ContestedFooty.com, an AFL commentary blog run by some university students in Melbourne, has received a Cease & Desist letter from the AFL. The AFL allege that the blog infringes their intellectual property rights - both the trademarks and the copyright in the AFL and team logos and names.
Dr Greg Adamson, Chair, SSIT Australia advises that the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT) is running a forum next week about online gaming and censorship that promises to be very interesting.
WOW, they’re uncontrollable: Online games, censorship and the crisis of control
6:00-7:30pm, Wednesday 13 May 2009
Dr. Jeffrey E. Brand, Associate Dean and Head of School, Communication and Media, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Bond University
Melbourne University, cnr Grattan & Barry Sts, Carlton. No charge, all welcome.
Brochure at: http://ssit.ieeevic.org/upcoming.php
A few days ago, a Swedish court found the four figures behind thepiratebay.org guilty of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced them to pay approximately $5M AUD in damages and serve a one year prison sentence. The severity of the punishment is surprising, particularly as the operators of the Pirate Bay played a fairly loose role in any copyright infringements — merely providing an index of torrents already posted and tracked elsewhere.
But whatever we may think of The Pirate Bay, this case raises another example of a very troubling period for copyright law. Pirate Bay and other public trackers are clearly responding to consumer demand, and tougher sanctions for copyright infringement are unlikely to change that. Over the past ten years, we have seen that these actions have rarely, if ever, been successful in curbing the volume of filesharing. New filesharing technologies developed after Napster, Aimster, Grokster, Kazaa, and the creators of other networks were successfully sued. This trend is likely to continue, because the underlying demand is not being addressed.
The goals of copyright are noble. We all want to ensure that professional creators have the ability to be paid for their work. But the current approach of imposing harsh punishments on users and intermediaries is not helping with that goal.
Colin Jacobs, Vice Chair of EFA, was a guest on SBS Insight on Tuesday night, discussing internet filtering with Senator Stephen Conroy, Mark Newton, Lyle Shelton and others. If you missed the show, you can stream it or view the transcript from the SBS website.
Colin has an interesting wrap-up of Senator Conroy’s long-awaited engagement with the substantive issues on the New Matilda blog, PollieGraph:
The most significant revelation was that the list will be focused “almost” entirely on RC material. The represents a significant backing away from the ACMA blacklist, which the Minister took great pains to remind everyone was a nine-year-old Liberal Party policy and not an invention of his government. Despite assertions to the contrary, previous indications have been that the ACMA blacklist would form the core of the new mandatory filtering regime, so this represents something of a policy shift.
Any narrowing of the list’s scope is to be welcomed, but unfortunately Conroy refused to be drawn out precisely what would be blacklisted - a few qualifiers were left in to allow future wiggle room. There were many references to bestiality or incest web sites, which while they can conjure up disturbing images in the listener’s mind, especially when juxtaposed with kids. However, the problems with the filter policy occur around the edges where the content is more controversial, and here there was less detail forthcoming.
Mr Michael Atkinson, the South Australian attorney general, still misunderstands a key issue affecting Australians and it’s an issue that those he represents are demanding that he consider.
Australian gaming website Kotaku has published a response to a letter that a member wrote to Mr Atkinson; unfortunately for law-abiding, adult Australian gamers the news is all bad. Not only is Mr Atkinson unrelenting in his position to cement Australia’s status as the only developed nation not to have an adult categorisation for computer games, he is still displaying woeful deliberate ignorance of the key issues involved.
Before the Government’s mandatory filter is even in place, the potential chilling effect of even the current net censorship regime was felt today when Whirlpool’s hosting provider received a take-down notice from ACMA because of a page that links to a another site on the current ACMA blacklist. Given the steep penalties, up to $11,000 per day, it’s hard to fault the host and Whirlpool for taking this seriously and complying. (more…)
Despite detailed and concerted lobbying and campaigning to attempt to secure logical and cohesive answers to our questions about what an Australian censorship regime might look like, we are still no closer than we were in November 2008 to knowing what might happen if you click something that the Australian Communications and Media Authority deem you should not. EFA has taken the initiative to explore the issue itself, in a light hearted fashion, and developed at the same time a way you can let your friends know what may be in store for all Australians.
Have a look at http://nanourl.net/f5b21 to see what EFA’s website may look like at the completion of “successful” trials, you can show anything you like to your friends.
The Labor Party went to the last election with a comprehensive plan for “cyber-safety” - that is, making the Internet safer for children. The centrepiece of this policy, and its most expensive component, is the controversial national ISP Internet filtering scheme, sometimes referred to as the “Conroy Curtain”. Plans for this scheme are advancing, and a live ISP trial was supposed to begin before Christmas. But does the scheme really hold water as a cyber-safety measure, or does it have a different motivation?
On Saturday 20 September 2008, EFA Board Member Colin Jacobs and EFA Chair Dale Clapperton will speak at the Software Freedom Day event to be held in Melbourne, Australia. Starting at 11am, Colin will speak on the Rudd government’s current ‘clean feed’ Internet censorship agenda, and present a comparative analysis of ‘clean feed’ against other Internet censorship regimes around the world.
Dale will discuss legal and policy issues of importance to open software and open software developers, including copyright, contract, and competition law, including recent cases in Australia and the United States of America, and the development of the secretive and worrying ‘Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement’ (ACTA).
Colin & Dale’s presentations will be interactive and participatory, and time permitting, will be followed by a Q&A session. They look forward to the opportunity to meet EFA members and supporters at this significant event.
A substantial amount of media and public attention on the issue of workplace surveillance has been created by an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday 14 April 2008. That article quoted the Commonwealth Attorney-General Mr Robert McClelland as saying that Labor intended to give extra powers to intercept telecommunications to private-sector companies dealing with critical infrastructure, and that these new powers were necessary to avoid the threat of cyber terrorism. These powers are currently only held by a select few intelligence, police, and anti-corruption organisations specifically named in legislation.
Under the law as it currently stands, it is illegal to intercept a communication passing over a telecommunications system unless the person making the communication knows it is being intercepted. This is why, for example, when you telephone a call-centre you will usually hear a recorded message that your call may be monitored for various purposes. Similarly, if a company’s Internet usage policy notifies employees that their Internet usage may be monitored, then that monitoring would not be an illegal interception under Commonwealth law, although State and Territory laws dealing specifically with the issue of workplace surveillance may impose additional requirements in some states.
Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) is appalled by Friday’s announcement that the federal Coalition government will force all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Australia to provide ‘filtered’ Internet connections upon request. This ‘initiative’ is nothing more than a tiresome repeat of previously announced and abandoned policies, and comes before the government has even conducted their recently-announced feasibility study of ISP-level filtering.
The government has also failed to implement their National Filter Scheme, first announced in June 2006 and aimed at providing free PC-based filters, and they have now announced it once again. The Minister has no credibility in this matter.
‘Internet censorship to “save the children” has always been a political “free kick” for both sides of politics,’ said EFA Chair Dale Clapperton. ‘It seems that in the lead-up to the federal election, the Howard government wants to be seen to be “doing something” to make the Internet safe for children.’