August 18, 2010 – 7:57 pm
In some ways, Facebook is very good for friendship. Via Facebook, I’ve managed to get back in contact with various childhood and school friends, which has been lovely. I am the kind of person who takes friendships seriously. I’m still friends with three people from Primary School, for goodness sakes, let alone numerous people from [...]
By Legal Eagle
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Also posted in Depression, Internet, Media, Personal
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Tagged computers, death, Facebook, friends, friendship, Politics, Religion, social media, social networking, Technology
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I’m back to teaching, which is nice. I like teaching. But there’s one thing I’d forgotten about: the obligatory query as to where my Powerpoint slides can be downloaded from the web. What Powerpoint slides? Long term readers of the blog know that I have problems with Powerpoint from way back. “Powerpoint is against my [...]
Heath Gibson reminded me in a post this morning that we have a renewed opportunity to persuade the Labor party to drop its ridiculous bid to impose net censorship. As he notes, because of the change in leadership, the party can now back away from previous policies without losing so much face (as it has [...]
By Legal Eagle
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Also posted in Australian internet filter, Internet, Law, Personal liberty, Public Policy, Society
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Tagged Australian internet filter, freedom of speech, internet filter, Julia Gillard, Law, policy, psychology, Technology
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When I was studying medieval Celtic history, I read somewhere that the early Irish believed that writing something down was a kind of magic, and various stories feature inscriptions in ogham, which assist the writers to find people, mark things as owned by a particular person, and to send magical messages. The early Irish were [...]
By Legal Eagle
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Also posted in Children, Feminism, Free Speech, Internet
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Tagged Aristotle, Bindi Irwin, Catherine Deveny, comedy, humour, jackie-o, kyle sandilands, Logies, ogham, Rove McManus, Sam Newman, the chaser, twitter, Wil Anderson, written word
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I think it’s fair to say that Heath G and I share an obsession with fantastically unsuccessful defamation actions that result in the very opposite outcome to that which the plaintiff sought to achieve. At Minimal State, Heath has a post about the best one yet, involving a hapless company named T & J Towing: [...]
February 14, 2010 – 3:14 am
Sir John Houghton, who played a critical role in establishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), was roundly condemned after it emerged that he was an apparent advocate of scary propaganda to frighten the public into believing the dangers of global warming. “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen,” Sir John was supposed [...]
By DeusExMacintosh
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Also posted in Environment, Funnies, Media, Politics, Science, Skeptics
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Tagged bennie peiser, christopher booker, christopher monckton, climate change, global warming, john houghton, piers ackerman, roger helmer
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December 6, 2009 – 2:07 am
Google has added Pompeii to its Street View application, allowing internet users to take a 360-degree virtual tour of the ancient Roman city. Italy’s culture ministry says it hopes the move will boost tourism to the site, state news agency Ansa reports. Among the ruins visible on the search engine’s free mapping service are the [...]
August 20, 2009 – 9:09 pm
I seem to be building up rather a niche in posts on blogging, social networking, defamation and privacy law. Cases are springing up like mushrooms. I’ve written before about the outing of “NightJack”, a policeman whose blog became immensely popular. It seemed to me that the development of outing pseudonymous bloggers was a rather sad [...]
I can’t believe there is a case called The Author of A Blog v Times Newspapers Limited [2009] EWHC 1358 (QB). But there is. “The Author of A Blog” cited as the claimant was the pseudonymous author of a blog known as “Night Jack”. He was a police officer whose blog provided an inside view [...]
By Legal Eagle
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Also posted in Blogging, England, Internet, Law, Media, Privacy, Society
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Tagged anonymous blogging, invasion of privacy, NightJack, Privacy, Richard Horton
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February 22, 2009 – 9:48 pm
All of us will have come across those internet contracts (aka End User License Agreements, aka EULAs). You know the ones: they say “Terms and Conditions of Use” and you scroll down about 20 clauses, and click “I agree” at the bottom. Because I’m a contract nerd, I do actually sometimes read them out of [...]
