"As the Ambassador here in Australia, it was especially troubling to find out that Australian fans were some of the worst offenders with among the highest piracy rates of Game of Thrones in the world," wrote Ambassador Bleich. "While some people here used to claim that they used pirate sites only because of a delay in getting new episodes here, the show is now available from legitimate sources within hours of its broadcast in the United States."

"I realize that fans of Game of Thrones who have used illegal file-sharing sites have reasons," continued Ambassador Bleich. "They will say it was much easier to access through these sites, or that they got frustrated by the delay in the first season, or their parents wouldn't pay for a subscription, or they will complain about some other issue with copyright laws." Continuing, he added, "But none of those reasons is an excuse—stealing is stealing."

This is swell and all, but doesn't he have more important things to worry about than Australians pirating Game of Thrones? He is a U.S. Ambassador. Like, a real one, nominated by the President of the United States. And he's talking about Game of Thrones on the internet. Your tax dollars at work!

As the IT News story suggests, the motivation for this obfuscation seems to be to encourage people to pay AU $250 (about US $257) for the DVD version instead. To save others from having to deal with the unhelpful Web site, Bowland generously stumped up the $250 himself, and made the full census database freely available as a torrent, as is perfectly legal under the CC-BY license. This shows perfectly why it is pointless trying to make it hard for people to download content that is CC licensed: once anyone has obtained a copy, they can then make it available in a more convenient form, neatly by-passing forlorn attempts to control something that has been set free forever.

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Until now, this problem of junk patents has been confined to China, and the companies that operate there. But last year China went even further with its subsidy system, offering to pay the fees for filing overseas, presumably to encourage Chinese companies to build up patent portfolios in foreign markets that can be used for defensive or even offensive purposes. We're now beginning to see the effects of this further distortion to the patent system, as Australian businesses struggle with the flood of new patents there. The Patentology blog explains:

A Chinese government scheme providing financial incentives for small and medium sized enterprises, public institutions or scientific research institutions appears to be resulting in abuse of the Australian patent system, and the 'dumping' of numerous low-quality innovation patents on the Australian Register.

These 'junk' patents are not being examined or certified. They therefore represent no more than potential enforceable rights. Even so, they generate costs to companies operating legitimately in Australia, which may need to obtain advice on the likely scope and validity of these patents in order to avoid possible infringement. In extreme cases, the existence of junk patents could result in an Australian business choosing not to take the risk of bringing a new product to market, even though the Chinese owner of a patent is not itself offering any products or services in this country.

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There is no doubt that naturally occurring DNA and RNA as they exist inside the cells of the human body cannot be the subject of a valid patent. However, the disputed claims do not cover naturally occurring DNA and RNA as they exist inside such cells. The disputed claims extend only to naturally occurring DNA and RNA which have been extracted from cells obtained from the human body and purged of other biological materials with which they were associated.

Ordinary and reasonable users of the Google search engine would have understood that the representations conveyed by the sponsored links were those of the advertisers, and would not have concluded that Google adopted or endorsed the representations. Accordingly, Google did not engage in conduct that was misleading or deceptive.

Safe harbors from secondary liability are essential for Internet platforms and businesses, and it is encouraging when other countries affirm these principles.

First, that once ASIO has taken control of an intermediary's computer it can do anything -- including poking around to see what's there. After all, if intermediaries are known to suspected terrorists, it's possible that they too might be terrorists.

The authorities are insisting that the warrant to break into somebody's computer would not authorize ASIO to obtain "intelligence material" from it. But you don't have to be clairvoyant to predict that at some point in the future, "exceptional" circumstances will be invoked to justify doing precisely that: once security services start down a slippery stop, they never seem to be able to stop.

Secondly, as the German experience shows, if a computer has been compromised by malware in this way, it's not just the government agencies that can take control: anyone who has obtained the malware and analyzed it will be able to look for ways to send their own instructions. That could leave innocent members of the public vulnerable to privacy breaches and economic losses that would be directly attributable to the spy agency's digital break-in.

Finally, this approach seems to overlook the fact that presumed terrorists are unlikely to be best pleased with any person that unwittingly sends them government malware. If they notice and really are ruthless terrorists, they might decide to take revenge on that person and his or her immediate circle of family and friends. Either the Australian spy agency hasn't really thought this through, or it is being extremely cavalier with the lives of the members of the public it is supposed to protect.

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It turns out that where a copy is made has consequences. Consider Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby...

The Great Gatsby already belongs to every Australian, in the sense that Australians have the right to read and copy it for free without anybody's permission. In the US, it belongs to the CBS Corporation, and if you want to read it on Kindle, it'll cost you $7.80.

If you copy Gatsby in Australia, no problem, it's cool, because Gatsby has entered the public domain. There's an excellent version available from Project Gutenberg Australia. If you do it in the US without permission from the CBS, it constitutes copyright infringement and is punishable with jail time and statutory damages up to $150,000 per incidence of infringement. So it really matters where the copying occurs.

Suppose you have a book sitting on a computer in Australia. The computer breaks the book into thousands of UDP packets and sends them into the Internet. Copying can't have occurred yet, because the packets aren't fixed in any form. For copyright purposes,

"Copies" are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term "copies" includes the material object, other than a phonorecord, in which the work is first fixed. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html

Now suppose the packets are reassembled on my hard drive in New Jersey. A copy of "The Great Gatsby" has materialized. Has a copyright been infringed? If I was in Australia and the source of the packets was in the US, would the answer be different?

So we have 8 different quantum copyright location scenarios; 6 have uncertainty as to the fact of infringement:

1. Person copying, copy source, and copy destination all in US. (US law controls!)
2. Person copying, copy source, and copy destination all in Australia. (Australia law controls!)
3. Person copying and copy source in US, copy destination in Australia.
4. Person copying and copy source in Australia, copy destination in US.
5. Person copying and copy destination in US, copy source in Australia.
6. Person copying and copy destination in Australia, copy source in US.
7. Person copying in US, copy source and copy destination in Australia.
8. Person copying in Australia, copy source and copy destination in US.

You could also be a cynic and say the only thing that matters is where the judge is sitting.

“Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge contains violence that is high in impact because of its frequency, high definition graphics, and emphasis on blood effects.”

Our preference would be for the creation of a collective licensing scheme for such works, along the lines of the Canadian system. There the Copyright Board has the right to issue a non-exclusive licence for the use of orphan works after reasonable efforts have been made to find the rights holder. Fees are then distributed among members after a certain number of years. Whatever model is chosen, it should be based on authorisation by a formal collective licensing body rather than taking the form of an exception. Also, importantly, there should be no assumption or requirement that moral rights have been waived.

We are seeing a lot of examples of Books being taken and read/shown on YouTube – they are therefore being shown in a public and not a private forum and so being shared without consent...

Where does one begin and the other end? Someone's "private" reading on YouTube for instance, although non-commercial, could undermine the legitimate marketing activity of the author or publisher – or certainly deminishes [sic] its impact.

APRA|AMCOS are concerned that references to the "constant debate" about whether copyright law acts as an incentive to production of new material are a distraction from what should be the focus of this Inquiry...

Copyright encourages creativity. Exceptions should only be enacted where there is an overriding social benefit that justifies a limitation on the property rights of the copyright owner. Anecdotes about how creators are not motivated by economic considerations have been used to suggest that creators are economically irrational and therefore should not participate in markets for their works. This is wrong. Copyright is a grant of property rights that enables authors to commercialise their products and maintain the integrity of their creative output.

Australia has a sophisticated licensing regime that permits a large number of new businesses to operate using copyright material. To the extent that not all such businesses survive, there is no evidence that this is related to anything other than the operation of normal competitive market forces.

[I]t is clear that copyright owners in Australia cannot act as potently to prevent online infringements as can copyright owners in the US, whether against the infringing customer or the infringing internet service provider.

If the aim is indeed to avoid or abolish barriers to innovation, then the introduction of "fair use" provisions would be a highly unusual path to take, a path that has been adopted by only four countries worldwide, but rejected by many. The introduction of a fair use doctrine would:

• create legal uncertainty and hence an atmosphere hostile to creative innovation and freedom of speech;
• violate Australia's obligations under international copyright treaties, in particular the "three step test" of the Berne Convention, WCT and TRIPS;
• require the introduction or importation of an entire body of legal precedents, adjudications and case law into Australian jurisdiction, the introduction and interpretation of which would carry with it unpredictable legal risks.

A "fair use" doctrine works (more or less) well in a US context because of its roots in more than 150 years of case law, and significant - 35 years - experience with interpreting its codified version. It is exactly this long history that alleviates (but not silences) concerns regarding legal certainty, freedom of speech and violation of international treaty, but many commentators remain concerned also with regard to the US context.

The uncertainty engendered by an open fair use exception is likely, as in the US, to give rise to considerable litigation that would defeat the purpose of adopting such an exception. It is likely that fair use would be raised as a defence to many allegations of copyright infringement, adding significantly to costs of legal advice and to the costs of litigation.

Currently only moral rights are an absolute rights. More rights must be made absolute, for example statutory rights. Some organizations demand these rights be taken away from the creator. Many organizations are bullish contractually with creators in regard to statutory rights. Accordingly a lot of money goes to international corporations instead of Australian creators.

Most people want to do the right thing and compensate the creators of copyright for the use of their work in other forms - give people the means to do this. Make it easy for them to pay the copyright owners, no matter how small the payment is.

I don't think the digital environment really has changed anything. What has changed over time is that copyright law here has been following that of the USA which serves some big media company interests but acts against artists and smaller media companies...

If the taxpayer paid for the creation of the content then it should be free to use by all. The system of the public pays and pays and pays ... does much to diminish respect for the law...

Brief quotes for purposes of comment, analysis, or parody should be allowed. The USA used to have something called "fair use doctrine", it is time to revive it. Also, the length of copyright, especially for music and recordings, and perhaps even films, needs to be shortened to something like 10 or 15 years. History should not be copyrighted...

Libraries and universities should be able to copy everything that they bought a copy of. They should not have to keep on paying and paying and paying when the media wears out...

Australia's R18+ classification for video games came into effect yesterday.

Until Jan. 1, 2013, Australia was one of the few developed countries in the world to not have an R18+ classification for video games. The highest rating for video games was MA15+, which meant that any game that the country's Classification Board found too mature for the MA15+ category was Refused Classification and effectively banned from sale.

The R18+ classification comes into effect after the Federal and State governments passed legislation last year to introduce the rating.

We've actually achieved a good balance where in effect MA15+ has become more restrictive and games that previously would have been in MA15+ are now going to be sitting in R18+. It's a win for the gamers who wanted to have the opportunity as adults to purchase these games, but it's also a win for parents because they can be more confident that games that are age-inappropriate will not be available to people under 18.

"The current guidelines have six criteria (themes, violence, sex, language, drug use, nudity), which are slowly becoming less and less important," Curry says. "There are other things that parents are worried about: they're worried about user-generated content, they're worried about privacy, they're worried about access to children chatting with adults, they're worried about gambling, they're worried about in-game purchases and geo-locating.

"So if we're going to look at classification, we need to ask, 'Why do we classify?' We classify to give people information about content, mainly for parents, the argument goes. Are we addressing their concerns? Probably not."

Guy Hingston, an Australian cancer surgeon, sued Google in Federal Court.

"When an individual computer user types 'Guy Hin ...', into the Google search engine as a search, the words 'Guy Hingston Bankrupt' appears," the complaint states. "When the link(s) is clicked on, the article(s) to which the user is directed has absolutely nothing to do with a bankruptcy associated with Dr. Hingston. Dr. Hingston is not bankrupt." (Parentheses and grammar as in complaint).

"Dr. Hingston is a surgeon practicing in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia," the complaint states. "Dr. Hingston's surgical practice focuses on breast cancer. Given his professional practice and position in his community, maintaining his good reputation is critical. Dr. Hingston has lost a number of patients and financiers who are refusing to associate and/or deal with Dr. Hingston as a consequence of the reference on Google to a bankruptcy."

Port Macquarie surgeon Guy Hingston bought the 19-year-old business 2½ years ago.

Dr Hingston said the main reason for CoastJet’s demise was the loss of a $2.8 million deposit on two new jets when American company Eclipse Aviation Corporation went into bankruptcy. The business was made more vulnerable, he said, by its heavy investment in a new partnership with Sweden’s Lund University School of Aviation.

He said CoastJet was preparing for its first intake of 24 students from Sweden at the end of March.

Dr Hingston said he and CoastJet’s staff were devastated. “We had two jets we were about to take delivery of, but with the manufacturer going bankrupt, we’ve lost everything,” he said.

The jets were destined to for CoastJet’s growing air ambulance service, Dr Hingston said, as well as for international airline pilot training and charters.

Hingston claims Google's automatic search result is defamatory, show him in a false light, and are "highly offensive to a reasonable person."

He claims Google was "was negligent in determining the truth of the information or whether a false impression would be created by its publication."

"This issue, and Google's continued failure to remedy this issue, despite numerous demands to do so, has caused significant harm and economic loss to Dr. Hingston in excess of the minimum jurisdiction of this court," the complaint states.

Hingston seeks at least $75,000 in damages for false light, and court costs.

A broken record

The conversation has failed to move on. The rights holders are still insisting ISP's should perform work on their behalf instead of addressing what we have always said is the root cause of the infringements – the limited accessibility to desirable content and the discriminatory and high cost of content in Australia. Infringements are a symptom – access is the problem.

Data retention proposals

iiNet won't support any scheme that forces ISPs to retain data in order to allow for the tracking of customer behaviour and the status of any alleged infringements against them.

Collecting and retaining additional customer data at this level is inappropriate, expensive and most importantly, not our responsibility.

It's not iiNet's job to play online police

We've been over this before. The High Court spoke loud and clear in their verdict when they ruled categorically that ISPs have no obligation to protect the rights of third parties, and we're not prepared to harass our customers when the industry has no clear obligation to do so.

It's time to find a new way

We believe that timely, affordable access to legitimate content is the best option for reducing unauthorised sharing.

Mr Assange said plans to register an Australian WikiLeaks party were ''significantly advanced''. He indicated he would be a Senate candidate, and added that "a number of very worthy people admired by the Australian public" have indicated their availability to stand for election on a party ticket.

He said a WikiLeaks party would advance WikiLeaks' objectives of promoting openness in government and politics, and it would combat growing intrusions on individual privacy.

If Mr Assange were elected but he was unable to return to Australia to take up his position, a nominee would occupy a Senate seat.

While both the Terms of Reference and the “Guiding Principles” make reference to Australia’s copyright law obligations with respect to copyright, it is important to recognize that these are not simply random or uncoordinated requirements with which Australia has agreed to comply. Australia is an active participant in an evolving international dialogue that articulates comprehensive norms and minimum standards for participation in an dynamic global marketplace in works of authorship and other copyright materials... In addition, the copyright and enforcement provisions of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) are of particular significance, not only because AUSFTA was, at the time of its adoption, a state-of-the-art pact between Australia and one of its most important trading partners, but also because it has contributed significantly to the template for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement negotiations, in which Australia is now actively engaged along with ten other trading partners around the Pacific Rim.

The enactment as part of Australian law of a new system based on the fair use doctrine would not bring with it this century and a half of judicial precedent that allows counsel, and the companies and individuals they advise, to rely upon the doctrine. Indeed, at its introduction, the new system would be unsupported by any binding precedent at all.

Since it is inconceivable that, as part of any new system of copyright exceptions in Australia, its courts would be directed to slavishly follow U.S. precedent, it is inescapable that there would be considerable uncertainty about the resolution of claims based on the new system in Australian courts. This is likely to create a deleterious level of unpredictability for copyright owners, copyright users, and the public. Whatever social benefits might fairly be attributed to the fair use doctrine under U.S. law would be unlikely to survive the passage across the Pacific to Australia. 

An additional uncertainty involves the impact of a change in Australian law on existing licensing agreements. Since the likely purpose, and even more likely a result, of borrowing from fair use to amend Australian law would be to expand, at least to some degree, the scope and applicability of exceptions to copyright protection, it is almost inevitable that some licensees would be compelled to re-examine whether they any longer needed to obtain a license for particular uses, or whether they could instead rely upon the expanded exception resulting from the new fair use provision. 

The images were posted after Mr Trkulja was shot in the back by an unknown gunman while eating with his elderly mother at a St Albans restaurant in June 2004. When Mr Trkulja's name was typed into Google's image search, photos had appeared of him alongside gangland figure Tony Mokbel.

However, the jury found Google's defence of the images broke down because it did not take any steps to remove the images from its searches once Mr Trkulja's lawyers contacted the company. The jury found the search engine was not liable for the search results themselves, as Mr Trkulja had incorrectly filled out a form for reporting offensive material by not including the URL of the content to which he objected.

My place of employment puts a massive emphasis on health and safety in the workplace, a policy I am 100% in support of. Safety is an incredibly important issue, and I applaud Toshiba for taking it into consideration, but I think they are a little misguided. I have personally never been injured or visibly endangered by working on any kind of computer system, much less a consumer notebook computer. I have also never heard of anybody else being injured by working on one. While I do understand the drive behind any concern for safety, the reality is that there appears to be no risk to the well-being of myself or any of my readers by providing repair manuals free to download, and so I do not understand Toshiba’s cause for concern here.

It is worth noting that Dell, HP and Lenovo provide service manuals for all of their laptop computers for download, free of charge or registration or membership of any kind, on their various support websites, which would indicate that none of these companies share Toshiba’s concern in this regard. I would not seriously take this to mean that Toshiba laptops are inherently more dangerous to service than laptops of other brands, thus causing them to discourage unqualified persons from doing so, but drawing on my own knowledge and experience I cannot see what risk they are attempting to mitigate here.

The other issue is whether this nominal climbdown was part of the plan all along. After all, it's a standard tactic to make totally outrageous initial demands so that anything less seems almost reasonable by comparison. Or perhaps this was Plan B: try to push through ISP filtering as Plan A, and if that fails, drop back to "limited" censorship.

Since it seems unlikely that those who fought against the general censorship plans will be able to muster much support for the idea of not blocking child abuse sites, the key question now is whether it will be possible to stop this approach turning into precisely the kind of ISP filtering that the Australian government claims to have abandoned.

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The group has today released a guide explaining how to do so using virtual private networks (VPNs) and alternative domain name systems (DNSs).

Choice also suggested setting up US iTunes accounts and using surrogate US addresses for forwarding packages from American stores. Choice has noted previously that Australians pay 52 per cent more for digital music downloads on iTunes compared to US users.

"As long as consumers are aware of the risks and do their due-diligence, there is no reason why they cannot pick up a bargain online with confidence," Levey said. "It also undermines the virtual walls these companies have built around the Australian market, which in the long term will help bring down prices to a global parity."

Part of the difficulty in contesting this view is that there is also very little research showing that exceptions are important, especially for driving economic growth. That makes a new report called "Excepting the Future" (pdf), commissioned by the Australian Digital Alliance, and pointed out to us by @MsLods, a particularly important contribution to the debate.

It starts by explaining why traditional copyright, devised in an analogue world, is no longer working:

digital content cannot be handled without copying it. Thus in the digital world, the distinction between handling and copying a work has completely broken down. All handling of digital content, however helpful to society or rights holders, may prima facie be a breach of copyright, attracting liability to rights holders if they have not permitted it.

Australia's current copyright system is ill-equipped to cope with key Internet activities like search and indexing, caching and hosting, since they all involve incidental copying. Theoretically, companies providing those services ought to seek licensing agreements with copyright holders to avoid infringement. The report calculates how much time and money would be required to do that in the case of search engines:

If the 170 search engines listed at www.philb.com/webse.htm transacted with all 3.8 million Australian domain name registrants [to obtain permission to allow their sites to be indexed], it would involve 645 million transactions. If each transaction took 9.5 hours [to allow for multiple communications and checks by the site regarding rights], then, at average weekly wages, the transaction costs would exceed $150 billion a year. And that is just for the Australian domain names.

Of course, these figures can, and probably will, be contested by those ideologically against copyright exceptions. But it's a start, and a welcome one in the context of the prevalent assumption that more copyright equates to more economic benefit.

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Canada passed a law in June that sets a new standard of permissiveness. It caps statutory damages if copyright is breached for non-commercial purposes. It expands the definition of “fair dealing” (“fair use” in America) and creates exemptions for educational purposes and for parody. Firms must pass warnings about infringement to the person who posted the material rather than immediately take the content down themselves. This contrasts with practice in America and Europe, where a web company alerted to infringing material must remove it. This encourages knee-jerk responses to complaints.

Britain too plans to introduce internet-friendly legislation this autumn after a review led by Ian Hargreaves, professor of digital economy at Cardiff University. As with Canada’s law, the recommended new code entails exemptions for non-commercial uses and user-generated content. Also mooted is a “digital copyright exchange” that would establish a marketplace for copyright. A musician could list her song and the licensing terms. A filmmaker wanting to use it would know quickly and simply what to do.

ABC1 controller Brendan Dahill said the decision to air the show online before television was motivated by a desire to reduce piracy, as well as fulfill the needs of drooling Whovians, who have waited almost a year for the new series.

" Piracy is wrong, as you are denying someone their rights and income for their intellectual property," Mr Dahill said. "The fact that it is happening is indicative that as broadcasters we are not meeting demand for a segment of the population.

"So as broadcasters we need to find convenient ways of making programs available via legal means to discourage the need for piracy."

But he also acknowledged that the ABC did not have to compete for ratings like other channels, allowing it to make broadcasting decisions that provide convenience and choice for its audience.

Question 3. What kinds of internet-related functions, for example caching and indexing, are being impeded by Australia’s copyright law?

Question 4. Should the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) be amended to provide for one or more exceptions for the use of copyright material for caching, indexing or other uses related to the functioning of the internet? If so, how should such exceptions be framed?

Question 5. Is Australian copyright law impeding the development or delivery of cloud computing services?

Question 6. Should exceptions in the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) be amended, or new exceptions created, to account for new cloud computing services, and if so, how?

Question 7. Should the copying of legally acquired copyright material, including broadcast material, for private and domestic use be more freely permitted?

Question 11. How are copyright materials being used for social, private or domestic purposes—for example, in social networking contexts?

Question 12. Should some online uses of copyright materials for social, private or domestic purposes be more freely permitted? Should the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) be amended to provide that such use of copyright materials does not constitute an infringement of copyright? If so, how should such an exception be framed?

Illustrating his point, Mr Williams speculated what today's artistic landscape would look like had Dickens and Shakespeare had to contend with digital piracy in the same epidemic proportions it now exists.

“Imagine the great works that are not being produced because the digital bandits are creating virtual pirate Globe Theatres and virtual literary magazines and making off with possibly 65 per cent of the profits,” Mr Williams said. Herald Sun Digital Pass

“If you think I’m exaggerating, think again, because the copyright bandits of the paper age of Shakespeare and Dickens had nothing on the copyright kleptomaniacs of the digital age.”