australia

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Competition not substantially lessened by mobile merger

Some coverage here:

http://www.cch.com.au/au/News/ShowNews.aspx?ID=31371&Type=F&TopicIDNews=7&CategoryIDNews=0&u_i=113362

ACCC press release here:

http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/874495/fromItemId/142

While this assessment of competition in a market was in a context of a
merger, the general approach adopted by the ACCC in looking at
competition in a market applies well in other competition law scenarios.

Two key factors in this case seem to have been;

that 'ongoing investments are needed to meet the increased customer
demand for bandwidth-hungry data services, including mobile broadband.
In this respect, the ACCC considers that mobile voice and data
services will continue to converge in the future'
'whether increased concentration in the mobile sector would result in
reduced pricing pressure for retail mobile telecommunications
services. It considered evidence which suggested that, individually,
without this merger, the parties would not sustain vigorous price
competition in the longer term'.