SEOSEM in OZ

Just the Basics

When I conceived this blog a few weeks ago, it was intended to illustrate the special circumstances of search engine marketing and search engine optimization in Australia. I picked up a few books on SEM and waded through them, bookmarking handy sites and lists of sites, all along comparing them with the clients and their marketing goals.
It wasn't long before I had lists on lists all over Australia.

I planned to do a few test projects to get me started. Each site could be representative of small business in Australia.

Because Australia has taken to the Net so quickly, and with the advent of real broadband speeds, this project looked to be fun - a case study in globalization that might track well as other small countries move onto the Net.
I felt kinda lucky to have found them, since each plan appeared to apply to thousands of businesses.
The real surprise after doing the research across the country to prepare for these projects was the restrictions of the new copyright law in Australia, but nuff said about that for now.

Links to your site

One of the more interesting reactions to the new copyright laws in Australia is on links and law, titled "How to stop links to your site".
There is a whole page on how to avoid being "framed", as if that were a real concern. What their on about is best demonstrated by choosing a link from any article on About.com. The page will appear under a wide About.com banner. About.com uses invasive Javascript to inject the code for their banner into the new page if it won't open in the frame.
It's not hard to overcome such programming. Just right-click anywhere in the new page and choose 'Open in new window' (or 'Open in new frame' if you're using Firefox.)

There is code that can be inserted into a web document to prevent being "framed"; and code that can prevent injected Javascript.

Thing is, this is the Internet. The whole idea of the Net is to get links to your site, blog, or page.

Not being "framed" has little or nothing to do with the dangers of the new copyright law, whether you have links to offending material or not. Your code may prevent someone from using a link to your page, but that doesn't mean they won't be able to copy the link and use it in a new browser window.
All the code does is force your page into a new window.

If the idea is to protect yourself from being visible to Australians, you've failed.
There is better technology for that on every server. Just set the server exclusions to Australian IP addresses. Not only will your site not be "framed" and exposed to Australia's restrictive laws, but it will not appear at all. You just redirect the user to a customized error page to explain.

Some servers will allow you to do this on a page by page basis, leaving parts of your site available while any offensive material is blocked. If the server doesn't have this facility (or you don't have access to it), there are Python and Perl scripts that can be employed.
This sort of scripting can be used on blogs, too.
Savvy webmasters will redirect the visitor to a customized error page for a few seconds, then back to the main page for the site. There's no sense in losing a visitor.

Sudden Deafening Silence

It's as if a silent hand reached out across Australia. You can even mark the date: December 20th.
From all the sources listed on the right under "Australian Copyright Law", there was an intense debate examining the new law, then suddenly - silence.
As if someone said, "Enough", then, "Stop dissecting and criticizing Australian law. Write about the rest of the world." The Word was spoken, and The Word was heard.
The last comments from Kim Weatherall and LawFont were on 20 December. The Sydney Morning Herald is focusing on YouTube. The last critique on Boing Boing was 25 December. TechDirt's last article was 18 December.
The ITWire from 12 December quotes Attorney-General Philip Ruddock's amorphous reassurances:

"Everyday consumers shouldn't be treated like copyright pirates. Copyright pirates shouldn't be treated like everyday consumers," Ruddock said. "In fact, anyone who uses iPods, DVDs, CDs or records television programs will benefit from the changes."

"Tonight countless Australians will no longer be breaking the law," he said, even though the new law doesn't come into effect for two weeks.

On the 18th of December, the Cooper judgment was handed down by the High Court making Mr Ruddock's reassurances sound hollow.
Why the sudden silence? If there was some official or semi-official word that went out, why aren't Australian experts writing about it? If there was no word, then why the silence?
Or is this just the infamous aussie holiday break?

Well, here it comes

Here it comes
For a nation that is pushing people onto the Internet faster and faster with new programs being funded all around, there had to be a plan to recoup the generosity. New taxes in Canberra (ACT) will increase the costs for providers that will be passed on to consumers. It's not hard to see this is a pilot program that can easily be copied by other states and territories.
Still the biggest money maker looks to be fines and legal fees generated by the new Copyright Law.

Cooper was investigated secretly for over 2 years at the expense of MIPI and its deep-pockets clients. Then the court case took 18 months. As a penalty, Cooper and Comcen were ordered to pay MIPI's costs. Those costs haven't been determined yet, but they must have been significant.
Even the High Court didn't feel it fines were necessary as punishment. At $6600.00 a link, the fines would have never been paid.

From a few conversations, it's obvious to ordinary Australians that courts and laws are made in Australia to generate revenues for the government and fees for lawyers has not escaped the general public. The general public has no idea what to do about it though.
Any conversation along these lines brings out a couple of terms from Australians they truly despise: "hillbilly" and "banana republic".

Whole websites are being torn down. Some rebuilt with great care. From my continuing informal survey, many will just leave the site blank.
Companies wishing to have a web presence will have to factor in the costs of copyrighted images and new taxes, even before the website has a chance to prove it can pay for itself. It won't be long before all states and territories enact taxes following the lead of the ACT, and probably adding a few more just to prove their independence.

Given the cost of access in Australia for second-rate broadband services and the absolutely low cost of providing it, Telstra should be able to quarantine profits from these services for its upgrade and maintenance strategies.- Michael Harris, Tapping, WA (from comments published on Australian IT News)

Australian Copyright Law - SEM in Oz

The ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) says there are 860,000 small businesses with Internet access, from a total of 2.3 million businesses with gross revenues less than $2 million AUD. Less than 10% of those small businesses have websites, and far fewer have monetized their websites.
At first glance, that would seem to be a tremendous opportunity for web designers and search engine marketing - the ground floor of a market.
The ABS figures seem to be based on registrations of Australian TLDs: '.com.au' and '.net.au'.
According to Webhosting Info, the registration of international TLDs - .com, .net, .org, .info, and .biz - is already declining dramatically.

Total Domains in Australia : 1,466,852

Rank	TLD	Total Domains	Market Share	Net Gain/Loss
1	COM	1,265,472	86.2713 %	(2,116)
2	NET	92,295	6.292 %	(111)
3	ORG	54,563	3.7197 %	(549)
4	INFO	35,171	2.3977 %	(249)
5	BIZ	19,310	1.3164 %	(357)

I have to admit that these figures coupled with the amendments to Copyright Law and the Cooper case, are disheartening. Considering the debate over amendments to Copyright Law in Australia has continued over the last year, it seems the new laws are already having damaging effects. Although the 59,914 domains in New Zealand is much smaller, at least the numbers are increasing.
It looks like I am just a little behind the times. The optimistic perspective that drove me to study and plan to add SEO-SEM to my skillset is better reflected by industry posts from 2004-2005. The Internet community is nothing if not responsive.
This is globalization in reverse for Australia.

Musings on the Australian Copyright Law

The more I read the last year's comments, submissions, and debate, the more I have to wonder how these people could possibly have written this law. No other country on the face of the Earth, other than possibly Communist China, has a more restrictive law on the books.
Australian legislators have put into force a law that makes Australia a regressive, restrictive society. There just isn't another way of putting it.

And further, how could a three judge panel from the Australia High Court take the law to an even more irrational and restrictive level before the ink is even dry?

I don't really expect to see an answer to these questions, much less the truth. It would be refreshing though.
Even more refreshing would be to see the law revoked immediately, and that panel of judges made redundant before they do more harm. That may be only slightly more likely than the truth, but it won't happen either.

Note: Until this analysis, the option appeared to be available for Australian webmasters and owners to buy a pair of TLDs - one in Australia and the other international - then using geo-location and redirects, to have exposure to both Australia and the rest of the world. Since the Cooper judgment extends the jurisdiction of Australian Copyright Law to an international TLD, that sort of adjustment won't be possible.
Indeed, nearly everything that might have been done programmatically to avoid prosecution by Australian website owners and ISPs appears to be useless.

What restrictive copyright laws may mean to small business in Australia pt 2

What restrictive copyright laws may mean to small business in Australia pt 2    

Let's look at the changes in Australian copyright law and recent rulings in terms of search engine optimization (SEO) and saerch engine marketing (SEM).

SEO
The major search engines have been the driving force behind web developers compliance with W3C recommendations.
Australian websites will not be under such pressure to comply with doctypes and coding conventions as the rest of the world. The pressure to move design for XML (XHTML) will be significantly less for Australian websites.
Programs such as Microsoft Frontpage, which really produces websites for only IE, may be more acceptable in Australia. Some browsers simply will not be able to interpret Australian websites in a reasonable fashion.
Perhaps the government will offer subsidies or grants from the monies collected in copyright fines to Australian companies who comply with the W3C standards.

What restrictive copyright laws may mean to small business in Australia

What restrictive copyright laws may mean to small business in Australia    

If the restrictive copyright laws remain, the nature and value of the Internet to Australia and especially to small business will change dramatically.
Looking at the present situation, when someone wants a product or service they turn to search engines Google (80%) and Yahoo! (15%) 95% of the time. The results returned are based on the search terms based on "Relevance". Relevance means the first sites contain the search terms, and supplementary results from other websites based on similar terms or partial matches with the search terms. That's search results often number thousands or even millions.

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.