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Fascinating exchange in the US Supreme Court on statistics, deterrence, and the death penalty. Quote of the day: ‘can a constitutional question of this magnitude turn on econometric rabbit-holes’?

Periodically there’s a debate about whether law profs should have the right to ‘turn off’ internet access in the classroom. I for one can certainly say that as a lecturer, I’m pretty confident I can tell broadly, which of the many students with laptops are tuned out, and at times, I do wish I could just switch it off.

Here’s the best argument I’ve seen though for turning off the wireless - basically, it makes it much less fun, and much more demoralising for the lecturer if students sit and surf. And that means everyone suffers, because a demoralised lecturer is - well, not fun.

Of course the answer is ‘be more interesting!!! and they’ll listen’. Yes, to a degree, but I’m not entirely convinced. After all, can you really fascinate all of the students all of the time? I’ve sat in the most amazing lectures and still seen people checking the old email/facebook/youtube.

Peter Martin has a good summary this morning of the 2020 Summit questions (available here).

Issues to watch:

1. The governance group, which is discussing the need for a bill of rights; the way in which interactive technology can change the nature of political engagement, the role of lobbyists, think tanks and the media as well as the role and limits of freedom of information laws.
2. The productivity group, which is discussing what Australia can do to foster innovation, encourage the transfer of ideas across businesses, connect scientists to others in the economy, and what differences the ‘developing digital economy’ (whatever that is) could make ‘right across the education lifecycle’ (whatever that is).

Further to my previous posts, the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Bill 2007 was passed by the Senate on 20 September 2007. It went through without a definition of ‘telecommunications data’. The Democrats and the Greens expressed their concerns about the bill generally and its impact on privacy and the vagueness of the term ‘telecommunications data’ but their suggested amendments were negatived. See Natasha Stott-Despoja’s speech and Kerry Nettle’s speech for details.

The Communications Legislation Amendment (Crime or Terrorism Related Internet Content) Bill 2007 was introduced into the Senate at the beginning of this week. Senator Eric Abetz had this to say in his Second Reading Speech:

“The Government’s recent review of the E-Security National Agenda found that the e-security landscape has changed significantly with the emergence of sophisticated, targeted and malicious online attacks. Many of these attacks are associated with websites used by criminals to perpetrate fraud or circulate malicious software.

This Bill proposes to amend the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to expand the black list of Internet addresses (URLs) that is currently maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to include crime and terrorism related websites hosted domestically and overseas. Black listing cyber crime and terrorism websites is part of the Government’s comprehensive NetAlert – Protecting Australian Families Online initiative.”

The commercial FTA networks, through Free TV, are pushing for a change to the Commercial Television Code of Practice in advance of the imminent Federal election. The changes, which are the subject of public consultation, would allow the commercial FTAs to sell an additional minute of political advertising…

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Here’s the latest from Cth AG Phillip Ruddock in respect of the agreement he was trying to broker with the States on the “Material Advocating Terrorism” terrorism changes to the classification regulatory regime. Only NSW and SA agreed to support the changes. As the AG makes clear in the press release set out below, he intends to press ahead with Classification Amendment (Terrorist Material) Bill 2007 despite the lack of agreement at the meeting of the Standing Committee of Attorneys General in Hobart today.
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The ‘war on terror’ has created the conditions for a new era of content regulation in the form of censorship of film and literature, broadcasting content standards and restrictions on the media in respect of national security matters. This week David Marr commented on the Attorney-General’s recent daubing (sorry I am sticking with the “unifinished canvas” metaphor) - the Material that Advocates Terrorism Discussion Paper released in May 2007 and the upcoming meeting with the States in Hobart at the end of this week. The Discussion Paper attracted many submissions from a diverse group of interested parties. See the submissions. The comments of Maureen Shelley from the Office of Film and Literature Classification Board echo the sentiments in many of the submissions made to the Attorney-General on the terrorism materials paper - that the new regulatory framework is “a significant departure from current practice”. The thrust of many of the submissions and the gist of Marr’s piece is that the changes sought by the A-G will have far reaching, potentially absurd, possibly discriminatory, unintended negative effects on the creation of and access to a broad range of films and literature which “might” fall within the new classification category. Led Zepplin comes to mind “oohh…it makes me wonder”…

In my last post I referred to the Electronic Frontiers Foundation rather than Electronic Frontiers Australia, Inc (EFA). Electronic Frontiers Australia made the submission to the Senate Committee reviewing the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Bill 2007. My sincere apologies for any confusion caused - it was a typo on my part.

Following on from Kim’s last post, if there was ever a time when national security and anti- terrorism legislation wasn’t a tech-law issue, that time has passed. The Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Bill 2007 is currently before a Senate Committee. There are 26 submissions . The industry will have to get its head around the new framework. National Security is now a tech law issue and I think it is going to get complicated.
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Those of you who have tried to post any comments recently may have noticed that I have added an anti-spam “captcha” feature (type into a box the words you see generated onscreen). It’s a shame it’s necessary, but the spammers are getting more sophisticated.

The good part is that the captcha is part of a program currently being used to digitise books from the Internet Archive and make them freely available. Kudos to the authors from Carnegie Mellon University.

To continue the renewal, we have also updated the site’s look and feel. Not a huge change, but I think it’s cleaner and quicker-loading, and I hope you agree.

There is also a “mobile” skin, for those accessing LawFont through a hand-held device, which reduces the amount of data loaded and formats better for a small screen — no need to select it, as it should kick in automatically(”Wordpress mobile” from AlexKing.org).

Although our frequency of posts has dropped off since the second half of 2006, things have been going on behind the scenes at LawFont.

Kim has recovered from her 2006 overload, and will be blogging primarily on Australian intellectual property issues. Sarah hopes to be back soon, and will be blogging again on a range of issues, mostly on developments outside of Australia.

Finally, we’d like to formally welcome our new blogger. Susanne is particularly interested in the regulation of communications and media content, counter-terrorism and national security regulation, and administrative law. We are very happy to have her with us!

Not before time, the UK has opened up the UK Statute Law Database (SLD) - the official revised edition of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom - for free, public use. This will be really useful: I’ve always hated trying to find UK legislation, and thought they really needed a proper AustLII. Hat tip: Boing Boing.

about fair use, space shifting/personal copying, the DMCA - can be found on Bill Patry’s blog here.