law

Media companies’ campaign against internet piracy suffered a major setback last week when a federal court judgement let internet service providers off the hook for their customers’ illegal downloads. But the copyright wars are more than just a matter for the courts, write Julian Thomas and Ramon Lobato in Inside Story

The following report considers a number of key challenges the Australian Federal Government faces in designing the regulatory framework and the reach of its planned mandatory internet filter. Previous reports on the mandatory filtering scheme have concentrated on the filtering technologies, their efficacy, their cost and their likely impact on the broadband environment. This report focuses on the scope and the nature of content that is likely to be caught by the proposed filter and on identifying associated public policy implications.

Faculty Seminar Series

Professor Justin O’Connor, Research Capacity Building Professor Tuesday 28th April 12pm-1pm The Hall (Z2-226) CI Precinct QUT Kelvin Grove

Creative labour: emancipation or honey-trap?

Book chapters and articles published in 2008 and 2009

Among the many contentious matters thrown up by the relentless march of economic globalization, those forms of knowledge variously known as 'indigenous' or 'traditional' remain seriously threatened, despite numerous transnational initiatives and highly publicized debate. It is not proving easy to bring these holistic worldviews into accordance with the technical terms and classifications of intellectual property law.

The Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project, together with the U.S. Library of Congress National Digital Information, Infrastructure and Preservation Program, the U.K. Joint Information Systems Committee and the SURFfoundation in The Netherlands, released their International Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation at the WIPO International Workshop on Digital Preservation and Copyright in Geneva, Switzerland on 15 July 2008.

Copyright law, digital content and the Internet in the Asia-Pacific provides a unique insight into the key issues facing copyright law and digital content policy in a networked information world.

This article, published in European Intellectual Property Review outlines the way in which the rise of digital technologies and online social networks has challenged the rationale and efficacy of copyright law. In examining how the law might respond to these challenges, the piece highlights law reform issues that need to be closely considered as we move towards the 300th anniversary of the Statute of Anne in 2010.

The production of knowledge has become central to economic life. Competitiveness in the 21st century market place is now characterized by the ability to translate scientific and technological knowledge into innovation. But does this render cultural and social knowledge unimportant?