International Journal of Law and Information Technology - Advance Access

In The Aftermath of the Promusicae Case: How to Strike the Balance?

Coudert, F., Werkers, E. — 2008-10-25

Copyright societies are currently pushing for increased private enforcement of intellectual property rights on the Internet, in particular by trying to involve Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in their combat against copyright infringements, and by pushing for new legislative mechanisms. This raises serious legal problems and questions both in terms of the protection of users’ privacy, their right to a fair trial, and the liability of ISPs. This article discusses the difficult task of balancing copyright interests and fundamental rights as debated in the Promusicae case.

Domain Names Dispute Resolution Policy in ASEAN: an Appraisal of the Position in Malaysia and Selected Member Countries.

Zainol, Z. A. — 2008-10-14

Out of ten member countries of ASEAN, only Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Laos have some form of Domain Names Dispute Resolution mechanism. The wordings of the respective DRPs are closely modelled from the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), but of course with some variations to reflect the local flavour. Thus, it is not surprising that, in many cases, the parties as well as the panels often refer to previous UDRP cases to support their arguments. To some extent, this ensures greater uniformity in the decisions.

Designing and formulating data protection laws

Schartum, D. W. — 2008-10-14

Pirates of the Internet, At Intellectual Property's End With Torrents and Challenges for Choice of Law

Morris, P. S. — 2008-10-14

This article will address three fundamental issues (i) the impact and legal status of BitTorrent technology on copyright infringement of music, software and movies over the internet (ii) damages and the enforcement of intellectual property rights via the EC Directive and (iii) argue that damages should continue to be used as a form of deterrence to illegal file sharing and "torrents" download by the end users who are enticed in the first place by the "torrent" up loaders through their websites and internet service providers "ISP’s" who might bear indirect liability for copyright infringement. The central point is that the same manner in which taxes are due to the state and failure to render unto "Caesar" what is due will likely result in a fine or prison sentence the same approach must be taken to internet copyright infringement through file sharing and "torrents" where there is a copyright infringement. A comparison of three recent cases that were decided on the BitTorrent technology platform will be used to bolster the arguments. The article begin with an overview of legal and economic argument in the current debate on internet copyright infringement then assess the enforcement of such infringement through the EC Directive on enforcement of intellectual property and its relations to damages and then concludes with the impact on choice of law for internet copyright infringement that takes place beyond national borders.

Institutional Repositories in Malaysia : The Copyright Issues

Abdul Ghani Azmi, I. M. bt. — 2008-10-03

Social Networking Websites - A Concatenation of Impersonation, Denigration, Sexual Aggressive Solicitation, Cyber-Bullying or Happy Slapping Videos

Mann, B. L. — 2008-10-03

Identifying personal data using relational database design principles

Bercic, B., George, C. — 2008-05-19

The European Union (EU) directive on personal data and resulting data protection legislation of EU member states require from data controllers, a notification of their activities to the appropriate supervisory authority. Included in this notification is also a description of the data or categories of data which are processed. Legislation in some EU member states (e.g. Slovenia) require that not only a description but also a concrete list of personal data attributes needs to be included in this notification. In such cases it is sometimes difficult to ascertain in concreto whether some collected attribute represents personal data (and should therefore be included in the list of attributes) or whether it is a non-personal attribute. Similarly, under the EU directive data subjects have various rights, including the right to access their data, and data controllers are sometimes faced with the problem of determining whether various data items constitute personal data. Further, the impending case in the European Court of Human Rights arising out of the decision of the UK case of Durant v Financial Services Authority (which narrowed the scope of personal data) has added some uncertainty to the interpretation of the EU directive. In view of the legal uncertainty regarding what constitutes personal data, this paper examines whether relational database design principles can be applied to identifying personal data. Using this approach, the paper explores various parallels between personal data identification and principles of relational database design. The paper thus makes a novel contribution to the ongoing uncertainty in data protection law. The paper also discusses the wider issue of applying computing/scientific principles to interpreting the law.