Oz waits for tech-ready media laws

According to Australian communications minister Stephen Conroy, it could be two years or more before legislation stemming from a top-to-bottom legislative review to shake up existing media laws will appear, reports ZDNet.

In Conroy's speech at an Australian Information Industry Association lunch in Melbourne this week, he said a fundamental review of Australian media policy had become essential. This is because the rapidly changing converged media environment had rendered obsolete existing legislation controlling the behaviour of telecoms and broadcast players.

"Given that convergence is now in your lounge room, it might be a good idea if the parliament caught up," Conroy told the audience. "The government's policies and actions, particularly in creating the NBN and pursuing the switch to digital television, have rapidly accelerated the arrival of the convergent media age in Australia after years of delay. Literally, technology has run over the top of existing legislation."

The information pertaining to copyright infringements delivered to Internet service provider iiNet by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) in 2008 was of questionable reliability, a Federal Court has heard, states Computerworld.

iiNet's legal representative, Richard Cobden, told a Federal Court this week that AFACT had delivered notices of copyright infringement about its users in the form of spreadsheets on CDs and DVDs throughout 2008.

The spreadsheets held basic information relevant to the movies allegedly being downloaded over the peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol, according to Cobden, including the movie title.

Microsoft has won a court case originating in 2004 that had inventors suing the Xbox maker for allegedly infringing on online multiplayer gaming-related patents, according to Gamasutra.

In 2004, Peter Hochstein, Jeffrey Tenenbaum and patent rights holder Harold Milton Jr, filed suit against Microsoft and Sony, accusing the companies of infringing on the 1994 patent which covers devices that facilitate remote multiplayer gaming.

The plaintiffs said Microsoft and Sony infringed on the patent with Xbox Live and Sony's PlayStation Network, and were seeking royalties and an injunction against the continued use of the technology described in the patent.