ICOMP

The New Zealand Office of the Privacy Commissioner has released a consumer survey titled: Individual Privacy & Personal Information. The survey has many illuminating points relating to consumer attitudes towards the online environment.

The survey can be found here: http://privacy.org.nz/assets/Files/Surveys/Privacy-Commission-UMR-Omni-Results-Apr-2012.pdf

The Australian competition watchdog will launch an investigation into clothing importers who are reaching agreements with overseas suppliers to stop selling their products to Australians on websites or instructing them to lift their web prices.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims has acknowledged that anti-competitive practices revealed by The Age last week could breach competition legislation.

He said an investigation would be launched, and companies found breaking the law would be prosecuted. ”We are extremely committed to having a close look at this,” he said.

”Making sure Australian consumers benefit from the revolution that we’ve got in the online world is a top priority … We will therefore use the [Competition and Consumer] act to its fullest.”
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/probe-into-retailing-on-the-net-20120517-1ytns.html#ixzz1vBTtABDq

Google could face new investigations by the Privacy Commissioner over its harvesting of personal information using Street View cars after a 17-month investigation by US authorities found it wasn’t the act of a “rogue” engineer.

From 2007 to 2010, Google’s ­specially designed Street View cars travelled the world taking detailed photos, recording wi-fi details and sucking up data carried on open wireless networks.

Read the article in full here.

The High Court dismissed an appeal by a number of film and television companies from a decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia. The High Court held that the respondent, an internet service provider, had not authorised the infringement by its customers of the appellants’ copyright in commercially released films and television programs.

The appellants, thirty-four Australian and United States companies, either own or exclusively license the copyright in thousands of commercially released films and television programs (“the appellants’ films”). The respondent, iiNet, provides internet services to its customers under an agreement which requires that the services not be used to infringe others’ rights or for illegal purposes. Users of internet services provided by iiNet infringed copyright in the appellants’ films by making the appellants’ films available online using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing system. The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, on behalf of the appellants, served notices on iiNet (“the AFACT notices”) alleging that iiNet’s customers had infringed copyright in the appellants’ films, and requiring iiNet to take action to prevent the infringements from continuing. iiNet took no action in response to the AFACT notices.

A summary of the judgement can be found here.

The judgement in full can be found here.

The ABC 7.30 program reported on the international precedent set by a ruling of the Australian Federal Court means that instead of just being the messenger, Google is responsible for the misleading ads generated by a search.

View the footage here.

Earlier this month the Federal Court found Google’s conduct in response to a users interaction with Google’s search engine was misleading and deceptive.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (the ACCC) initiated proceedings against Google.  One aspect of the ACCC’s case was that Google, in failing sufficiently to distinguish between ‘organic’ and ‘sponsored’ results relating to advertisers engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct contrary to section 52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (the Act).

Read the article in full here.

GOOGLE, Yahoo, Facebook and other commercial organisations that mine data on people’s private activities should be required to regularly ”send us a report on what they have got on us”, the English celebrity philosopher A.C. Grayling argues.

This would be a first step in reclaiming privacy so thoughtlessly given away in our seduction by social media.

Read the article in full here.

Where an online publisher publishes advertisements which originate from others and, in so doing, uses technology to interact with a web user to affect that final content, then the online publisher is more likely to be held responsible for that publication.

It would seem to be the case that the more sophisticated the software platform is, the greater the risk.

Read the article in full here.

The Federal Court has ruled that internet giant Google has breached the Trade Practices Act by displaying misleading sponsored links at the top of its search results.

Breaches investigated included ads with the headline ‘Harvey World Travel’ that redirected to the company’s rival, STA Travel, without the company’s knowledge.

Listen to the Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission being interviewed here.

Google has been found guilty of allowing four Australian businesses to post misleading and deceptive advertisements on its search engine after a court upheld an appeal by the competition watchdog to have an earlier decision overturned.

The judgment, handed down in the Federal Court this morning by Justice Peter Jacobson on behalf of himself and two other Federal Court judges, means that Google will now have to establish a “compliance program” so that advertisers will not be able to post misleading or deceptive advertisements in the future.

Read the article in full here.