No. Australian courts, state or federal, do not claim jurisdiction outside Australia. Only web pages that affect Australians in Australia have the potential for defamation (local term - includes libel and slander by any media) and only Australian citizens or permanent residents may apply to the courts. The initial application would be for an injunction against the publisher (a take-down notice). It is not easy to get an injunction. A refusal to obey the injunction would lead to a civil case for defamation. Truth is a sufficient defence, but there is no First Ammendment protection (there is no Bill of Rights in Australia). A jury has to decide if the plaintif has been defamed but a judge alone hears the defence and decides any penalties, which would include penalties to a plaintiff if the publisher could provide a defence.

This is the second such case in Australia so there is precedence - quite robust in fact. Federal and state law treats web pages under the same rules as television broadcasts (yes....I agree....). Google would be considered a publisher since it presents the web page after a search. Untested as yet is the issue of linking to a page.

What a weird situation! Prostitution is illegal in the USA? If it is illegal for a woman to offer sexual services for money and for a man to buy those services then all those trophy wives and their husbands should be arrested. This will cause disquiet in the upper ranks of society. Less flippantly - laws against prostitution are a class-based punitive measure.

Where I live selling sexual favours has never, strictly speaking, been illegal. Soliciting for prostitution in a public place is illegal but brothels are legal because they can be regulated and have health inspections. There are illegal brothels but only because they break the planning laws and operate in a residential area.

And why should visiting a prostitute make it difficult to find a job? Cause hurt to their partner, probably, and make them the target of ribald jokes, certainly, but how does it impact on their employability?

And why do so many of the posts above accept this situation?

Lots of old books. Gruenberg on telemetry, the Radiotron Designers Manual, the ITT Radio Engineers manual, Skolnik on radar, the GE transistor manual and anything that shows actual circuits. You can always get modern books on theory but 1960s to 1990s books will give you circuits you can actually build.

Lots of components. You can buy in bulk from Chinese distributers using eBay and there is very little risk of counterfeits.

Good strong lighting. Loupe magnifiers. Fume extractors. Those devices that hold PCBs and components in place while soldering. Solid but comfortable chairs. Solid laboratory benches able to hold your test instruments and heavy equipment under test. At least 45 x 60 cm space on the bench.

Back in 1968 the Bureau of Mineral Resources in Australia operated proof-of-concept apparatus that did exactly the same thing. When I saw it operating it was a roomful of glass pipes that allowed the bacteria to live in their extreme environment and produce a gold compund that settled out and was collected there. Gold would have to be very expensive to make it commercial (and back then the price of gold was quite low), but it did work.

BTW, if you do the mathematics, the quantum wave function for gold is very similar to that of carbon14. And indeed at the heart of every gold nugget is a small speck of organic matter. Native gold is a finely dispersed suspension in granites and is usually not of commercial concentration. However, since alluvial gold accumulates in river beds the thinking at the Bureau was that bacteria were responsible for the growth of nuggets and that quantum processes played some unknown role.

CCTV cameras have been fitted to taxis in Sydney for several years now at the request of the drivers. The hope is that this deters robberies. Does it work? I have never seen any figures - does anyone else know? They have also been fitted in State Transit buses with newer buses having a least three. In this case while it does not deter theft or assault it does lead to convictions. Also some entertaining reality TV on the news each night.

AVM may have good legal ground. The GPL does not correspond to copyright law as it existis in many countries so may not be legally enforceable.

Surely the conduct of examinations is the responsibility of the university or at least the faculty? Why does a lecturer need to be involved in enforcement?

I was involved in conducting examinations in schools (Year 3 to Year12) and universities for many years. Examination rules were usually set by the state Board of Studies or the university, but the rules I worked under can be summarised as:
- scientific calculators are permitted, but candidates must demonstarte to the invigilators that memeories are emptied (usually by just switching the calculator off, or by removing the battery)
- no dictionaries of any sort
- mobile phones switched off
- no PDAs or other networked devices.

Of course there were exceptions specified for particular exams, schools etc but in general they had to be simple and easy to understand given that the invigilators were usually retired school teachers and academics not always from the same subject area.

Calculators were permitted (actually they were mandatory) but the type was specified.

Not always. Many characters in Arabic are modified by the characters before and after them in cursive script and this is usually beyond most fonts.

Or at least in the state of New South Wales, where the Foundation Style is the script that has been taught in schools for at least 15 years.

http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/parents/k6writing.html

Foundation script was introduced to ensure that students produced a readable handwritten script and in the expectation that most future "writing" would be done at a keyboard. (Although I have spoken to Board of Studies people who deprecate keyboard skills, saying that we have to anticipate true speech recognition in a few years time).

Type I As/NZS rules by sheer weight of numbers.

Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, various Pacific island nations, widely used in Argentina and Uruguay and, oh yes, China ( or at least large parts of it.