Around the World:Update June 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   

Governance

Civil society speaks out, condemns attempts to regulate Internet
Civil society representatives gave an unofficial news conference this morning in one of the conference rooms of the “e-G8” forum on Internet issues in Paris, voicing their opposition to attempts to regulate the Internet and criticising the lack of representativeness of most of those who were invited by the French government to take part in the forum. Full Story

Rupert Murdoch uses eG8 to talk up net's power to transform education
Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation founder and chairman, used his address to the eG8 Forum in Paris to call for more investment in education and "unlocking the potential" of the world's children. Full Story

Domain Names

Law firm proposes piracy dispute resolution process: an independent, low-cost system is under discussion
TELCOS and copyright holders have shown strong interest in a low-cost extrajudicial online piracy dispute resolution scheme devised by a prominent intellectual property law firm. The scheme is modelled on the trademark and domain name dispute resolution system used by .au country code regulator, auDA. Full Story

auDA Panel releases draft recommendations on .au domain name policies
auDA's 2010 Names Policy Panel is currently reviewing the policies for .au domain names. Full Story

ANZIAs open for pre-registrations
InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc) and .au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA) are proud to announce the launch of the 2011 Australia and New Zealand Internet Awards (the ANZIAs). Full Story

auDA Working Group reviews operation of .au secondary market
auDA has convened the Secondary Market Working Group to: examine the operation of the .au secondary market and identify any points of market failure; and provide advice and recommendations to auDA on any actions that should be taken to address any identified market failures. Full Story

Domain Monetisation Policy explained
In simple terms, domain monetisation is the practice of registering domain names to make money from them. There are lots of different ways of doing this, but the one that most internet users would be familiar with is when a domain name resolves to a webpage with click-through advertising links – something like computers.com.au. Full Story

Marketing bonanza awaits as organisations set to get approval to register brands as domains by Theo Hnarakis, chief executive of Melbourne IT
On June 20, the governing body for internet domain names, ICANN, is expected to approve the final rules to allow organisations to register their brands as internet domains. Full Story

Internet name game heats up
The Melbourne University spinoff company that managed Australia's entry on to the internet in the 1990s is scouting for business amid a potential new domain name rush. Full Story

Domain wars: a tale of two Sydneys
Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Nova Scotia don't butt heads too often but upcoming changes to the internet domain name system could force the cities into mediation. Full Story

4.5 Million Domains Added in Q1, 2011, Takes Global Domain Total To 210 Million
4.5 million domain names were added to the global total of domain names registered across all TLDs in quarter one 2011, an increase of 2.2 per cent on the previous quarter, Verisign announced in their latest Domain Name Industry Brief. Full Story

.AT Domains Contribute €13.5m To Austrian Economy Per Year, And Growing
.AT domain names contributed €13.5 million to the Austrian economy in 2009, with the contribution growing each year, a study conducted on behalf of the Austrian registry has found. Full Story

Internet Use

Era of free content is over says Fairfax chief
The era of free online content is over, according to Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood, who indicated Fairfax would begin charging users to access parts of its website when the six-month free period for its new Sydney Morning Herald and Age iPad apps expires at the end of this year. Full Story

Tablets are just the medicine for newspapers, says expert
Apple's iPad and the Android-based tablet devices about to flood the market will be a game-changer for the newspaper business, says a leading media and technology analyst. Full Story

Social media challenges Singapore's rulers
Weeks after a watershed general election in Singapore, the influential role played by social media to dramatically transform political debate in this affluent city- state continues to reverberate through cyberspace. Full Story

Children with internet access at home gain exam advantage, charity says
A million children's exam results will be on average a grade lower than their peers this year because they do not have internet access at home, according to a leading charity. Full Story

Scientists set new download speed record
Scientists have set a new data speed record using just a single laser to transmit the equivalent of 700 DVDs in one second. Full Story

Bing Director Stefan Weitz: 'Traditional Search Is Failing'
Most people think about search as a simple series of actions: type in a phrase, cross your fingers it brings up what you need, and then click around a page of blue links till you get what you were looking for. Full Story

Many Formats, One Price: More Publications Begin Bundling Their Digital, Print and Mobile Subscriptions
Magazine and newspaper publishers are reorienting themselves around a business model that has taken hold in other media: the bundle. Full Story

Three Asian markets snag world's fastest Web speeds
South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan were crowned the top three markets with the fastest Internet connections worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to the latest stats from Web services vendor, Akamai. Full Story

Innovation in online advertising: How real-time bidding will affect media companies
You are browsing for lampshades on a department store’s website. You grow bored, and surf across to the website of your favourite daily newspaper. Mysteriously, the lampshades follow you: an advertisement for the same brand appears next to the article you are reading. Welcome to the world of real-time bidding, a cleverer and nosier way of selling advertising that is beginning to shake up the online media business. Full Story

New Technologies

Laser puts record data rate through fibre
Researchers have set a new record for the rate of data transfer using a single laser: 26 terabits per second. At those speeds, the entire Library of Congress collections could be sent down an optical fibre in 10 seconds. Full Story

Intellectual Property

Piracy dispute panel proposed
A prominent intellectual property law firm has moved to establish an extrajudicial scheme to resolve piracy disputes between internet firms and copyright holders. Law firm Maddocks is promoting a scheme to internet service providers and content owners modelled on the trademark and domain name dispute resolution system used by .au country code regulator, auDA. Full Story

WIPO Delegates Meet On IP And Development Implementation
Intellectual property has often been considered by developing countries as a hindrance to development rather than a driving force. Next week, delegates to the World Intellectual Property Organisation will discuss the implementation of the organisation’s commitment to take development considerations more substantially into its work. In particular, delegates are expected to try to agree on the coordination mechanism of the committee responsible for the effort. Full Story

Wikileaks cables reveal US pressuring Canada on IP enforcement
"Embassy Ottawa remains frustrated by the Government of Canada's continuing failure to introduce—let alone pass—major copyright reform legislation that would, inter alia, implement and ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Internet treaties." That's the opening line of a United States embassy dispatch sent to Washington, DC in February of 2008, now published by Wikileaks. Full Story

UK parliamentary committee suspends intellectual property rights inquiry
A parliamentary committee has dropped its inquiry into the Digital Economy Act (DEA) and whether it is the right mechanism to protect copyright on the internet. Full Story

Berlin Wall artists sue city in copyright controversy
The East Side Gallery is one of Berlin's most popular tourist attractions, a 1.3km-long brightly painted stretch of the wall which divided east and west for almost 30 years. Full Story

TRIPS Amendments Needed To Restore Balance In IP, Researchers Say
Current global intellectual property obligations are seen by some as favouring rights holders to the detriment of the public interest, and a series of amendments to international rules on trade and IP could address this, says a new book from a European think tank. Full Story

Report calls for overhaul of UK copyright law
The Hargreaves report on intellectual property is to recommend setting up a 'digital exchange' for the clearance of copyright, as well as legalising the 'ripping' of CDs to digital devices. Full Story

European Commission sets out "blueprint" for Intellectual Property Rights to boost creativity and innovation
Intellectual property rights (IPR), which comprise patents, trademarks, designs and geographical indications, as well as copyright (authors' rights) and rights related to copyright (for performers, producers and broadcasters), have been around for centuries. Often, without our even realising, they affect our daily lives: they protect the technology we use (cars, mobile phones, trains), the food we eat and the music we listen to or the films we watch. But in the last few years, technological change and, in particular, the growing importance of online activities, have completely changed the world in which IPR operate. Full Story

EU Commission outlines changes to IP laws
EU laws need to be changed to better combat online intellectual property (IP) infringement, the European Commission has said. Full Story

Online TV & Music

YouTube moves past 3 billion views a day
YouTube may have initially gone viral thanks to the proliferation of cute cat videos uploaded by users attracted to the novelty of self-broadcasting. But the technology has since moved on to become a central tool used by protesters across North Africa and the Middle East. Full Story

While in France, Watch What You Download
More than 800 members of the global digerati are to gather this week in Paris, at the invitation of President Nicolas Sarkozy, to discuss the future of the Internet. Here are a few tips for participants in the so-called E-G8 Forum. Full Story

Mobile / Wireless

Mobile phones bring the cashless society closer
Get ready to start paying for sandwiches, magazines and pints down the pub with nothing more than a swipe of your mobile phone as a payment revolution hits Britain's high streets. Full Story

Telstra turns on 4G service in four cities
Telstra has switched on 4G mobile service across four major metropolitan markets as it chases an ambitious deadline to have the service in full commercial operation by year's end. Full Story

Gartner Says 428 Million Mobile Communication Devices Sold Worldwide in First Quarter 2011, a 19 Percent Increase Year-on-Year
Worldwide mobile communication device sales to end users totaled 427.8 million units in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 19 percent from the first quarter of 2010, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphones continued to outpace the rest of the market, and a newly competitive mid-tier smartphone market will drive smartphones into mass adoption and accelerate this trend. Full Story

Internet users clog mobile network
Insatiable demand for smartphones, tablets and data-enabled devices is putting telephone networks under so much pressure they are struggling to cope. Full Story

Mobile broadband traffic to soar exponentially
Mobile broadband traffic will be 1000 times higher by the end of this decade than in 2007, requiring more spectrum to be allocated to mobile companies, the communications regulator will warn. Full Story

Online Crime, Security & Legal

FBI, Australian federal police target overseas poker websites that flout law
The Australian Federal Police and the FBI are jointly investigating untaxed and unregulated online casino sites, which take an estimated $1 billion a year from about 700,000 Australian punters. Full Story

Cyber crime: Australians 'continue to share their personal and financial information irresponsibly'
Consumers need to be smarter about keeping track of their "digital footprint" and be cautious about sharing personal information online to avoid cyber crime. Full Story

Six more ISPs sign up to iCode - US cybersecurity czar, Howard Schmidt, expresses interest in taking iCode internationally
An additional six local internet service providers (ISPs) have joined the Internet Industry Association's iCode, which brings the organisation one step closer in achieving 100 per cent compliance. Full Story

AusCERT 2011: Police lack tools to combat cybercrime
Police officers are behind the eight ball when it comes to dealing with cybercrime, a Queensland Police Service officer has said. Full Story

Reporters' iPads shielded by privilege, says lawyer
Criminal law specialists have condemned the actions of the Queensland Police Service after the seizure of a Herald journalist's iPad as evidence of a potential crime. Full Story

Internet fraud hits Sydney's western suburbs hardest
Fairfield is the state's e-commerce fraud capital, according to data released to the Herald by the computer security firm RSA. Full Story

Privacy

Business 2.0: Privatising privacy
As the internet makes privacy an even rarer commodity, there's a lot of money to be made for those guaranteeing it. Something rather interesting is happening to privacy, in the breakneck world of the internet. It's being privatised. Full Story

European cookie law deferred for UK websites for one year
UK websites are being given one year to comply with EU cookie laws, the Information Commissioner's Office has said. Full Story

Data Privacy, Put to the Test
Big Oil. Big Food. Big Pharma. To the catalog of corporate “bigs” that worry a lot of us little people, add this: Big Data. Full Story

Government & Public Policy

ISPs must keep some data under new law
Australian telcos will soon be required to retain customer traffic data under a new law proposed to allow Australia to accede to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime. Full Story

Another state decides against shield laws to protect bloggers: the new media faces a fresh legal rebuff
NSW has become the second state to reject the push by the federal Greens to extend journalists' shield laws beyond the news media to amateur bloggers and anyone else who publishes news. Full Story

Miscellaneous

Microsoft to Buy Skype for $8.5 Billion
Microsoft announced that it would buy Skype Global for $8.5 billion in cash, in its largest acquisition ever. Full Story

Telecommunications

Joint sale for mobile spectrums
Mobile carriers can purchase the spectrum they need for the next generation of mobile broadband services in November next year, after the communications authority decided to auction two frequencies at once. Full Story