What is Fair? Karen Chester from the Productivity Commission
Good morning. Thank you Professor Giblin and congratulations on the launch of yours and Professor Weatherall’s book – What If We Could Reimagine Copyright? An anthology of ten thoughtful essays that collectively make for a forward‑looking treatise on copyright. And my thanks to the Australian Digital Alliance for inviting me to speak today, and to […]
Bots without borders: how anonymous accounts hijack political debate
A bot (short for robot) performs highly repetitive tasks by automatically gathering or posting information based on a set of algorithms. They can create new content and interact with other users like any human would. But the power is always with the individuals or organisations unleashing the bot. Politicalbots.org reported that approximately 19 million bot […]
Mobiles, metadata and the meaning of ‘personal information’
The Federal Court last week determined not to resolve the great privacy question leftover like a bad hangover from 2013: When is information ‘about’ Ben, and when is it ‘about’ a device or a network? While at first glance you might think that the Privacy Commissioner losing an appeal would be bad news for privacy, […]
Help oppose the expansion of data retention to civil cases
The Attorney-General’s Department is considering expanding access to the mandatory data retention scheme to include civil cases. This could mean that retained data is made available for a range of civil matters including: copyright infringement family law cases employment-related cases We’ll be vigorously resisting any such expansion in this scheme and instead will be pushing […]
“Everyone Made Themselves the Hero.” Remembering Aaron Swartz
On January 18, 2012, the Internet went dark. Hundreds of websites went black in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The bills would have created a “blacklist” of censored websites based on accusations of copyright infringement. SOPA was en route to quietly passing. But when millions of […]