Sourced from smh.com.au

A Perth-based company has been fined $5.5 million for sending millions of unsolicited emails, with a judge labelling the spam annoying, costly to combat, and a threat to the internet.

It is the first time an Australian company has been fined under the the federal government’s spam laws, introduced in April 2004.

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Sourced from pocket-lint.co.uk

KinderStart alleges not just defamation, but violations of free speech and libel in its lawsuit.

Judge Fogel, however, in his opening statements, is unsure if the allegations show grounds for defamation, saying, “Assuming Google is saying that KinderStart’s website isn’t worth seeing, why can’t they say that? That’s my question”.

The case isn’t going anywhere fast, as Judge Fogel said that he would need until the end of the year to make a ruling about whether the case should go forward or be dismissed.

Google’s fighting its corner zealously, with one of its lawyers, David Kramer, saying, “This is a case that challenges Google’s very right to operate. It is not a case about KinderStart’s free speech.

Sourced From smh.com.au

A salacious email inviting a female lawyer to no-strings sex has spread like wildfire to countless inboxes worldwide.

The email was penned by law clerk Craig Dale, and sent last week to female lawyer Azadeh Bashari.

They work for separate law firms in New Zealand and it is unclear how they met.

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Sourced from smh.com.au

The days of anything goes on YouTube are over. If you’re planning on using copyrighted content as part of your own creative masterpiece, you’re more or less inviting legal action, says a new research paper.

The paper, authored by Damien O’Brien and Brian Fitzgerald of Queensland University of Technology (QUT), identifies “remixes” and “mashups” of copyrighted content as a critical factor that’s been overlooked by Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock in his new copyright reforms, announced on May 14.

“We now inhabit a ‘remix culture’, a culture which is dominated by amateur creators – creators who are no longer willing to be merely passive receptors of content,” the paper reads.

“The challenge for creativity and the economy of digital content production is the extent to which mashup and remix artists should be allowed to borrow.”

YouTube serves more than 100 million short video clips per day, which includes many from amateur film producers who use copyrighted material in conjunction with their own creativity to develop something new. Permission from the original copyright owners is rarely sought.

One example cited in the paper is a video remix from December 2005, where a Perth group called Dean Gray uploaded a remixed version of Green Day’s album American Idiot – dubbed American Edit – to the internet.

“Within days they received a cease and desist letter on behalf of Warner Bros and Green Day,” the paper reads.

“Dean Gray is like many of a new generation of amateur creators. They can sit at home in the bedroom and produce the most wonderful things. Most often they do not want money. Merely, they wish to share the finished product with the world.”

The paper poses the question: should Dean Gray (and authors of other remixes) pay for a license, even if their clip is non-commercial and doesn’t necessarily rob Green Day of album sales?

Under current copyright laws, unless permission has been given in advance through an open content license (e.g. Creative Commons), according to the law the answer is “yes”.

“The exclusive rights of the copyright owner over acts such as reproduction/copying,

communication, adaptation and performance – unless licensed openly – by their very

nature reduce the ability to negotiate copyright material without permission,” says the paper.

The copyright reforms announced by the Attorney-General do little to remedy the issue, which means legal action could be taken against Australian mashup and remix artists, says the paper.

“There appears to be no provision for any fair dealing exception for mashups

or remixes which are highly transformative, non-commercial derivatives that do not

compete with the primary market of the copyright owner.”

The legal implications of this could be felt sooner rather than later, having already surfaced in the US. It appears copyright owners are now far more confident in taking legal action against YouTube now that it’s got the weight of Google’s substantive cash reserves behind it.

On November 20, YouTube removed no less than 29,549 videos that used material from Japanese copyright holders without permission. Six days later the site removed 1000 sports videos (including Australian Open Tennis footage), while on Friday YouTube removed all clips taken from the Daily Show, Colbert Report and South Park, at the request of Comedy Central.

PERHAPS THE BIGGEST HOT-BUTTON QUESTION in search is whether Google will continue rising forever, or if it will bust. Last week saw indicators both ways. On Monday, Standard and Poor downgraded Google’s ranking from “hold” to “buy,” cautioning against “what we perceive to be potentially excessive enthusiasm” about Google stock. On Tuesday, completely ignoring S&P’s warnings, the Street pushed Google’s stock to a new high of $473.31/share.

By and large, the Googlephiles and Google-skeptics are in a fight over a single issue: whether Google’s expansion beyond search–from the acquisition of YouTube to products like Google Spreadsheets, made to rival Excel-will bring the company more money, or will spread the business too thin. Everyone agrees that Google’s doing well: primarily through its core business of search, Google holds nearly 25% of all online ad revenue. The question is what will happen as Google attempts to go beyond search.

The Googlephiles have a lot of evidence to rely on, including Google’s wealth of very smart people, its corporate tenacity, and its clearly savvy business sense. Skeptics can point to observations like those this one made in BusinessWeek this past July: “An analysis of some two dozen new ventures launched over the past four years shows that Google has yet to establish a single market leader outside its core search business.”

I think that the believers and the skeptics are both half-right–which is why they’re missing the entire point. The skeptics are right in arguing that Google’s a clear leader in search, but faces trouble gaining ground in other areas. The believers are right in their assumption that pushing beyond search is good for Google; they’re just wrong about why.

The real truth is this: Google’s forays outside of search are highly valuable for the company, precisely because those forays don’t succeed.

Consider BusinessWeek’s assessment of the lifecycle of a Google nonsearch offering, from the July article mentioned above: “After sparking substantial buzz, most of Google’s nonsearch offerings quickly fade from view. ‘People give Google the victory in the beginning and don’t show up later to notice that things didn’t go anywhere,’ says Paul S. Kedrosky, a venture investor at Ventures West Management Inc.”

And here’s the results of a few Google attempts to go beyond search, as discussed in the same article: “Google Talk, an instant-messaging service launched last August, now ranks No. 10, garnering just 2% of the number of users for market leader MSN Messenger, according to comScore Media Metrix. Three-month-old Google Finance, heralded as a competitor to market leader Yahoo! Finance, has settled in as the 40th-most-visited finance site, according to data from Hitwise, a competitive intelligence firm. Gmail, the e-mail service that was lauded at its 2004 launch for offering 500 times as much storage space as some rivals (they quickly closed the gap), today is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail.”

Google expands beyond search with much public fanfare, only to see its projects fizzle when nobody’s looking. Which is actually a brilliant PR strategy for driving traffic to Google Search.

By continually announcing that it’s expanding beyond search, Google gains tremendous buzz, which translates into higher stock prices, which translates into still more buzz. All that attention keeps Google top-of-mind; by being top-of-mind, Google draws more users and more loyalty towards the Google brand–which means more searchers flock to Google Search, and more searchers stick with it. And it’s through Google Search that Google actually makes its money.

All that buzz is only beneficial if the new launches don’t succeed. If Google were to successfully expand past search, users would mistrust it as a corporate giant bent on empire-building–a problem that’s certainly familiar to Microsoft. Because Google fails at really getting a hold beyond search, users don’t see any effects of Google’s empire-building, and instead only see Google as a company that’s continually on the rise.

It’s a great strategy. The only problem is that it might not be sustainable, because Google itself might not be aware that it actually exists. To take one example, it’s unlikely that GoogTube is a $1.65 billion ruse to makes Google seem to be interested in user-generated video. Google really is interested in user-generated video–and in a lot of other things that are far less related to search. Until now, it’s just gotten lucky enough to fail.

As I argued concerning Google Radio, some of Google’s non-search projects are really extensions of its search monetization, and are likely to succeed. But others projects mean entering areas where Google doesn’t have much experience, and is taking a risk. With regard to those riskier areas, the key question for Google’s future is whether it can realize that losing is really one of the best assets the company has.