Around the World: Update April 2011

This update provides an overview of the latest issues of interest to ICT professionals both in Australia and Internationally. We hope that you will find this information useful.

Please feel free to forward this update to any of your colleagues or friends who may be interested.

To contact a member of our Information Communications & Technology team, please click here

Kind regards

Brendan Coady | Partner
Direct 61 2 9225 6258
brendan.coady@maddocks.com.au

Robert Gregory | Partner
Direct 61 3 9240 0770
robert.gregory@maddocks.com.au

Domain names in conjunction with

Domain Names

Australia's .au Internet domain celebrates 2 million registrations
Australia's Internet community celebrated a significant milestone last night with the registration of the two millionth .au domain name. Article 1 Article 2

Domain Name Registration Tips
Some people believe that domain names are entirely the realm of technically-natured people – but that is not totally correct. Granted that delegating website building and mail setup to a tech is understandable, domain name registration and domain name hosting are two separate areas of having an Internet presence. Full Story

Scams: It’s Personal – Fighting fraud on the home front
auDA is proud to once again partner with the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce (ACFT) for National Consumer Fraud Week. This important initiative raises business and consumer awareness of the economic, personal and social threats posed by fraud. Full Story

AusRegistry International wins lucrative Middle East Internet contracts [news release]
Navigating the Internet for people from non-English speaking backgrounds has just become a lot easier thanks to the ingenuity and expertise of Melbourne based domain name registry services provider AusRegistry International, who has just signed its third Middle Eastern contract to provide software to drive critical Internet infrastructure in the region. Full Story

ICANN Leaders Say Internet Community Will Support June Launch of New Generic Top Level Domains - CEO and Board Chair Wrap-up Historic San Francisco Meeting
Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of the Board of Directors of ICANN, said a June 20 launch date for expansion the Internet’s gTLDs, beyond the familiar ones, such as .com, .net and .edu, will receive broad backing from the Internet community. Full Story

Clinton Urges ICANN Attendees to Keep Internet Young
Former president Bill Clinton described international non-governmental organizations like the internet governing body ICANN as the highest pinnacle of civilization, but warned members to be wary of institutions growing sclerotic and self-interested as they age. Article 1  Article 2

Microsoft Pays Bankrupt Nortel $7.5m For 666,624 IP Addresses
With IPv4 addresses becoming scarce, prices are booming. One consequence of this is Microsoft recently agreeing to buy almost two-thirds of a million IPv4 addresses for $7.5 million, or $11.25 per address, through a Delaware bankruptcy court from Nortel. The announcement came in the 23 March edition of the Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Report writes Milton Mueller on the Internet Governance blog. Full Story

Internet Use

Social media use jumps but TV remains top in Japanese crisis [IDG]
Millions of Japanese flocked to Internet and social media websites following this month's earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis, but television retained its place as the primary source of information for most people, according to two surveys released today. Full Story

Microsoft Wins 'Most Ethical' Award
Ethisphere has rated Microsoft among the most ethical companies in the world, a distinction not granted to tech giants Apple, Facebook or even "don't be evil" Google.  Full Story

New York Times Announces Digital Subscription Plan
The New York Times rolled out a plan on Thursday to begin charging the most frequent users of its Web site $15 for a four-week subscription in a bet that readers will pay for news they have grown accustomed to getting free.  Full Story

New Technologies

Microsoft Kinect 'fastest-selling device on record'
Microsoft has sold more than 10 million Kinect sensor systems since launch on 4 November, and - according to Guinness World Records - is the fastest-selling consumer electronics device on record. Full Story

Tablet Computer Demand Putting a Dent in PC Sales
On Wednesday, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs declared that the tech industry is in the "post-PC" device era as he introduced the iPad 2. A day later, a leading technology research firm gave credence to that assertion, cutting its PC shipment forecast and citing tablets as one of the reasons.  Full Story

Intellectual Property

Woolworths' trademark battle continues
A Sydney organic food supplier went up against supermarket giant Woolworths yesterday in a fight over the supermarket's latest marketing campaign. Launched in the Federal Court of Australia on 16 March, Organic Marketing Australia, which trades as Honest to Goodness, has alleged that Woolworth's Honest to Goodness Family Meals campaign that features the prominent cook Margaret Fulton infringes its intellectual property, objecting to the use of the phrase "honest to goodness". Full Story

US IP Enforcement Ambitions In Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement Stir Reactions
An alleged official document leaked last week showed that the United States is taking the lead in escalating intellectual property rights enforcement in negotiations for a regional trade agreement among countries bordering the Pacific Ocean. But there may be some concern about IP protection going beyond existing international trade obligations. Full Story

The Great Language Land Grab
When tech companies engage in legal squabbles about who gets to use our everyday words, what are ordinary speakers of the language to make of it all? Full Story

Online TV & Music

Piracy: are we being conned?
Is piracy really sending the entertainment industry broke or are the claimed hundreds of millions of dollars in annual losses and thousands of job cuts just a load of hogwash? Full Story

AFACT v iiNet: Case moves to High Court
The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) will lodge an appeal with the High Court as part of its ongoing allegation that Perth-based internet service provider iiNet had allowed its users to infringe on the copyright of the film studios the body represents. Full Story

Mobile/Wireless

Smartphone Market Expected to Soar in 2011
Smartphones, smartphones, smarthphones! That’s what we have to look forward to over the next several months. Full Story

APAC mobile users want lower data roaming charges
When overseas, Asia-Pacific Internet users are predominantly making use of data roaming services for e-mail, online collaboration and messaging via their mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops. However, carriers are urged to cut data roaming prices by up to 80 percent to generate higher usage, according to a new ZDNet online survey. Full Story

LTE pull is capacity, not speeds: Telstra
Key Telstra executives this morning emphasised that its newly announced Long Term Evolution (LTE) roll-out was about freeing up capacity on its flagship Next G network, rather than just boosting top-line speeds. Full Story

It's Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know
A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game. Full Story

Online Crime, Security & Legal

High-tech criminals outsmarting the law
Computer crime investigations are facing a major upheaval as the shift towards a new type of hard drive technology allows criminals to cover their tracks and outsmart digital forensic specialists, Australian researchers have found. Full Story

ACMA sets crosshairs on virus-removal telemarketers
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) today announced a "targeted compliance campaign" targeting businesses that offer virus removal and technical support. Full Story

Privacy

Internet privacy and the "right to be forgotten"
When it comes to privacy, the Internet has long been something of a Wild West but that that is starting to change, with regulators in Europe and the United States beginning to pull in the reins. Full Story

Censorship

ONI Releases Special Report on the Use of Western Technologies by Middle East Censors
The recent political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa has thrown into focus the information shaping, events-based blocking, and counter-control activities undertaken by governments throughout the region. New research by the OpenNet Initiative shows that many of these activities are supported by Western filtering tools and services. Full Story

Julian Assange tells students that the web is the greatest spying machine ever
The internet is the "greatest spying machine the world has ever seen" and is not a technology that necessarily favours the freedom of speech, the WikiLeaks co-founder, Julian Assange, has claimed in a rare public appearance. Full Story

Government & Public Policy

IIA lends tentative support to Australian cyber security czar
The Internet Industry Association (IIA) has come out in support of an industry-led proposal to create a cyber security czar or ombudsman. Full Story

Review of National Classification Scheme starts [news release]
The Gillard Government today launched a comprehensive review of the National Classification Scheme to be conducted by the Australian Law Reform Commission. Attorney-General Robert McClelland has referred the Scheme to the Australian Law Reform Commission and asked it to conduct widespread public consultation across the community and industry. Full Story

Censors speak: classification system broken
The classification system for video games, movies, apps and other content is broken and needs to be updated for a modern digital world in which anyone can easily access any material over the internet, former members of the Classification Board say. Full Story

Net classification costly: Telstra, RIM
Classifying all games and movies for mobile phones and the internet will be too costly and inefficient, according to Telstra and BlackBerry creator Research In Motion (RIM) submissions to a government inquiry. Full Story

IIA Fastracks Industry Copyright Code [news release]
In the wake of the landmark iiNet appeal decision, the Internet Industry Association today announced it would immediately start work on an industry code of practice for internet intermediaries, including ISPs, search, hosting and social media providers. Full Story

Government to censor iTunes app store
Australians will soon be able to complain about mobile game apps they take offence to and get them removed from app stores such as Apple's iTunes if they're deemed "refused classification". Full Story

UK government unveils libel law reforms
The government on Tuesday unveiled sweeping changes to the libel laws aimed at protecting freedom of speech and bringing an end to so-called "libel tourism" from abroad. Full Story

Telecommunications

Google boss weighs in to NBN debate
The chief executive of Google has given a big tick of approval to the federal government's national broadband strategy, describing it as a mark of “excellent leadership” and a catalyst for innovation and change. Full Story