The ACMA alleges that GoTalk via its two offshore calls centres called 40,000 numbers contained on the Do Not Call Register.

Breaches of this kind have proven to be costly for infringing companies in the past, with Dodo Australia being issued a fine of $147 400 in 2008 for its call centres ringing 67 de-listed Australian phone numbers.

This isn’t the first sign of trouble for GoTalk. Last year the company accepted undertakings by the ACCC to record telemarketing calls and to monitor conversations at random to ensure compliance with the TPA, in response to allegations that its offshore call centres had misrepresented information to consumers, including pricing and terms and conditions.

The matter is listed for directions on 29 March 2010 in the Federal Court in Sydney.

This comes on the back of a notice of motion filed by AFACT against iiNet with the Federal Court on 18 February 2010 – that motion is scheduled to be heard by the Court on 4 May 2010.

We will keep you posted once more information is to hand.

It was alleged by 34 applicants made up of film studios such as Sony and Warner Bros that iiNet had facilitated copyright infringement, by allowing customers to use peer to peer software to download pirate versions of movies and other copyrighted material.

The Court held that the law did not impose a positive obligation upon iiNet to prevent copyright infringement. The result comes as a slap in the face to the big film studios who had vigorously pursued this case.

This case had attracted international attention and had resulted in legislative changes in jurisdictions such as the UK, where ISPs have an obligation to disconnect customer who infringe copyright.

ISP Lawyers and Telecommunications Lawyers have for some time been debating the merits of this case – some commentators don’t think that this is the end of the matter, with the films studios having the ability to appeal the judgment on points of law.

More to follow…….

Click here to see media comments on the iiNet judgment by Cooper Mills Director, IT & T Lawyer, Erhan Karabardak.

Many believe the iPad and iBookstore will do for the publishing industry what the iPod and iTunes store did to the music industry in 2001. Back then, iTunes accelerated the decline of their business model and tore apart the original bundles of records subsequently sold to consumers at unit price. Will our local media industry and publishing sector share the same fate or embrace the iPad as a revolution of the digital age?

So far, the signs have been encouraging. The Australian Publishers Association report that Australian publishers have been in extensive talks with Apple over the last few months in an effort to seal licensing deals for Australia. Although the iBookstore is not expected to be available to Australian users on launch, that date is likely to change quickly as the Australian Publishers Association has confirmed licensing deals are well on the way to being completed this year.

In the US, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has announced eBook deals with five of the world’s leading publishers – Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan.

These talks have been hastened with the arrival of other eReader devices. Amazon (with its Kindle) and Barnes & Noble (with the Nook) have the potential to diminish the importance of publishing companies altogether through the use of self-publishing platforms by authors.

To avoid this, Australian publishers have in the last 12 months been paying a lot of attention to digitisation and preparing for electronic works to ensure plenty of titles are available to Australian consumers. But until a sufficient number of these titles are in place, it will be imperative for the Federal Government to lift the ban on book sellers from buying cheap foreign imports from overseas sellers. Currently, parallel importation rules prevent stores from sourcing books at lower costs from overseas markets. Retailers, such as Borders will need to respond to the growing consumer demand.

REDgroup, owners of booksellers Angus & Robertson and Borders – are already planning 1 million titles that can be downloaded across multiple technologies in Australia.

The challenge for publishers therefore will be the speed with which they can port their back catalogues to digital. Porting books to the digital world is difficult because entire back catalogues must be digitised in different formats and publishers should seek professional legal advice on redrafting and in some cases renegotiating copyright deals with authors and estates for the purposes of digital distribution.

Only two leading publishers have converted Australian print books to digital form in significant numbers – Allen & Unwin has a library of 1500 titles, while Pan Macmillan Australia has 500 titles ready to go digital.

Newspapers and magazines are also planning to sell content on the device through digital apps, but The New York Times is the only publisher to have revealed its offering so far.

News Ltd spokesman Greg Baxter refused to comment to Australian media on its iPad plans last week, but Brian McCarthy, chief executive of Fairfax Media, has been bullish about the prospects for the new device.

The iPad will allow newspapers and magazines to be easily read electronically in a format that many readers will enjoy while also linking pages directly with breaking news and videos on their digital mastheads, such as The Age. Fairfax is reportedly developing apps that could be used on both the iPad and iPhone.

With sales of Amazon Kindle devices outstripping actual print book sales in the US over Christmas, the Apple iPad is sure to be a hot seller amongst Australian consumers.

Among the questions to be contemplated by publishers over the coming months will be the meaning of their brand in a tablet world – to avoid the fate of the music labels, publishers such as Pacific Magazines will need to determine how to maintain individual brands in their overall stable, rather than individual stories; in other industries, companies will need to decide if the most potent expression of their brand is bundling existing free web products with a premium pay-wall subscription, or in the case of Sports Illustrated below, an entirely new multimedia product.

Watch and embed the Sports Illustrated player

James Grant Hay is CEO of Inshot, Branded Content Specialists

This Court battle caused auDA to develop an interim policy on wildcarding in 2007, which was to have been reviewed  but almost 3 years on and nothing has happened – so it remains an interim policy. Our enquiries of auDA revealed that they did intend to have their security and stability advisory committee (SSAC) look at the issue soon (that was in 2009) – it is interesting to note that at the time the interim policy was announced the SSAC didn’t have any members!

In order to understand wildcarding one must understand what it means. The auDA policy defines it as:

A “wildcard DNS record” is a record in a DNS file that will match all requests for non-existent domain names, so that a user who types a non-existent domain name into their browser does not get the standard “Error 404” message, but is instead redirected to another webpage.

The auDA definition is a little misleading. Firstly a wildcard record matches all requests for fourth level domains as opposed to ‘non-existent domain names‘. For example a domain coopermills.com.au exists, but if it were wildcarded then anything that was typed before coopermills.com.au with a full stop would resolve to (usually) a web page hosted at the third level domain. If an internet user was to type cars.coopermills.com.au, then it may resolve to www.coopermills.com.au. The effect of this is to in essence allow any fourth level domain, as opposed to manually creating them.

Wildcarding is commonly used by almost all parking companies such as Sedo. The rational is that it is better that an internet user is directed to content rather than an error – this enhances the internet user experience.

auDA had claimed that wildcarding caused the security issues identified in RFC 1535. The Registrant called the author of RFC 1535 Ehud Gavron to give evidence as an expert at the trial, who disagreed. During Mr Gavron’s visit (and after the matter had been resolved by the parties), Cooper Mills Lawyers hosted Mr Gavron who spoke on wildcarding of domain names in the .au context.

To download the podcast click on the link: Domain Wildcarding: The Implications for the .au Space

These claims have raised concerns with some mobile operators, who claim that if this finding were to be used by criminals, GSM telephone call could be intercepted and monitored relatively easily and cost effectively. This type of conduct is prohibited under Australian law.

IT and Telecommunications Lawyer, Erhan Karabardak, Principal of Cooper Mills Lawyers, said:

“whilst these claims, if true, could pose a serious concern, it is unlikely to pose a threat to GSM communications in the short term“.

Thank you for your support in 2009, and we look forward to working with you in 2010.

Our office will be re-open on 11 January 2010.

Stay tuned for our new IT Law, Telecommunications Law, Domain Law and general Commercial Law articles / posts.

Telecommunications Company TeliaSonera has said it is recruiting customers to pilot its new 4G network in Oslo and Stockholm which will be launched in early 2010.

The 4G network is configured around the Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, with data speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, which is significantly faster than existing 3G networks. The 4G roll out has be designed to easily deploy by overlaying existing 3G infrastructure.

Customers will initially connect to the network via a Samsung B3710 USB dongle and a laptop, as no handsets can yet use the 4G network. The Samsung B3710 lets users download at max speeds of 100Mbps. The B3710 is set to be available in the first half of 2010, in time for the first live customer tests. Handsets that can use LTE are expected in mid-late 2010.

Ericsson has constructed the network in Stockholm, Sweden while in Oslo, Norway Chinese firm Huawei is behind the operations. Both networks cover the central regions in both cities.

Most operators have committed to upgrading to the faster system, and TeliaSonera  expects that the advance is speed will drive the use of many novel applications such as gaming and viewing of video on laptops.

The move comes after its internet filtering trials commenced in January 2009, as we previously reported.

Details to follow

To assist us to cater to our audience, if you have any specific requests for IT Law, Domain Law or Telecommunications Law articles or information, feel free to drop us a note at info@coopermills.com.au