31793421
submission
daria42 writes:
It may be a little-known fact that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is an Australian citizen, but that hasn't stopped activists and politicians in Australia for calling on the Australian Government to help secure his release from the current legal action in the UK and Sweden and secure his return to a safe haven in Australia, blocking a potential extradition to face more serious charges in the United States. However, due to the ongoing legal action, the Australian Government said this week, its hands were currently tied in what actions it could take with respect to Assange, as no formal US extradition request had been made.
31783869
submission
daria42 writes:
It looks as if the global hacking community has decided enough is enough when it comes to News Corporation's hacking attempts — first from News of the World journalists, then from a secretive pay TV piracy group in Australia. News Corp's Australian division warned its staff today that it was being targeted by a so-called 'phishing' campaign where external sources are spamming staff to try to get them to respond with their account login details. Turn about for News Corp? Looks like it.
30969239
submission
daria42 writes:
A series of articles and Apple itself has made it pretty clear that the 4G speeds which the company's new iPad tablet boasts are not supported in Australia, due to the fact that the only 4G network currently functioning in Australia (Telstra's) uses a different spectrum band (1800MHz) compared with the 700MHz and 2100MHz bands being used by telcos in the US and a number of other countries. But this disclosure doesn't appear to have placated the country's competition regulator, the ACCC, which tonight flagged plans to sue Apple over what it called its "misleading" claims on 4G support in Australia. This isn't the only lawsuit Apple is currently fighting in Australia — some of you may recall the company is also in court in Australia against Samsung over the company's Galaxy Tab tablet, which Apple alleges breaches its patents.
29807995
submission
daria42 writes:
Steve Jobs might not be around any more to enforce some of Apple's stricter policies, but that doesn't mean the company is letting it all hang loose. Overnight the UK company which produces a speech recognition app called Evi, which mimics many of the functions of Apple's Siri, confirmed Apple had approached his company letting it know that Evi was being reviewed for possible breaches of Apple's App Store policies. The reason? A clause in the policy which bans apps too similar to Apple's existing software. It does appear to matter to Apple that Siri doesn't function that well in the UK, because of a lack of good localisation.
29752925
submission
daria42 writes:
Progress is happening rapidly in Australia, with the country's government continuing to roll out a nation-wide fibre network. However, the country's major telco Telstra doesn't appear to have quite gotten the message. Releasing its first National Broadband Network fibre broadband plans today, the telco stipulated that fibre customers will still be forced to make phone calls over the telco's existing copper network. Yup, that's right — fibre to people's houses, but phone calls over the copper network. Progress.
29201095
submission
daria42 writes:
Looks like Australia's Government is continuing to prefer to keep its ongoing anti-piracy discussions behind closed doors. It held an initial meeting held in September last year to try and get the content and ISP industries to thrash out an agreement on how to handle Internet piracy. Consumer representative groups were explicitly blocked from attending the meeting, and attendees are now allowed to reveal what was discussed behind closed doors. Now a second meeting has been held, and again, no information has been revealed about what's being discussed. Quelle conspiracy?
28900407
submission
daria42 writes:
Looks like not even the holiest of holies is safe from the clutches of the rogue group of Internet nasties known as Anonymous. Late last week, the FBI confirmed that Hackers from Anonymous had been able to retrieve audio of an international conference call between the FBI in the US, and Scotland Yard in the UK, which contained details of an international cybercrime investigation. The audio has now been published on the public Internet, although Anonymous appears to have censored some sensitive names of targeted hackers from the broadcast. Well it's safe to say we live in interesting times — when even the FBI isn't safe from being hacked, who is?
28472401
submission
daria42 writes:
Apple's global financial resurgence on the back of the iPhone and iPad has been well-documented, but did you know that the company recently took pole position as the largest non-telco technology company in Australia? With Australian revenues larger than HP or IBM according to new internal documents released by Apple this week, Apple is now the largest tech company of any stripe on a per revenue basis in Australia. And it's even closing in on major telcos like Optus. With the iPad 3, iPhone 5 and maybe even an Apple television in the works, it's hard to get a grasp on just how large Apple is going to get over the next several years. Steve Jobs must be proud ;)
24729472
submission
daria42 writes:
The legal wrangling between Samsung and Apple over patents is showing no signs of calming down, with the Korean company filing a lawsuit in Australia and Japan today to block sales of Apple's iPhone 4S handset ... just three days after it went on sale. Wow.
24653982
submission
coolstoryhansel writes:
In response to the lawless prairie (read: the Internet) increasingly making it difficult for people to apparently commercialise their property the Attorney General has proposed changes that streamline the process of identifying people allegedly infringing copyright. The Pirate Party have condemned this as streamlining the invasion of privacy.
Perhaps they should first actually try making their content available digitally in Australia before completely disregarding human rights.
24648718
submission
daria42 writes:
Remember how the mass piracy lawsuits common in the US are now coming to Australia? Of course you do. Well, now Australia's Government has come out backing the legal process which makes them possible — and is even promising to streamline it. Anti-piracy organisations will be jumping for joy — but I'm not sure how popular the move will be with the rest of the population.
24620716
submission
daria42 writes:
Apple has just won an injunction preventing Samsung's iPad alternative, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, from being sold in Australia. Although the injunction is temporary, it still has the potential to block sales of the Galaxy Tab in Australia for some time, while the pair make arguments in court about which patents have been infringed in the manufacture of the Galaxy Tab and Apple's iPad. It also appears likely at this point that Samsung may decide not to launch the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia at all — with the tablet market likely having moved on by the time the case is completed.
24565926
submission
daria42 writes:
Despite a disappointed response from pundits, it appears as though the iPhone 4S is the most hotly in-demand handset in Apple's history, with the company announcing overnight that more than a million pre-orders for the phone had been placed. But is Apple's stronger global distribution behind the increased stats? The iPhone 4S will launch in more countries, faster, than the iPhone 4, leading to speculation of less organic demand for the iPhone 4S, but broader geographical reach. Do the statistics lie?
24343026
submission
daria42 writes:
Remember when the RIAA started sending tens of thousands of letters to Americans who it had alleged had infringed copyright online, trying to get them all to settle out of court? Yeah, good times. Well that style of mass-lawsuit has now arrived in Australia courtesy of a new company which dubs itself the 'Movie Rights Group'. The company is currently seeking to obtain details of at least 9,000 Australians it alleges has infringed copyright on one film, and it has a number of other films in the pipeline. Sounds like a good time to know an IP lawyer.
24261716
submission
daria42 writes:
Microsoft might have attempted to alleviate concerns expressed by the Linux world about its restrictive UEFI boot implementation in Windows 8, but it doesn't look as though the issue is going to die down. Confirmation arrived today that Linux users in Australia have registered a number of formal complaints with the country's competition regulator over the issue, claiming Microsoft's actions were anti-competitive. It looks so far as though the regulator has responded with a form letter, but attempts to push the issue are ongoing.
