The rate at which technology is evolving is far far greater than the rate at which the Australian legal sytem is evolving. It is much easier to rip an MP3 off a CD and post it to a file sharing server than it is to stand next to a stereo with a handheld mic and hand out bootleg cassettes

These are some of the questions raised and reasons why the law is inefficient at responding to the technological change of society

Timely nature – The law is way to slow at responding to key technological issues

• Copyright Act 1968 – It was illegal to rip a CD to MP3 in Australia till 2006
• It was also illegal to record TV for the purpose of timeshifting.

Whose jurisdiction? – Who has legal jurisdiction on the Internet

• In 2007 Yahoo was sued by a French court for having Nazi content for sale in a Yahoo.com store. The issue here is that Yahoo.com is stored and served by a US Internet Network, therefore it is under the jurisdiction of US Law, however Yahoo.com’s content can be accessed anywhere in the world.

The idea of Embedded Law – law not in terms of statues but in the technology itself.

• DVD players – It is not illegal to purchase a DVD in America and bring it to Australia but my DVD player prohibits me from doing so.
• Playstation Case 2002 – A man installed region protection circumvention hardware in his Sony Playstation and was sued by Sony. He however was found to be not guilty
• However the Copyright Act was swiftly updated in 2006 to make circumvention of these methods illegal.

Technology, and ultimately the internet has revolutionised society as we know it. The internet is no longer just linking information. It is linking people – People sharing, trading and collaborating

Revolution does not happen when society adopts new tools, a revolution happens when society adopts new behaviours. In a digital age we need to rethink a few things  – copyright, authorship, commerce, ethics, privacy, governance and ultimately ourselves.