Lex Ferenda

Political Advertising, the BCI and Trócaire.
Michael D rocks on.

Not content with giving us the landmark Dow Jones v Gutnick case on online defamation (holding that publication takes place at the point of download) and the infamous and much-derided Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act (regulating Australian-hosted and foreign-provided Internet content under a semi-broadcast framework applying to ISPs etc), I see that the good government of Australia is back to give us more!

The Communications Legislation Amendment (Content Services) Bill 2006 has been leaked, and is causing a blogostorm down under. The draft that escaped, though, would provide for a serious level of liability (and requirement for prescrutiny) for online content providers.

Peter Black argues that the Bill is wrong because:

• it would require online content providers to monitor material before it is put online;
• the chilling effect is magnified when you consider the range of content that is potentially covered by the Bill;
• it treats online publications and print publications differently;
• it is unclear as to exactly who is covered by the regime, and to the degree that it applies to individual bloggers or website owners it is far too broad and onerous;
• it is going to apply to any content service with even a tenuous link to Australia; and
• the regime introduces a clearly unworkable system for live streamed content.

More (much more) here. Initial reports and ‘the leak’ from Crikey.

The Royal Mail (UK) has issued a series of stamps on the theme of “The World of Invention); the stamp pictured to the left honours Tim Berners-Lee, ‘inventor’ of the World Wide Web and is a lovely visual image of ‘the Web’.

The Court (Osgoode’s blog on the Supreme Court of Canada) has a detailed analysis of who got cited by the Supreme Court in 2006. Any volunteers to do an Irish one? It’s hardly too much work, given the seeming reluctance of most Irish judges to refer to secondary sources…

But it does throw up some interesting things, like this Naxos page of Irish (classical) composers and An Post’s special stamp.

Please take a look at this site: http://www.rogersandme.ca/tea_index.html

Prof. Susan Drummond is the key player here; she took on the might of Rogers and won. (Drummond was my comparative law prof at Osgoode and she is frighteningly intelligent and interesting; her legendary status is confirmed by this affair!) Rogers is a major Canadian media corporation, owning a series of radio stations, cable networks, a mobile phone service, the Blue Jays and the place formerly known as the Skydome, and more. This story concerns the mobile phone service.

Drummond’s phone account was misused by evil parties unknown, leading to a sky-high bill of over $12,000. She challenged it and Rogers did all the things that responsible companies shouldn’t do, culminating in a Small Claims Court hearing where Drummond (without any courtroom experience) faced off against a battery of overpaid Bay Street lawyers…and won! I’m thrilled to see that she is writing a book about the experience. I’ve left out lots of the story, but Rogersandme.ca as well as these articles (1 | 2) from the Toronto Star will tell you more.