LawFont.com

No, I’m not learning Finnish. That is the first line of this highly recommended article on Crikey.com.au – Therese Catanzariti, Australian expat in Finland, on Finnish music with a rather nice segue into Kazaa and private copying issues.

In other IP news and reading this morning:

• Warwick Rothnie on the ever-ongoing (or rather, never-going) iTunes Australia saga. Oh, and Warwick – government comments on where the fair use inquiry was at as at the end of August can be found here.
• The Economist on the digital home and the fundamental importance of open standards and interoperability in getting consumers to shift to new devices.

What else am I reading? (more…)

I hadn’t mentioned this, because it seemed to me so much less important than other current government reviews (on TPMs and copyright exceptions), but Attorney-General’s are running yet another simultaneous review: this one of the appropriate scope of the ISP safe harbour provisions brought in with the FTA Amendments last year. I wasn’t going to blog about this, because it’s pretty clear that AGs do not think it requries wide comment. But now Warwick Rothnie has commentary here, I’ll just note it in passing. (more…)

Some more links to peoples’ comments on Kazaa:

1. a couple of articles are available on Online Opinion: including this piece by Stephen Peach (ARIA), and this piece by Stephen Abood.
2. Michael Madison’s views (University of Pittsburgh) – interesting comments comparing US and Australian approaches to legal development.
3. Phil Tripp’s views are here (Tripp is a music business type person, and runs the website themusic.com.au, a news/commentary portal for music biz)
4. Brendan Scott’s views here (pdf)
5. Ed Felten’s comments on Kazaa are here.
6. Kathy Bowrey’s Comments (and comments on many other digital copyright and ‘piracy’ issues) here.
7. David Starkoff (recommended – don’t agree with him on everything but it’s an interesting view);
8. IPKat (just saying it seems a sensible result. Of course, that’s not the issue – the issue is the reasoning, which is problematic for reasons I’ve outlined and Matt Rimmer has also underlined in his comment on this and Geists’ blog, quoted in Starkoff).

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I’ve already put up fairly extensive (albeit initial) comments on Kazaa below. I’m not, of course, the only one to comment on the case: here are some more links:

• Michael Geist on how the Kazaa judgment shows that Australian and Canadian copyright law are moving apart;
• The Australian (news story)
• Copyfight (reporting the story)

It’s not much – but I’ve not yet found all that much apart from news stories.

Let me know if you find more commentary that I should link to here. Also, if there is anyone out there with some comments they want to post, feel free to put them in the comments box or, if that’s just too annoying, email them to me so I can post them direct to the blog.

So today, senior Australian Federal Court judge Justice Wilcox handed down his decision in the trial of the Kazaa case. In this case, over 30 applicants – in essence, copyright owners – sued the companies and individuals involved in providing Kazaa software. They alleged all kinds of things, but the essence of the case is this question:

By providing P2P file-sharing software (and through all their other activities), did the respondents (Sharman companies, Altnet companies, and assorted individual directors) authorise the undoubted copyright infringement done by the users of the software?

The result?

• The Sharman companies did authorise infringement. They did not engage in other forms of infringement/illegality alleged by the copyright owners (including direct infringement, conspiracy, misleading conduct under the TPA or unconscionable conduct);
• The directors/head honchos in Sharman are liable for authorising infringement too;
• Some of the other parties avoided liability.

The Australian are calling it ‘The Day the Music Died’ (a bit odd, given that the market has, of course, moved on from the Kazaa system). Below are some initial thoughts.

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So I’ve been giving some thought to this question of – apart from the exceptions specifically allowed by Article 17.4.7 of the AUSFTA, just what additional exceptions might be required? You may recall that it is only to this, limited question that the Terms of Reference of the LACA refer.

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Last week, a review was announced dealing with the drafting of Australia’s new anti-circumvention laws. For those who joined us late, basically, anti-circumvention laws are laws which seek to control how people interact with technologies used by copyright owners to control use and/or access to copyright-protected material. We have to draft new laws, to replace the current law in s 116A of the Copyright Act, because of the AUSFTA, Article 17.4.7. Article 17.4.7 is based on the US law, the DMCA.
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Here’s an interesting one: a judgment from Branson J regarding an order made by the Patent Office revoking an innovation patent.

What’s interesting is that the case looks pretty much like a pure business method patent.

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I’ve been reading the submissions made in the Attorney-General’s Inquiry into Copyright Exceptions (colloquially known as the Fair Use Inquiry, or the iPod Inquiry).

Some time ago I mused in blogprint whether the AG would make submissions available online. So far, this does not appear to have occurred. But quite a large number of submissions are available online, and I’ve been spending a bit of time trawling (and then reading). Here’s a list of what I’ve found so far (once again, let me know if I’ve missed anything):
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Yesterday, the Australian Federal Court refused to stay proceedings brought by Australian company QSPX against Ericsson. It had been alleged that the proceedings were infected by ‘champerty’.
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…which I thought was kind of interesting. And no, I’m not talking about the religious theme (warning, disturbingly twee photo of Alexander Downer behind that link).

Rather, I’m talking about the technology theme. And not just down in the technology section of the page. Up on the sidebar, quite high up, We have stories about the continuing sales of iPods, about the rise and rise of podcasting, and about digital TV – a story about how the BBC is launching an internet service allowing people to download its TV shows for later viewing, which will use a proprietary piece of software called the BBC Interactive Media Player (iMP), which apparently will use P2P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing technology.
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