Companies have always been required to keep registers of their members. The register is a public document which is open for inspection by a member without charge and by any other person upon payment of a fee. When copies are requested they must be provided in exchange for a fee. The provisions dealing with the maintenance of and access to registers are currently found in Chapter 2C of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). According to the Attorney-General these provisions were intended to facilitate "rapid and easy access" by the public to a company's register and to do so "at reasonable cost": Second Reading Speech, First Corporate Law Simplification Bill 1994 (Cth) (House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates (1995) vol HR 199), pp 709, 712. The issue in this case is about the quantum of the fee that can be charged for a copy of the register. Each side engaged senior counsel to put its case. Experts have been called to give their views. Witnesses have been examined and cross-examined. The cost to each party is in the tens of thousands of dollars. So much for easy access at a reasonable cost.

1. Back down and abandon the change.  I don't think this is likely, especially since eBay apparently want to introduce this policy globally;
2. Appeal the ACCC's decision to the Australian Competition Tribunal; or
3. Go ahead with the policy change regardless.  Given that the ACCC can't revoke the notification unless they're satisfied that eBay's policy change would contravene s 47(1) of the TPA, eBay would effectively be saying 'we'll see you in court' to the ACCC.
   

Censored versions of some of the photos have been published by News Ltd here.  (If they are, in fact, child pornography, then I don't know why News Ltd thinks blacking out breasts makes them any more legal to publish/distribute!)

Online photographs used by media websites to report on the investigation into Bill Henson have been referred to the Classification Board, the Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus, said.

...

"Several online images of Bill Henson photographs from media websites reporting on the exhibition at the Rosyln Oxley9 gallery in Sydney have been referred to the Classification Board," he said.

They were referred to the board by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which investigates complaints about online content.

• 'engaged in sexual activity';
• 'placed in a sexual context'; or
• 'is subjected to torture, cruelty, or physical abuse (whether or not in a sexual context)'.

• 'the child is engaged in activity of a sexual nature (for example, actual or simulated sexual intercourse or a striptease) for the purpose of the production of pornography'; or
• 'the child is in the presence of another person engaged in such an activity for that purpose.'

In Tugcu v Mars Australia Pty Ltd [2008] NSWSC 377, the plaintiffs are a family who have for some time purchased Dolmio brand food products (made by Mars Australia) which bear a halal logo on their label, signifying that the ingredients and recipies for those products were certified by the Halal Certification Authority Australia.

The plaintiffs recently discovered that a certain Dolmio product which bore the halal logo contained white wine as an ingredient and was therefore not halal.

Mars Australia appear to have done a collective mea maxima culpa, blaming an error during the development of the label for a relatively new product.  They stopped distributing the affected product, arranged for it to be recalled from stores, informed the Halal Certification Authority Australia, and placed a notice on their website.

The plaintiffs brought an action for contravention of s 52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) and sought an injunction preventing the distribution of the affected product in reliance on s 80 of the TPA.

The Court declined to grant an injunction, holding that the balance of convenience did not favour the granting of an injunction, because of the steps already taken by Mars to address the problem.  Gzell J went on to say (at [10]) that:

in light of those steps, damages are an entirely suitable remedy.

I'm not suggesting that an injunction should have been granted.  Given that Mars was already dealing with the problem in a fairly comprehensive manner, an injunction would have been of little or no utility.  But I think it's somewhat strange that Gzell J would say that damages were an appropriate remedy for contravention of a religious law?

The Australian Government defines critical infrastructure as those physical facilities, supply chains, information technologies and communication networks that, if destroyed, degraded or rendered unavailable for an extended period, would significantly impact on the social or economic well-being of the nation or affect Australia's ability to conduct national defence and ensure national security.

I've done a pile of radio interviews this morning and have TV interviews scheduled for this afternoon with Channel 2, 7 and 9 for their nightly news programs.  Tune in to see my ugly mug, if you dare!

Social networking sites will be required to remove material unsuitable for children, such as nude or violent images and comments, within 24 hours of receiving a complaint, under a tough new code for internet safety.

The Byron Review on e-safety, published yesterday, also recommends that search engines such as Google and Yahoo display a "safe search" button prominently on their home page, to filter out potentially harmful material when children search the web.

The report, by the clinical psychologist and writer Tanya Byron, also recommends that websites promoting suicide be closed, using existing laws on assisted suicide. Those that promote self-harm and eating disorders should also come under greater legal scrutiny.

Dr Byron, a mother of two, said yesterday: "Many parents seem to believe that when their child is online it is similar to them watching television. In fact it is more like opening the front door and letting your child go outside to play unsupervised."

Assuming that Byron's analogy is correct, if a parent opens the front door and lets their child go outside to play unsupervised, and something bad happens, is it the fault of the outside world or is it the fault of the parent?

Dumbing down the Internet to a level where it's supposedly 'safe for children' is not the answer.  What's worse, is that this is merely one part of a disturbing trend of the abdication of parental responsability to the government.  The Internet is supposedly harming children, so instead of parents supervising and educating their children, the government will tame the Internet.  Children are too fat, so instead of parents controlling their children's diet, the government will ban advertising of junk food when they're likely to be watching television.  The government isn't a babysitter and neither is the Internet!

You can verify this yourself on the cleanfeed.com website, using their 'test a site' facility on the front page.

But, there's a very serious side to this very funny example:

• Filtering products are inaccurate.  There will always be overblocking and underblocking.
• Blacklists and categorisations of websites are subjective.  Whether One Nation in fact engages in 'hate speech' is dependant on your point of view and there are arguments for and against.
• Government mandated filtering that has effects such as this may run into constitutional problems.  We have an implied freedom of speech on political matters in Australia.  If a government-mandated filtering system is going to block access to political websites -- especially websites of actual Australian political parties -- it would seem to be succeptable to a constitutional challenge.

I'm in Australia, and don't physically have an iPhone or access to one, so my information on their operation is necessarily second-hand.  That said, in the course of preparing the article, I solicited information from different people who  actually used iPhones in the US to find out more information about the 'activation' process.

My information -- confirmed from more than one source -- is that the iPhone will not work at all (with the exception of making emergency calls) without being activated.  That is, no WiFi, no iPod-like functionality, nothing.  I don't think that such a situation would have a problem getting over the futurity/compulsion hurdle, unless people are purchasing iPhones for expensive paperweights.

If  BBB is correct, and the iPhone functions as everything else except a phone, I still think it would get over the futurity/compulsion issue.  If people are buying the iPhone and intending not to activate it (and not to bypass the activation), wouldn't they get the same kind of functionality out of an iPod Touch?  I don't know enough about the functionality of each to be able to answer this question, I'm not a Mac expert.

The only serious legal issue might come in relation to Third Line Forcing which says that one company cannot sell a product that makes it a condition of sale that the consumer purchase a product from another company. However, Apple need only sell the iPhone through a carrier's retailers and it is likely to be fine. In any case, it can obtain permission from the ACCC for any arrangement it might propose.

• Supply you with services (the licence to use the iPhone software);
• On the condition that you acquire services from somebody else (the carrier that's paying them kickbacks)

Late last year, the ASIO director-general, Paul O'Sullivan, complained the agents had not had a chance to rebut the charges. But the two ASIO officers - known as B15 and B16 - had in fact given evidence to Justice Adams, who found their testimony unconvincing and, at times, untruthful.