SEOSEM in OZ

ISPs blamed for cuts in bandwidth

If there was any question that the new copyright law will have a significant influence on broadband providers and the spread of broadband, it is gone now.

Here is a recent example.
A major Australian ISP, exetel, has been contacted by an unnamed "legally constituted authority" and ordered to cut bandwidth or delete the acounts of a number of its customers suspected of copyright infringements. exetel responded that it had a warning in its Terms of Service against illegal activity. The unnamed authority's response that that was insufficient.
The customers' accounts were suspended or set to limited bandwidth.

Although exetel informed its customers of the reason for these actions, the customers response was to blame exetel for trying to cut the load on its servers.
One user announced that it was time to "churn" to another ISP after complaining that he and other high volume P2P users paid for the added bandwidth and was one of the most profitable customers. A response was made that many P2P players left their systems on all the time and surreptitiously acted as servers, which was also against the Terms of Service.

A moot point between exetel customers seems to be whether low volume or high volume users are more profitable. exetel is being blamed for using the new copyright regime to rid itself of the high volume users to increase profits. What the real numbers are here may never come out. Some of the comments seem to come from knowledgeable people.

Another exetel customer threatened to send a letter to exetel stating that in limiting or suspending accounts exetel was in breach of contract and its fiduciary responsibilities. How that works out I'm not sure.
Overall, exetel is being blamed for serving its own interests.

Copyright Law in Australia - SEO Alternatives

SEO is website design for a specific goal: to help the website accomplish business goals.
One of those business goals is to remain within the law.

As Kim Weatherall notes (from "Cooper - how linking in Australia can land you in hot legal water":

Here's one favourite quote that captures some of the flavour of the Branson judgment:

'Mr Cooper placed considerable weight on a suggested analogy between his website and Google. Two things may be said in this regard. First, Mr Cooper's assumption that Google's activities in Australia do not result in infringements of the Act is untested.'

This quote is striking. Not because it is inaccurate. On its terms, it is obviously perfectly true. No one has sued Google here yet. What is striking is that a statement as potentially momentous as this: that the activity of running a search engine - one of the fundamental activities that makes the 'Internet work' these days could well be infringement, we don't know - can be said without the merest bat of a judicial eyelash.

Have we, or have we not just had a very extended debate about copyright law in Australia? Was not one of the memes in that debate the idea that copyright ought to 'work' in a digital environment? Are not search engines, and links, fundamental to the way the Internet and digital environment work?  Did all this debate completely pass the members of the court by?

Leaving aside that Australian Copyright Law has created broad liability for a moment, there are two key legal concepts that may offer some design options, at least in the interim: Authorization and Relationship. I'm going to lean on wiser and more learned shoulders here a little. Further in the same article by Ms Weatherall:

Now, in broad terms, the law is:

1. a person can be liable both for infringing copyright, and for authorising infringement (ss36, 101)


2. 'authorise' has a meaning developed in the caselaw - basically, 'sanction, coutenance or approve'.  The classic old case on this was Moorhouse, in which a university was held liable because it provided coin-operated photocopiers right beside the books with no control and no steps to limit infringement;


3. according to legislation introduced in 2000 and designed, allegedly, to codify common law and provide 'certainty', in assessing authorisation, courts must take into account three things:

• the extent (if any) of the person’s power to prevent the doing of the act concerned
  

• the nature of any relationship existing between the person and the infringer;


• whether the person took any other reasonable steps to prevent or avoid the infringement.

Any website or webpage can authorize infringement by linking. If the Cooper judgment is allowed to stand, that is established. But there are design elements which can be employed to define the nature of the relationship between the visitor to a website and website, and to limit the liability of authorization.
What if Cooper had popped up a box on every link that said:

Warning! This link may lead to copyright protected material.
Please contact the owner of the website to ensure your activities do not infringe on Intellectual Property rights.

The Justices considered the name of his website and the stated purpose of his search engine in determining the relationship and authorization. Such a warning may not have saved Mr Cooper.
However, it might offer some options to web designers in Australia to protect themselves and their clients.

Broadband in Oz

Sometimes you have to wonder if the different departments of the Australian federal government ever talk to one another, or if it's just a lot of people wandering around showing off their titles at dinner parties.
In light of the new restrictive copyright laws, the statements from the Minister of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan's report about the advance of broadband access across Australia (PDF file) sound a little unrealistic.

The digital content industry plays a vital role in driving the growth of broadband services, including digital TV, film and radio, mobile phones and gaming. Five years ago this industry was tiny. It now employs 300 000 people in some 95 000 firms and is worth $21 billion to the Australian economy.

Much of the innovative content in Australian games, animation, film post production and advertising originates with small-to-medium creative firms. The health sector has also recognised the benefits of digital content in delivering health services, for example, remote diagnostic work. The education sector is increasing the range of curriculum services delivered online. The work of professionals involved in mining, architecture and spatial industries has been transformed by the visualisation capability provided by digital content and new technology applications.
Through the March 2006 Digital Content Industry Action Agenda Report the digital content industry has established a vision to double its output to $42 billion by 2015. The report provides strategies to boost investment, build exports, extend industry-based training activity and link industry with research and development priorities. The industry will progress these strategies over the next 12–24 months. In parallel, a comprehensive Digital Content Strategy, designed to accelerate the production of digital content, is being progressed by the Australian Government.

She is correct in stating that 5 years ago the digital content industry was tiny.
This report is worth looking over though. Some of the graphics illustrate the miniscule access Australia had to the Internet until 2001; and how quickly Australia has moved onto the Internet with 71% of Internet connections currently using some form of broadband (figures 2 & 7)

Kim Weatherall, an Intellectual Property expert seems to answer this proud statement of a developing industry when she states:

And finally, this Bill fails the two basic tests the Attorney-General set himself when he started this process.  This bill does not give Australians the same rights that American consumers have.  And it does not ensure that consumers are treated like consumers and pirates like pirates. It treats everyone as pirates. Everyone from 14 year old wanna be stars, to Google, Apple, the creators of MySpace, YouTube or any other exciting new technology. Welcome to Australia, your own personal copyright nightmare. (from " Copyright Amendment Bill Amendments - comments")

and further,

As has been said: the next YouTube, MySpace, Blogger etc won't come from Australia, because there is no flexibility in our copyright laws, no breathing space. It should, of course, be pointed out that both YouTube, and MySpace have been sued in the US. But note that those lawsuits have come recently, after the proof of concept/momentum has been established. You might not get to that stage here in Australia. (from " Scenarios, Scenarios, Scenarios - applying the new copyright law to real life scenarios")

There were 130 submissions regarding the new copyright bill, but I didn't find Minister Coonan on the abbreviated list online. I cannot imagine that such a far-reaching bill would be passed without soliciting Minister Coonan's viewpoints.

The Day Australia went Black

One day, Australia looked like just another part of the World Wide Web. Australians searching for products and services, or researching for school, could see any of the 70 million websites and hundreds of millions of webpages.
The next day, most searches on Google, Yahoo! and MSN returned nothing. Not a few pages, just ...Nothing.
As of January 1st, 2007, Australia became a blank hole in the Internet.

Slowly over the next few months, a few webpages appeared in the searches as webmasters, ISPs, and IT departments scrambled to craft permission statements acceptable to the new copyright laws. Each version had to be vetted with the Australian Attorney-General as they arrived.
Some sites and webpages appeared, then disappeared, as the wording of permission statements was fine tuned to comply with the new copyright laws.
Some websites were removed because the pages they submitted with permission statements contained links which were infringements under the new law. Google and Yahoo! wrote to the AG Philip Ruddock to ask for a grace period. There had been no reply for months. Finally, a reply from Philip Ruddock stated that this was a matter already ruled upon by the courts, and his office had to respect the independence of the magistracy.
The Attorney-General's reply further stated that the new copyright laws were due for a review in July 2008. Google, Yahoo! and other search engines were free to make submissions towards that review. Until then, the rulings of the High Court of Australia would stand.

The Attorney-General stated that a sample permission statement would be posted on the Government website for all to use. But as of that time, the Attorney-General nor any of the government offices, had given Google or Yahoo! permission to index their webpages. No one could access the sample permission statements.
In the strict interpretation of the High Court ruling, news media around Australia came to realize that to publish links in print was the same as to publish on the Net. The link to the sample permission statement could not be published in the newspapers.

Whole sections of newspapers disappeared. Editors and writers were fired, and new editors and writers who did not rely on the Net were hired.
Magazines were removed en masse from newsstands around the country. Any magazine with printed links, and especially those which came with game CDs or tutorials, were removed. The newsagents' stands contained only sparse newspapers and a few children's magazines.
Articles were published warning the public that to include links without permission in emails was to risk copyright infringement. The same articles warned that links included in SMS messages was being considered before the courts.

How had this been allowed to happen?
The answer that came back was breathtaking in its simplicity. It was broadcast on all the television news programs. A smiling official from the Attorney-General's office was seen saying: "It all came at a bad time. No one works on anything serious over the holidays."
Every Australian knew it was true. From mid-December til late January each year, Australia takes a holiday.
(This is, of course, a parody, and therefore protected under Australian copyright law. The sad part is, it could easily be true very soon. -PD)

Australian Copyright Law

I began writing about the changes in Australian Copyright Law on the Shortcut Computers blog, as part of an effort to promote a friend's website and help expose his company's skillset. His project seemed like a challenge since the service area for his small computer tech company was small - only a few suburbs on one side of Melbourne, Australia - and his services limited to supporting home and small office networking from the relatively-new broadband services.
Most of the strategies outlined in various books or by the tutorials described national or worldwide targets. I figured this limited target area would prove a good counterpoint project to explore the SEM market in Oz.
The writings ( parts 1, 2 and 3) were intended to explore how SEO and SEM project developers would have to adjust to the new marketplace defined by these laws. At first, it seemed like a tempest in a teapot.
When Google announced that these changes would "push Australia back into the pre-Internet era", the subject got interesting. This is Chinese curse-type interesting: "May you live in interesting times."

What's happening in Australia may be a harbringer of the future of the Internet.