As new businesses develop and technology advances some principles still remain the same.

Recently a digital advertising agency was prosecuted by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in relation to the supply or possible supply of its advertising services. The advertising was to be done by way of digital displays at various shopping centres.

It`s important to pay attention to the way the personal information of your company is secured. If you mishandle the confidential information of your customers, it can cause them a financial or reputational loss and lead to a decreasing of trust and considerable harm to your good name.

It is well established under Australia law that secondary publishers can be held liable for defamatory material if they had actual or constructive knowledge of the defamatory matter. This was the crux of Dr Janice Duffy’s multi-year legal battle in the Supreme Court of South Australia with internet search giant, Google.

Metadata Retention

On October 13th, the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (Cth) legislated for the retention of metadata by telecommunications carriers and internet service providers (telcos) for a mandatory period of two years. This data will then be made available to federal, state and territory police, Medicare, Councils in NSW, Worksafe Victoria, the RSPCA, the Tax Office, Australia Post, domestic spy agency ASIO, ASIC and many others when conducting criminal and financial investigations.

Tips

• Take the time to develop an understanding of the cyber threats that could affect your business.
• Work with your clients or board to create a solid cyber-security program that involves the board, management, IT team and employees. A holistic and inclusive approach is required to ensure that proper and functional policies are in place that can and will be complied with.
• Within this ever changing space, continued vigilance and attention to new and current methods, policies, systems and procedures is fundamental if organisations are to minimise the chance of a cyber-attack.

Small businesses are becoming increasingly vulnerable to unfair terms in standard form contracts.  The Government has got closer to addressing this vulnerability by extending the unfair contract protection to include small business contracts.  But what is a small business? And what types of clauses are void?

Another reminder has been sent by the Courts confirming that publication of photos on Twitter on or other web pages does not entitle the world at large to use or republish those photos.

Nothing about the internet changes the fact that the owner of the copyright in a book, movie or music is the only party that has the right to exploit that material. They can offer an end user a license to access the material for a fee, they can give an end user the right to download and play a movie for their personal use, or they can license a movie chain to play that movie in the cinema. Those rights belong to the owner of the copyright and no-one else has the right to use or access the material unless they have the permission (and paid the fee if required) of the rights holder.

The Australian Government announced on 5 August 2014 that it will  introduce a suite of counter-terrorism measures to provide security agencies the resources and legislative powers needed to combat terrorism, whether within Australia or carried out by Australians overseas.