The Playstation Mod Chip: A Technological Guarantee of the Digital Consumer's Liberty or Copyright Menace/Circumvention Device?

This article overviews the way in which anti-circumvention laws recently enacted in countries such as the United States, the European Union and Australia have been utilised to reinforce digital rights management. In particular, this artcile looks at the Australian case that has been replicated around the world concerning the modification of the Sony PlayStation console in order to circumvent regional access coding (RAC) on Sony PlayStation games. RAC makes it difficult to use local platforms to play burnt or copied games and games from other geographical regions. The article examines the litigation concerning this issue which is currently before the the highest court in the Australian legal jurisdiction - the High Court of Australia

Search engine liability for copyright infringement

The chapter provides a broad overview to the topic of search engine liability for copyright infringement. In doing so, the chapter examines some of the key copyright law principles and their application to search engines. The chapter also provides an import discussion of some of the most important cases to be decided within the courts of the United States, Australia, China and Europe regarding the liability of search engines for copyright infringement. Finally, the chapter will conclude with some thoughts for reform, including how copyright law can be amended in order to accommodate and realise the great informative power which search engines have to offer society

Ultra Vires as an Unjust Factor in the Law of Unjust Enrichment

This article examines the application of unjust enrichment and restitution law to ultra vires government acts. It posits a general theory about how courts should deal with the effect of unconstitutionality

Unjust enrichment as a principle of Australian constitutionalism

This article examines the central role of unjust enrichment in Australian constitutionalism. The Australian Constitution, amongst other things, divides the legislative powers of the Australian federal system between the Commonwealth (central) and State (regional) governments. Section 51 Constitution provides that the Commonwealth Parliament shall have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to an enumerated list of powers. One of the enumerated legislative powers of the Commonwealth is the power to make laws with respect to the "acquisition of property on just terms from any State or person ...". The provision operates firstly to give the Commonwealth power to acquire property and secondly as an individual right or guarantee of just terms; that is as a constitutional protection of the right to private property..

Third-party copyright and public information infrastructure/registries: How much copyright tax must the public pay?

In a case currently before the High Court of Australia (Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) v NSW ) the fundamental question at issue is whether the owner (in this case surveyors) of copyright material (in this case land survey plans) that is submitted as part of a public register (in this case the land titles registry) with all the benefits that entails, should nonetheless have the right to charge the government and end users every time they reproduce or communicate that material to the public. This book chapter examines the merits of this claim

The Legality of Free and Open Source Software Licences: The Case of Jacobsen v. Katzer

In August 2008 one of, if not the most, influential Intellectual Property courts in the USA known as the Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit upheld the validity of a free and open source software licence known as the Artistic Licence. The case is significant because up until this point there has been little judicial discussion of the legal operation of this new type of copyright licensing that is sweeping across the world fuelled by the ubiquity of the Internet. The decision in Robert Jacobsen v. Matthew Katzer and Kamind Associates, Inc. 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 17161 (Fed. Cir. 2008) issued on 13 August 2008 provides a unique and welcomed insight into the legal operation of free and open source software licences and by analogy Creative Commons styled open content licences. This article analyses the judgment and provides commentary on its reasoning

Introduction

The conference and research project that produced this book have operated throughout 2006, 2007 and 2008 in a rapidly changing knowledge landscape. One of the most significant changes is that e- Research has moved from being a specialist activity or technique to one that now promises to be adopted as a methodology for almost all research

The (Cinematic) Dark Knight

This paper, presented at the 2013 Scholars Day is a look into the development of Bruce Wayne, Batman and the characters around them