 | INTERNET LAW - Is an IP Address Personal Information under Hong Kong Privacy Law? |
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| | IBLS Editorial Department
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
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| | Privacy laws protect personal individuals' identifiable information. IP (Internet protocol) addresses itself are not considered personal information, although they may lead to other individuals" personal information such as address, telephone number, name and date of birth, among others. Do IP addresses constitute personal information under China privacy law? This article answers this question by presenting a 2007-Hong Kong’s case. [More...] |
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| INTERNET LAW - Mobile Porno, How to Protect Yourself in Cyberspace |
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| | IBLS Cybercrime Diploma Graduate, Marjorie S. Rieskin
Sunday, July 05, 2009
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| | Internet is a global connection of networks and, therefore, it is difficult to exercise control over the Internet. Yet, control is necessary. To exercise maximum control, it is important to take actions at three fronts simultaneously,
1. Legislation: laying down the rules and regulations as well as the policy;
2. Technology: developing software programs;
3. Information and education: making people aware as to the dangers of the Internet
and the steps the legislative, executive, and the judiciary should take. Also, raising awareness in society.
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| INTERNET LAW - Royalties, Non-resident Withholding Tax |
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| | Inland Revenue Service, New Zealand
Friday, July 03, 2009
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| | When a New Zealand resident or a permanent establishment in New Zealand makes payments to a non-resident for the rights to use their intellectual property, the payments are considered to be sourced in New Zealand and subject to tax here. A resident person making such payments to a non-resident has to withhold non-resident withholding tax (NRWT) on the payments.
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| INTERNET LAW - Australia Copyright Update 2009 |
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| | Freehills.com, Australia, Kristin Stammer, Sue Gilchrist, Irene Zeitler, Campbell Thompson, www.freehills.com
Sunday, May 17, 2009
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| | The High Court recently decided1 that IceTV, the provider of an electronic program guide (EPG), did not infringe Nine's copyright in its TV program guide (IceTV Pty Ltd v Nine Network Australia Pty Limited [2009] HCA 14).
The High Court overturned the Full Federal Court"s decision and found IceTV, in taking program time and title information, had not taken a substantial part of Nine’s Weekly Schedules.
The High Court favoured the primary judge’s approach which found the skill and labour in making the programming decisions was irrelevant as it was not directed to the originality of form of expression of the program time and title information.
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| INTERNET LAW - The Protection of the Right to Privacy on the Internet in China |
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| | Cynthia Zhang and Matthew Murphy, MMLC Group, Beijing
Monday, March 09, 2009
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| | Cyberspace privacy of personal information mainly refers to the right of citizens to enjoy the peace in the network's private life and the protection of private information in accordance with the law. It is a kind of right of personality, which should not be unlawfully infringed, known, collected, copied, disclosed, or utilized by others. It also refers to the prohibition of disclosure of certain personal and sensitive information on the internet, including facts and images. Internet privacy is a right to privacy in cyberspace, new challenges along with the popularity of the Internet. The development of network technology makes it more difficult to protect internet privacy than the traditional privacy.
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| INTERNET LAW - Fines Imposed for SMS Spam |
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| | IBLS Contributor: FreeHills, Kaman Tsoi, Senior Associate, Melbourne
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
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| | A telecommunications provider (the company) has been fined $110,000 after allegedly sending 20,000 SMS messages without sufficient sender identification. The fine was imposed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) for breach of the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) (Act).
The Act applies to commercial electronic messages including email, SMS, MMS and instant messaging. The Act requires commercial electronic messages to include 'accurate sender information'. In this case, the company did not identify itself or its product by name, arguing that recipients would be able to make the connection between the three-digit sender ID and the three-letter product name. ACMA did not accept this argument. While SMS marketers struggle to fit all of their messages within the small per-message character limits, ACMA here demonstrated that there are limits to its tolerance for abbreviated approaches to compliance.
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| INTERNET LAW - Online Censorship in Thailand |
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| | IBLS Editorial Department- Staff Attorney
Monday, December 08, 2008
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| | Thailand has a long history of government- authorized censorship. The 2007 Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand and the 1997 Constitution guarantee freedom of speech with the proviso that censorship may be imposed in certain circumstances. Additionally, Thailand's Computer-Related Crimes Act, which was introduced by the military junta, imposes some limitations by penalizing a range of computer-related speeches.
The 2007 Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand guarantees freedom of speech but a law may impose censorship "for the purpose of maintaining the security of the State, protecting the rights, liberties, dignity, reputation, family or privacy rights of other persons, maintaining public order or good morals or preventing or halting the deterioration of the mind or health of the public.”
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| INTERNET LAW - Asean Free Trade Agreement and its Relevance for E-commerce |
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| | IBLS Editorial Department
Monday, November 17, 2008
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| | The Asean Free Trade Agreement -AFTA, definitely plays a significant role in the development of e-commerce among ASEAN nations. ASEAN is the Association of Southeast Nations, with 10 member states and an estimated population of 575.5 million. ASEAN members are Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam; this regional economic group presented a GDP of US$ 3,431.2 billion for the year 2007. ASEAN nations signed AFTA in 1992 in Singapore to create a free trade area for goods, services, and investment for the info-communication industries. Even though e-commerce is still incipient among ASEAN nations, its potential is colossal taking into account its population and the regional agreements ASEAN has signed with third countries such as Australia/New Zealand, India, and the European Union.
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| INTERNET LAW - Hong Kong’s Regulation of Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Advertisement |
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| | IBLS Editorial Department
Monday, November 10, 2008
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| | Hong Kong's legislation well regulates the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages. In May 2007, Hong Kong enacted the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance (UEMO), to regulate all forms of commercial electronic messages sent with or to the "Hong Kong link” (.hk). UEMO is supplemented by the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Regulation (UEMR) enacted by Hong Kong in December 2007. In addition to UEMO and UEMR, Hong Kong"s Telecommunications Authority approved a code of practice to regulate practical aspects of commercial electronic messages and serve as the users’ guidelines. Both Hong Kong’s commercial advertisers and foreign companies advertising in Hong Kong should be aware of this legislation because it applies to advertisement sent from Hong Kong or received in Hong Kong, either by individuals or companies. [More...] |
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| INTERNET LAW - Legal Overview on Franchise Regulations in Indonesia |
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| | IBLS Contributor: Bambang Pram Said, Said, Sudiro & Partners Indonesia, mail@ssplegal.com
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
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| | The term “franchise” was introduced by Isaac Singer in 1851. In general, franchise refers to an approval by the owner of particular products or services (the “Franchisor”) granting rights to another party to use or to market such products or services under a certain terms and conditions.
The Franchisor utilizes the franchise system as an alternate scheme to expand a business rapidly. The Franchisor does not have to provide huge amount of capital to operate in the new market areas. The capital will be derived from the party granted the right to use or to market the products or services (the “Franchisee”). Furthermore, the Franchisor can be less concerned about the management of the branches, as the management will be taken care by the Franchisee.
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| INTERNET LAW - China's New Corporate Income Tax Laws and their Effects on Foreign Investment |
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| | IBLS Editorial Department
Monday, September 08, 2008
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| | China's State Council approved the Detailed Implementation Regulation (DIR) on December 2007. DIR's main goal was to implement China's new Corporate Income Tax Law (CIT) that entered into force on January 2008. DIR and CIT are extremely relevant for foreign companies doing business in China because they determine how the China government will tax its income, establish withholding tax rules, eliminate taxes on qualified dividends, determine tax credits and exemptions, and set other significant corporate tax rules.
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| INTERNET LAW - Republic of Korea Drafts Internet Libel Law for 2009 |
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| | Kelly O'Connell, IBLS Editor
Sunday, August 03, 2008
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| | On July 22, the Republic of Korea Government announced that new rules are coming into effect for the country's web, drafted by the Korea Communications Commission. The ordinance is titled, "Comprehensive Measures for Information Protection on the Internet.” These rules establish heavy penalties for website managers and owners for violations of rules regarding breach of libel, private data leaks, and non-anonymous user identity blogging. The measure also defines a new crime, called “cyber insult,” that will give new powers for police to crack down on Internet users who post defamatory messages. The law gives broader protection under the real names website system.
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| INTERNET LAW - Japan's Protection of Computer Programs |
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| | IBLS Editorial Department
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
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| | Even though copyright laws were not developed envisioning protection of computer programs, the world's tendency to provide copyright protection to computer programs is growing. According to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic works and the Universal Copyright Convention, once a country provides copyrights protection to domestically-developed computer programs, it must afford the same protection to computer programs developed by foreign persons from countries signatories to these international agreements. This article presents an overview of Japan's protection of computer programs.
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| INTERNET LAW - Beijing Puts First-Ever Piracy Criminal in Jail as Fakes Create One-Third of GDP |
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| | IBLS Editor
Thursday, May 15, 2008
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| | After promising for years to start cracking down on rampant piracy, a Chinese court has now handed down a one-year jail sentence to a Beijing man for selling fake DVDs. This marks the first time a person in the Capital has been convicted and sentenced to prison for the crime of theft of intellectual piracy, according to the Chinese Xinhua news agency. The pirate is Zhou Cheng, 40, who was also fined 10,000 yuan ($1,430) for selling illegally-mastered DVDs at a store in Beijing's Chaoyang district where authorities found 10,000 illegally copied discs. China is the world's biggest source of pirated goods.
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| INTERNET LAW - Laos Trademark Law of 1995 |
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| | Kelly O'Connell, IBLS Editor
Monday, April 07, 2008
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| | Originally unified as the ancient Lao kingdom of Lan Xang, which was established in the 1300's under King Fa Ngum, this lush Asian state is known now as Lao People's Democratic Republic ("PDR”), or simply Laos. Despite being a regional player for hundreds of years, the kingdom entered decline until it was finally mastered by Siam (Thailand.) from the late 1800's till the late 19th century. France brought Laos into the French Indochina territories at the end of the 19th century. In 1975, after the end of the Vietnam war, Communist Pathet Lao wrested control of the government from the six-century-old monarchy and aligned the state with Vietnam and its highly structured regime. Change came as the country slowly eased out of communism and reestablished private enterprise and opened the door to foreign investment, starting in 1986. Laos was ushered into ASEAN in 1997.
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| INTERNET LAW - Distinctiveness of a Trademark under Taiwan Trademark Law |
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| | IBLS Editorial Department
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
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| | Taiwan is an Asian Island of 35,801 Km2 (13,822.8 sq. mi.) and 23 million inhabitants. As part of the Republic of China, Taiwan is playing a major role in the international trade arena, especially in all related to the outsourcing and manufacturing sector. Thus, trademark holders worldwide are vigilant of Taiwan, and other Chinese territories, intellectual property ("IP”) laws, including trademark laws. Most trademark laws require that the mark be 'distinctive' to support IP protection. This article explains the ‘distinctiveness" requirement under Taiwan trademark law.
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| INTERNET LAW - Local Working of Patents in India |
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| | IBLS Contributor: Gladys MIRANDAH, patrick mirandah co., singapore@mirandah.com
Monday, March 31, 2008
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| | There is a requirement to file a statement of information (Form 27) regarding the working of a patent in India. The working of a patent means the commercial exploitation of the invention that is embodied in the patent. These statements can be supplied every financial calendar year, within three months of the end of each year.
Although the working of an invention within India at a commercial scale amounts to local working (LW), it still is controversial as to whether the LW of a patent can only be satisfied by the local production and not importation.
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| INTERNET LAW - How to Register a Domain Name in Hong Kong |
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| | IBLS Editorial Department
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
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| | Hong Kong Domain Name Registration Company Limited ("HK DNR”) is the Hong Kong's authority in charge of domain name registrations since 2001. HK DNR is under the control of the Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation Limited which is the national registry and registrar for the registration and assignment of domain names in this country. Companies or individuals can register the following country top-level domain names: .COM.HK, .EDU.HK, .GOV.HK, .HK, .NET.HK, .ORG.HK in English and other Chinese domain names. This article provides start-up guidance on how to register these English domain names in Hong Kong.
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| INTERNET LAW - Taxation Of Corporations In Japan |
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| | IBLS Editorial Department
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
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| | Asian economies are growing at exponential rate. Even though most of their expansion is caused by intensive international trade and banking services, e-commerce is getting momentum in the Asian economies nowadays. Japan, as one of the largest economies in Asia is attracting foreign investors and corporations that want to establish their quarters in this country and Japanese are expanding their business' 'nets abroad. This article provides a summary of Japan"s corporate tax system.
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| INTERNET LAW - Chinese Great Firewall of Internet Facing Increased Criticism & Internal Attacks |
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| | Kelly O'Connell, IBLS Editor
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
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| | Reports that China's massive Internet is heavily policed and censored is news to few political aficionados or students of the World Wide Web but a movement is growing within the country to fight back against the Government's heavy hand and refusal to allow any genuine rights of free speech or expression. Now a protest surge is developing behind an 18-year-old student's obscure blog that questions whether China's policies are either logically related to their stated aims or even a smart policy for the State to pursue.
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