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.
24207172
submission
daria42 writes:
Thought your Mac was secure running Apple's latest operating system? Think again. Turns out that in some respects Lion is actually less secure than previous version of Mac OS X, due to some permission-tweaking by Apple that has opened up a way for an attacker to crack your password on your Lion box. The flaw was discovered by an Australian researcher who has previously published a guide to cracking Mac OS X passwords. Sounds like Apple had better get a patch out for this pronto.
24120740
submission
daria42 writes:
A long-running Australian court case debating whether Google has done enough to differentiate paid advertisements from normal organic search results has come to an end, with the search giant the victor over the country's competition regulator. The landmark case influenced how Google discloses which search results were advertisements — with the result that it now labels ads as "Ads" rather than as "Sponsored links". In addition, Google now prohibits companies from advertising products or serices with which they are not associated — making it much hard for competitors to artifically take valued positions in Google's rankings.
24116816
submission
daria42 writes:
Spare a thought for the staff of Australia's largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Some 6,000 staff at the bank's new head office have been handed new Apple MacBook Airs as their primary work laptop ... but configured by default to boot into Windows XP. Seems like the bank is focused on moving forward ... while at the same time moving speedily backwards. *sigh* Wonder if it's possible to sideload OS X Lion.
24093910
submission
daria42 writes:
Oh dear ... it looks as if Symantec has been exposed for massively exaggerating cybercrime statistics. It appears as if the security vendor included 'indirect' losses such as time lost due to cybercrime outages in its statistics about the financial losses to global cybercrime. This in itself would have probably been OK taken in context, but the company then directly compared its figures with the overall revenue of the global illicit drugs industry — but without including indirect losses from drugs. The result? "You’d think the marketroids were smoking the green stuff themselves when they came up with that comparison," wrote one security journalist.
23475888
submission
daria42 writes:
A US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks has revealed much of the previously hidden background behind the BitTorrent court case currently playing out in Australia's High Court, including the Motion Picture Association of America’s prime mover role and US Embassy fears the trial could become portrayed as “giant American bullies versus little Aussie battlers”. Oops ... looks like there's a little bit of egg on the movie studios' faces!
23436998
submission
daria42 writes:
It looks like Microsoft might not quite have the free reign over government desktops that it would like to. In Australia, it was revealed this week that the country's Department of Defence has recently conducted a trial involving 100 users of the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, which recently found a home at the Apache Foundation. It's not yet clear whether the department will progress with the trial to a broader rollout, but if it did, it could have significant implications for Microsoft in the Australian government.
23216224
submission
daria42 writes:
The news that HP has discontinued the its TouchPad line of tablets has already had a dramatic impact in Australia, where the TouchPad went on sale just four days ago. The only local retailer for the tablets, Harvey Norman, has just pulled the tablet from shelves, citing a lack of confidence in its ability to support the device going forward. The only question remains: What will HP do with the remaining TouchPad stock it has? Destroy it? Sell it at a steep discount?
23212648
submission
daria42 writes:
Does Apple's arrogance know no bounds? This week it was revealed that the company has still not responded to Australia's Federal Parliament on the issue of why the prices of its products are significantly higher in Australia than they are in the US, five months after the query was first raised by a member of parliament from Australia's governing Labor party. Apple has refused to issue a statement on the matter or even acknowledge the issue. What will it take to get Apple to open up — a national enquiry?
