Comment on Sachin’s blog – Anonymity no more?

Sachin’s blog comments on the proposed removal of anonymity from web technologies such as blogging in China. I made the comment that These kind of ideas could only possibly arise in a country where internet content and usage is so heavily regulated. Removing the anonymity factor would completely change internet usage. People speak much more freely when they’re faceless, they assume a confidence which they may not themsleves possess.

From the perspective of privacy, I suppose the argument could be made that people waive their right to privacy when they choose to publish informaiton in the public domain.

I further commented that Sachin had done an excellent job on his blog throughout the semester!

Comment on Lanny’s Blog – UNSW Law Resources

Lanny’s blog makes some points on the use of technology in the law school. I have to agree on both points. The lack of power outlets was either a large oversight or a very poor decision. Perhaps they were concerned about limiting their liability for students tripping over cables or electrocuting themselves, because we’re clearly all such incompetent people.
In terms of the wireless network, it sounds to me like Alberta is on the right track. Having a network on tap in the classroom must be incredibly convenient. While we have that availability at UNSW, it’s just not feasible for many students to pay the exorbitant rates for it.
UNSW seems determined to choke the computerisation of law!

Comment on Michael’s Blog – YouTube acquisition

Michael’s blog contains an article on the Google purchase of YouTube for $US1.65 billion, making the point that it is an extraordinary investment for a company yet to generate revenue. I would make the reply that it certainly has a lot going for it as an investment – huge amounts of traffic, strong branding, dominant market share, a juicy demographic for advertisers – and consolidates the social networking resources that Google offers. It may not have generated revenue to this point but MySpace is a good example of the potential YouTube offers.

The purchase also keeps YouTube out of the hands of rivals such as Yahoo! Google seem to be stacking a lot of faith in advertising-based revenue.

Streamlining legal research

One of the interesting challenges in conducting legal research is coming up with every possible permutation and combination of words that counsel, judges and magistrates might use to describe something. Did the police administer a breathalyser test? A breath test? A breath analysis? A breath analysis test? The list goes on, and this is simply for describing a fairly mundane device. With the appropriate semantic data attached to these terms, or with logic embedded in the search engine, any of the above searches could produce the results for all of them. But isn’t that cheating just a little?

Client access to information

Should clients have electronic access to their legal files? Certainly the claim can be made that it’s their information so they should be able to access it when they please. Indeed this is an argument that has played out in the context of medical records. But are legal files so analogous to medical records? Often files held by lawyers have legal significance – certificates of title, testamentary documents, contracts and the like – and lawyers like to know when and why clients may be accessing such documents.

Publication or promulgation?

An interesting point was raised in class today in relation to promulgation of law in the future. As it stands the principle seems more to be one of publication of the law, very passive in its operation. The information is made available in an amorphous mass for those that find the need to sift through it for a specific purpose. As an example of this, I recently had to determine what breath-analysis devices had been authorised for use pursuant to the Road Transport (Safety and Traffic Management Act) 1999. This involved determining the previous iterations of the legislation and then tracking back through NSW Government Gazettes for references to the legislation that may or may not have related to breath-analysis devices. The first such reference dated back to a 1968 NSW Government Gazette.

Obviously this was a time-consuming experience and it certainly flagged to me a need for a searchable electronic form of the Gazette. Electronic copies are available for 2001 onwards from the NSW Department of Commerce, but even these are clumsy to search through. If we are to be held to account by these laws surely their content should be known to us, or capable of being learnt, without having to engage in lengthy research exercises.

Expert systems for conveyancing

Coneyancing has consumed a considerable amount of my time at work recently. It’s not a complex area of law for the most part, being quite procedural in nature, although it does call for thoroughness. It seems to be an area that may lend itself to the use of expert systems.

With this in mind I thought I’d investigate whether there were any existing systems available. A quick search revealed the National Electronic Conveyancing System. This doesn’t seem to fit the typical mould of an expert system, more of an electronic medium through which conveyancing transactions may take place.

IT Security Compliance

Amongst the usual morass of recruitment advertisements and industry gossip in this week’s Lawyers Weekly, I noticed an article on achieving information technology compliance with regulatory requirements. The article recognised the role of the IT professional as balancing three potentially opposing issues: bottom-line costs; security threats; and compliance with regulatory requirements.

Patch and vulnerability management is identified as critical. Regulations aren’t specific in terms of tools or products that must be used or regularity of patching, they contain more general requirements that pratices and procedures be in place and that the assessment of threats and system value occur on a regular basis. This lack of specificity in regulations is seen as creating uncertainty.Not only must patches be kept up to date across relevant systems, but systems must be in place to report on patching and to constantly monitor and assess gaps in security.

The article raises an interesting question: “given that vendors such as Microsoft are releasing 40-plus critical patches a year, and even more for Office and Internet Explorer, do regulators need to see systems patched or fixed to the highest level at all times?”

The article responds in the negative. Prioritisation is seen as the key. In order to prioritise, there needs to be an understanding of the systems in place. High-risk systems need to be patched more regularly than low-risk, critical patches need to be applied more quickly than non-critical and generally the benefit of the patch must be weighed against the disruption to business.

Perhaps the more interesting question in all this is whether any liability may fall on developers who distribute software with security loopholes…

Legal liability of P2P developers

Entertainment companies are typically highly supportive of technological development. Why then have they been so uniformly against the proliferation of P2P software products such as Morpheus, Grokster and KaZaA? The answer is no mystery. The software has allowed for an explosion in the level of copyright infringements. The distributed hosting provided by P2P allows for distributed responsibility, which makes litigation a difficult proposition. The software distributors seem to be an attractive target to pursue, they make considerable profits from advertising and user data vending. But should they as distributors be held liable for the infringements that may be committed by end-users of the tool?

The US Supreme Court in Sony Corporation of America v Universal City Studios found that so long as a multi-purpose tool is capable of “substantial non-infringing uses”, the distributor will not be held liable. This landmark decision from 1984 still strongly influences the legal montage, at least with regards to claims of contributory infringement on the part of distributors. More recent US decisions, such as MGM v Grokster and A&M Records v Napster have opened alternate avenues of liability for distribuotrs and developers – inducement and vicarious liability.

Inducement was defined as a secondary form of liability in MGM v Grokster, applying to “one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.” This limb of liability certainly empowers entertainment companies, although not to the full extent they desired. It remains to be seen whether the reduced economic motivation will curtial innovation in distributed file-sharing, which has potential benefits.

Subject Wiki User Page

My user page on the subject wiki for LAWS1032 can be found here – http://laws1032.russell-allen.com/wiki/alex_brown.