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Freedom to Differ 

A blog that speaks freely about legal issues facing the media and the internet. It mainly covers issues relating to the legal regulation of the internet and the media, but at times Constitutional law issues and politics are discussed. While the focus is on Australia, developments in other nations around the world are considered as well.
Post Frequency: 25.4/day Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 09:11:39 Recent Entries: 2028
Go to Freedom to Differ, find other International Law blogs, or browse all law blogs.
Hilden on the Organization for Transformative Works
Posted on January 21, 2008Writing for FindLaw's Writ, Julie Hilden looks at the agenda of the Organization for Transformative Works: The intriguing new group, The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), is proposing some interesting changes to copyright law that would strengthen protections for "fan fiction...
Aussie Bloggers Blog launches
Posted on January 21, 2008To compliment the Aussie Bloggers Forum, which has been up and running for a few weeks now, the team has now launched the Aussie Bloggers Blog. Check it out here.
Facebook's applications
Posted on January 20, 2008Hear, hear to Dan Mitchell at the New York Times: THIRD-PARTY applications are supposedly the secret to Facebook?s success. So far, though, the applications fall mainly into two categories: the silly and the annoying (and sometimes, both). Users can throw virtual sheep at each other or take part in zombie...
Mashable
Posted on January 20, 2008Although Mashable is a site I read religiously and link to frequently, I think Louis Gray's point is fair and well made: Mashable Uses A-List Power to Steal B-List Buzz In the tech blogosphere, there's a clear delineation between those who are actively creating the news (the developers, engineers, and...
eBay for Cruise book
Posted on January 20, 2008The Australian reveals how some Australians are getting their hands on a copy of the controversial Tom Cruise biography: CONSUMERS hungry for Andrew Morton's Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography are turning to eBay to get a copy. US publisher St Martin's Press has instructed its distributors not to sell the...
History of social networking
Posted on January 20, 2008At GigaOM, Brian McConnell charts the evolution of social networks from the 80s to 00s: As Facebook enjoys its moment in the sun, we should take a moment to step back and look at the history of computers and social communication. Some historical perspective is in order, both to assess...
Facebook in privacy trouble ... again
Posted on January 20, 2008Facebook's practice of not deleting accounts is attracting scrutiny in the UK: Is Facebook facing some more flack for its user policies in the UK? After users complained about Facebook?s policy regarding the deactivation of an account, the Information Commissioner?s Office has initiated an investigation to look into the matter...
Some EU politicians support file sharing
Posted on January 19, 2008Mashable reports on a EU political party that supports file sharing: In a highly unusual move for any political group today, the Greens EFA party of the European Parliament have publicly expressed their support for file sharing on the Net. The party has taken the highly progressive step of speaking...
AFP is not a fan of Web 2.0
Posted on January 19, 2008On Tuesday I blogged about how a UK lecturer had banned their students from using Google and Wikipedia (see here), but it seems as though academia is not the only sector to be concerned about using Wikipedia and other new media: It?s one thing for Agence France Presse to ban...
Esteban Colberto interviews Lou Dobbs
Posted on January 19, 2008Watch Esteban Colberto interview CNN anchor Lou Dobbs. It's funny, but it feels a bit odd? Well, TVNewser has the details: Earlier today, TVNewser highlighted the unique, highly produced interview of Lou Dobbs on The Colbert Report last night. It turns out, the interview, like the idea that Stephen Colbert...
Google to host open source scientific data
Posted on January 19, 2008Wired reports that Google is to host terabytes of open-source scientific datasets: Sources at Google have disclosed that the humble domain, http://research.google.com, will soon provide a home for terabytes of open-source scientific datasets. The storage will be free to scientists and access to the data will be free for all...
Social networking in education
Posted on January 18, 2008Inspired by The Economist's debate on the following proposition, "Social networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom", dannah boyd (perhaps surprisingly) argues the case against social networking in education: In their current incarnation, social network sites (SNSs) like Facebook and MySpace...
Strange online communities
Posted on January 18, 2008Cracked.com has a bizarre list of the eight strangest online communities, including Men's Long Hair Hyperboard (mlhh.org) ,Furrs Fur Christ (furrsfurchrist.com), and Boytaurs (boytaur.net). What is a Boytaur you ask? Well, this pic says it all: Definitely strange...
Slippery slope of censorship
Posted on January 18, 2008Given the proposal for Australia to introduce ISP level content filtering, this post from Techdirt's Mike Masnick is worth remembering: The Slippery Slope Of Censorship In ISP Filtering We've talked about how government attempts to censor certain types of internet content tend to be a slippery slope towards more and...
Generation Google
Posted on January 18, 2008Ars Technica summarises an interesting British report on how young people use the internet: A new UK report on the habits of the "Google Generation" finds that kids born since 1993 aren't quite the Internet super-sleuths they're sometimes made out to be...
"Talk about awkward": our personal and private lives collide
Posted on January 18, 2008USA Today describes the common phenomenon of our personal and private lives colliding through social networking sites: Just after her honeymoon last March, Wadooah Wali took the de rigueur next step these days: She changed her status on the networking websites Facebook and MySpace from "in a relationship" to "married"...
"Musicians aren't merchants"
Posted on January 18, 2008CNET News.com has some lessons from Radiohead's and Trent Reznor's recent experiments in music distribution: Musicians aren't merchants. We certainly learned that through Radiohead and Trent Reznor's separate experiments with choose-your-price album promotions...
Blogonomics
Posted on January 18, 2008For the Columbia Journalism Review, Chris Mooney considers the idea of the Bloggers Guild of America: Yes, dear reader: the Bloggers Guild of America may be on its way. The dispute between screen and television writers and media conglomerates has its roots, after all, in the Web...
The Scrabble wars
Posted on January 18, 2008Blogging for Media Post's Just an Online Minute, Wendy Davis takes stock of the Scrabble wars: Just An Online Minute? ScrabbleWars: P For Piracy, Or E For Extra Exposure? It?s been one week since news first broke that Scrabble owner Hasbro was complaining to Facebook about Scrabulous, the online version...
Cyberlaw and cyberlawgs
Posted on January 18, 2008Blogging for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Corynne McSherry looks at a rather "silly" trademark case: Eric Menhart may call himself a cyberlawyer, but we think he has a lot of learn about cyberlaw -- and common sense. Menhart is the author of a blog about cyberlaw issues called, logically if...
Redefining fair use
Posted on January 18, 2008Commenting on remarks made Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu in a recent debate for the New York Times (see here, here and here), Techdirt's Mike Masnick wonders whether it is time to redefine fair use: Wu, however, points out that the growing digital world has drastically stretched the concept of...
Teenagers and news
Posted on January 18, 2008The Media Management Center at Northwestern University has a fascinating report on how teenagers experience news: Teenagers aren't much into following serious news online, but news organizations can ?and should ? cultivate their interest by learning how to catch their eyes, diminish their angst, go where they are on the...
Porn 2.0 on the rise
Posted on January 18, 2008Probably the most visited post in the history of this blog is Porn 2.0, which linked to a Mashable post on the rapid growth of YouPorn (see here). Given that there seems to be so much interest in this topic I was interested to see the top moving sites of...
Where is Apple's rental service for music?
Posted on January 18, 2008Blogging for Bits, Saul Hansell asks where is Apple's rental service for music?: One quick last word on Macworld and what Steve Jobs didn?t do. The technology that enables movie rentals also could enable music rentals ? or, in other words, a music subscription service like Rhapsody...
The Internet Party
Posted on January 18, 2008What happens when Google's parents leave town for the weekend? Cracked.com has the answer:
Why is Finland Europe's technology leader?
Posted on January 18, 2008CNET News.com covers why Finland Europe's technology leader (at least according to Finland's Prime Minister): Although it's on the fringe of Europe geographically, Finland has for years been at the center of the continent's tech industry. The country gave birth to cell phone leader Nokia and has emerged as a...
Lawyers, blogs and money
Posted on January 18, 2008James Grimmelmann considers whether legal academics should commercialise their blogs: Drafting my disclosure statement reminded me of an issue I?ve been meaning to discuss for a while. I don?t blog for money; I?m uncomfortable when other legal academics do...
"Mac People"
Posted on January 18, 2008PC World reports on a new study of "Mac People": People who prefer Apple's Macintosh computers over PCs have long been considered to be on the artsy, hip end of the personality spectrum -- and now a study proves that "Mac people" indeed are more liberal and open-minded than average...
Digg's secret editors
Posted on January 18, 2008Valleywag has this exclusive story on Digg's secret editors: Why do some stories abruptly disappear from Digg? Duncan Riley of TechCrunch suspects "super users." But there's a much simpler explanation: Digg's shadowy moderators. Digg cofounder Kevin Rose has admitted that the social-news site, a supposedly democratic venue where users pick...
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Scalia Opens Religious Freedom Conference
Justice Antonin Scalia gave the keynote address at a conference on...
Ads Ask New Hampshire Candidates For Religious Freedom Positions
A coalition of groups advocating church-state separation is runnin...
Must Freedom of Expression include the license to offend?
Yes
Imposing any limits on speech, no matter how seemingly reasonab...
I'm wondering about how the law applies to my marriage. How does being married differ from being single in the eyes of the law
Short answer is that it probably depends on the State you live in, whether the c...
How does assault differ from battery?
Assault requires only the expectation of contact; battery requires contact....

Must Freedom of Expression include the license to offend?
Yes
Imposing any limits on speech, no matter how seemingly reasonab...
I'm wondering about how the law applies to my marriage. How does being married differ from being single in the eyes of the law
Short answer is that it probably depends on the State you live in, whether the c...
How does assault differ from battery?
Assault requires only the expectation of contact; battery requires contact....








