Posts Tagged australians
Aussie is taking on US giant over mental breakdown
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on January 3, 2012
CLASS action specialists Shine Lawyers will sue a US medical devices giant for harm caused to Australian mother Jennelle Jeffery, who claims she suffered a mental breakdown after enduring shocks from a faulty defibrillator.
The firm took on the Federal Court case against Medtronic following revelations Ms Jeffery was among 1500 Australians implanted with Sprint Fidelis defibrillator leads.
Ms Jeffery, 32, had the defibrillator fitted in 2005 after being diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart condition affecting one in 500 Australians. It can cause palpitations, fainting, irregular heartbeat and sudden death.
The defibrillator was designed to shock the heart back to a regular rhythm.
Similar devices have saved countless lives but in this one a central component, the Medtronic Sprint Fidelis leads, were prone to fractures which could set off inappropriate shocks or leave heart patients unprotected. The leads were recalled in 2007 after being implanted in 268,000 people.
According to hospital documents, Ms Jeffery was left with a severe post-traumatic stress disorder commonly associated with soldiers returning from war as a result of the shocks.
"It’s early days as to the size and scope of the action," said Shine partner Rebecca Jancauskas. "if more people were to approach us we could examine or explore whether there was scope for a class action."
Senator Nick Xenophon said he planned to ask a Senate committee to launch an inquiry into the Sprint Fidelis leads and the handling of the recall.
Ms Jeffery said she only discovered the recall in an internet search. other patients have also claimed they were not informed until they received shocks years later.
At least 13 deaths, including one in Australia, have been linked to the leads.
Aussie is taking on US giant over mental breakdown
WA Labor throws support behind native title claim
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on December 4, 2011
The major political parties in Western Australia have joined forces to push the Federal Government to honour its commitment to fund native title.
The agreement, made in 1994 by the then Prime Minister Paul Keating and reaffirmed by John Howard, meant the Commonwealth would fund 75 per cent of native title costs.
However, the WA Government now says that the Commonwealth will not fund any further claims and the state is owed $240 million.
Indigenous Labor MP Ben Wyatt has warned the Federal Government against taking the stance.
“If the Commonwealth Government walks away from native title, then the future success of future native title settlements looks more grim,” he said.
“Without the Federal Government support then native title will fail to continue its path of reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.”
Yesterday, Attorney General Christian Porter said the Commonwealth funding of native title compensation was temporarily suspended during the global financial crisis.
He said the Premier Colin Barnett received a letter from Julia Gillard in may saying the Federal Government would no longer honour the agreement.
“They agreed, we agreed, this state agreed to that on a Commonwealth promise; an acknowledgment by the Commonwealth that they would bear the lion's share of the cost,” he said.
“And, the Prime Minister, in one letter, simply and breathlessly reneges on that agreement.”
The Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been contacted for comment.
Will new laws force prostitution underground?
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on November 18, 2011
Louise Merrillees
Updated November 07, 2011 14:33:33
Janelle Fawkes worked in the Western Australian sex industry for 15 years.
She says the legislation introduced to parliament to legalise the industry will force sex workers underground in to escape what she calls “onerous laws”.
“This will be the most dangerous sex industry law ever introduced into Australia,” she said.
“Currently it is not illegal to be a sex worker in WA but the requirements for compliance to the new legislation means the entire sector, particularly the private independent sex worker, will go underground.
“And when it is underground and out of sight, sex workers become vulnerable.”
The proposed bill would see brothels excluded from residential areas and it initially required women to register as sex workers unless they were working in a brothel.
The bill also includes the creation of an exit fund to help sex workers leave the industry, authority for health workers to enter premises where prostitution is suspected and the ability to cap the number of licenses issued.
It is the latest attempt by a state government to regulate prostitution.
Attorney General Christian Porter says ordinary West Australians do not want prostitution businesses near their homes or near children’s schools.
“The bill is designed first and foremost to get prostitution out of the suburbs and to protect people’s homes,” he said.
“A vote against this bill is a vote for backyard brothels and the current uncertain, untenable situations.”
Former brothel madam Linda Watson says the laws do not go far enough.
Ms Watson now runs a program designed to support women who want to leave the sex industry.
She says prostitution should be made illegal across the board but the Government should target those seeking it rather than those providing it.
“We don’t need to have prostitution anywhere, prostitution could be stamped out if we could just get rid of the buyers,” she said.
“It’s going to be very hard to eliminate prostitution, it will go underground but prostitution belongs underground.”
Contentious
Mr Porter made some key changes to the bill in an attempt to get it over the line, including removing the need for sex workers to be registered if they are employed by a licensed brothel.
The State Opposition Leader Eric Ripper says Labor is opposed to the legislation mostly because of the register.
He says a change to the draft bill which removed the need for prostitutes to be registered if they are employed by a licensed operator, is not good enough.
“That’s worse than the original proposal,” he said.
“And if you say to some people, you don’t have to register with the government but you can register with brothel owners, how does that help? you simply drive the industry underground.”
“What’s really bad about registration is the information that then flows out to the community.
“This makes it virtually impossible for sex workers to leave the industry, there’ll always be that record of their work in the sex industry.”
Ms Fawkes points out that the licensing model has failed in two other states.
“Licensing models are proven to create a two tiered industry, whereby a small number of brothels are legal and the majority of the industry operates illegally,” she said.
She also claims that moving brothels into industrialised areas will mean sex workers will be at greater risk, as they are in areas often poorly lit and isolated.
However, the legislation is not a done deal.
Liberal MPs are being given a conscience vote on the issue and backbencher Peter Abetz has confirmed he will not be supporting the laws.
Mr Abetz says that while he agrees with parts of the legislation, he is morally bound to vote against it.
“The difficulty that I have with the legislation is that it, in a sense legitimises prostitution, it gives it state sanction,” he said.
“And that’s something that philosophically I really struggle with.
“Without some kind of sunset clause of phasing out the sex industry as a legitimate industry, I would have difficulty supporting it.”
The Independent Kalgoorlie MP John Bowler says he will support it, if the town’s infamous Hay Street brothels are given an exemption from the residential ban.
“The vast majority of Goldfields people have supported the retention of the Hay Street brothels, it works well,” he said.
“They’re a tourist attraction.
“We’ve got two of the three remaining brothels that have tours and they provide employment and I suppose something a little bit different for the tourists.”
Mr Porter says the Hay Street brothels are located in a mixed residential area which would prevent them from acquiring a licence but an exemption may be granted, similar to one in Perth.
“Whether or not people in Kalgoorlie, or the Kalgoorlie community want a similar exemption for Hay Street is something that they will no doubt come to the government on,” he said.
Not the answer
Ms Watson says legalising the profession is not the answer.
“Wherever prostitution has been legalised, crime will proliferate,” she said.
“If our politicians are really serious about drug issues and stamping down on prostitution they should say be saying ‘hey this is not going to happen in my town or on my watch’.”
Ms Fawkes, who is now chief executive officer of the national body representing sex workers, the Scarlet Alliance, says sex workers already face discrimination and forcing them to register their details will make it worse.
“Sex worker experience high levels of discrimination and stigma in Western Australia; sex workers are rightly reluctant to have their details on a register,” she said.
“Sex work experience is used against sex workers and their families and has resulted in sex workers losing custody of their children and being victims of harassment.
“A private sex worker would need to gain council approval, gain a license from Racing, Licensing and Liquor and operate outside of a residential area in order to work legally.”
“What sex worker is going to do that?”
Topics: state-parliament, prostitution, perth-6000
first posted November 04, 2011 21:01:15
Porn link tipped in net piracy case
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on November 8, 2011
Matthew Clapham – part owner of the company Movie Rights Group.
AN AUSTRALIAN company trying to sue people for illegally downloading Hollywood movie Kill the Irishman has extensive links to internet pornography, raising suspicions that the legal action may in fact be a stalking horse for a larger assault on behalf of the porn industry.
As reported by Fairfax earlier this month, Brisbane law firm Lloyds Solicitors, acting on behalf of the Gold Coast-based Movie Rights Group, has written to internet service providers including Telstra, iiNet, Internode and Exetel seeking the details of thousands of people alleged to have illegally downloaded the crime thriller Kill the Irishman ins may.
An investigation by Fairfax has now revealed that the New Zealand-born brothers behind Movie Rights Group are major players in the internet porn industry, raising the possibility that their real motive is to sue thousands of Australians who have downloaded porn without paying for it.
Advertisement: story continues below
Richard Clapham – part owner of Movie Rights Group.
Melbourne copyright lawyer Anthony Palmer said the legal action brought by Movie Rights Group on behalf of Los Angeles-based distributor Lightning Entertainment appeared to be designed to establish a business model that could have widespread potential in relation to other copyright breaches. ”It looks to me very much like they will attempt to establish that model with Kill the Irishman and then they’ll try to roll it out to other copyright holders. It’s potentially very lucrative,” he said.
Lightning Entertainment bills itself as a distributor of ”independent” cinema, and counts films Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger and Kenny among its titles. however, the Age has learnt that Lightning is in fact a subsidiary of New Frontier Entertainment, a company that derived 74 per cent of its near-$50 million revenue last financial year from pay-per-view and subscription pornography.
Fairfax can also reveal that the owners of Movie Rights Group, Matthew Wade Clapham, 33, and Richard Dean Clapham, 38, also own a string of companies based in Australia, London and Cyprus that run a plethora of porn sites and associated billing services.
Those connections have led some local experts to suspect that what Movie Rights Group ultimately has in mind is a US-style mass suit against people who have illegally downloaded pornography without paying for it.
”In my opinion, they could be testing the waters to see what the media, political and public response is,” said digital forensics expert Grame Thompson. ”Presumably they’re also doing it because they want to make a lot of money. Porn could well be next.”
In the US, lawyers have issued tens of thousands of letters of demand to people accused of illegally downloading explicit content in the past year. Typically, these letters suggest that if the case were to go to court, the alleged downloader could, if found guilty, face fines of up to $150,000, plus costs.
Alternatively, they are told, the case could be settled immediately for a small fee, generally just a few thousand dollars. many pay up rather than face the possible expense and humiliation of a court case. A similar approach has also been used with some success in Britain.
The group responsible for representing the interests of film and TV copyright holders in Australia, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, has been quick to distance itself from the Movie Rights Group action.
kquinn@theage.com.au
Follow Karl Quinn on Twitter: @karlkwin
Buyers dodge tablet ban
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on October 25, 2011
Banned from sale in Australia … Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1. Photo: Reuters
- Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 blocked from sale
- Apple fails in new Samsung court bid
- Kogan buckles under Apple legal threats
- Samsung’s lawyers can’t spot the difference
Australians are making a mockery of a Federal Court injunction banning the sale of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets in Australia by ordering them from online stores.
Meanwhile, in the US, Samsung’s own lawyers were left red-faced after being unable to differentiate between Samsung and Apple’s tablets in court.
Samsung has been forbidden by Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett from selling or marketing the device in Australia until a full hearing in its patent infringement case with Apple, which isn’t expected to take place until next year. Justice Bennett said Apple had a prima facie case that Samsung infringed two of its patents.
But online sellers on eBay, and web stores like MobiCity.com.au, Expansys, Techrific and dMavo, are bypassing Samsung Australia and obtaining stock from other countries such as Hong Kong.
GetPrice.com.au lists a slew of Australian sellers offering the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and there are over 2000 results on eBay. Some, like MobiCity, offer a 12 month Australian warranty.
Maverick online seller Ruslan Kogan was also selling Galaxy Tab 10.1 units but withdrew them from the market after receiving legal threats from Apple. However, it appears the other sellers, many of which are hosted overseas, do not care for Apple’s threats.
“If this is an outcome of the injunction, the harm is not to Samsung, which makes its sales all the same, but to the Australian retailers who do not have the opportunity to compete,” said senior patent lawyer Mark Summerfield, from Watermark in Melbourne.
“If we could ask one question of Justice Bennett in the wake of her decision it would be this: does she really believe, in a global consumer economy, that there is any practical value in an Australian court slapping an injunction on a mass-market consumer product that is, in any event, widely available for purchase online?”
Large influx of orders
An unidentified director of dmavo.com.au told ZDNet Australia that he was importing hundreds of Galaxy Tab 10.1 units to cater to a large influx of inquiries following the court injunction. The director told the website that they believed Apple had no basis for legal threats against them.
Summerfield said those who bought the tablet would have little to fear in terms of legal action but it was likely that the resellers of the device – who are selling it despite the injunction – would be slapped with legal threats from Apple.
The effectiveness of injunctions in the digital age was questioned earlier this year after Twitter users in Britain foiled an attempt by footballer Ryan Giggs to use an injunction to keep details of an alleged affair secret. In 2009, bloggers and Twitter users thwarted a legal attempt to stop British media reporting on questions posed by a lawmaker in a parliamentary debate over the dumping of waste in west Africa.
Ruslan Kogan, founder of Kogan.com.au, said companies needed to understand that we now operate in a global marketplace. Kogan’s executive director, David Shafer, said only the local retailers would lose out with the injunction.
“In the age of the internet, an injunction in one jurisdiction doesn’t prevent supply of a product into that jurisdiction, it only harms the retailers or resellers in that jurisdiction because they can’t be the stores making the sale,” said Shafer.
Apple and Samsung did not respond to requests seeking comment.
Patent war a delaying tactic
Summerfield said the patent infringement battles around the world were a strategy by Apple to delay the introduction of a serious competitor in the tablet space.
But even with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 injunction, Samsung is still permitted to sell other tablet models in Australia.
On Friday the Federal Court rejected Apple’s request to block or obtain advanced warning of any new Samsung tablet before it goes on sale. Justice Bennett did not sympathise with Apple’s fears that such measures were necessary because Samsung may launch a near identical product to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in future under a different name.
Samsung has yet to comment on its future tablet plans although this week it is slated to launch a new smartphone based on the next version of Google’s Android platform.
Apple’s global patent infringement battle with Samsung now includes more than 20 cases in 10 countries.
Samsung’s lawyers can’t spot the difference
In the US, District Judge Lucy Koh said that Samsung’s tablet infringed on Apple’s iPad patents, but added that Apple had a problem establishing the validity of its patents. Apple is seeking to ban sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet and the Galaxy S 4G phone in the US, but Koh has yet to make a ruling.
Apple must show both that Samsung infringed its patents and that its patents are valid under the law.
Samsung attorney Kathleen Sullivan argued that in order to defeat an injunction bid, Samsung need only show that it has raised strong enough questions about the validity of Apple’s patents.
“We think we’ve clearly raised substantial questions,” Sullivan said at the hearing on Thursday in a San Jose, California federal court.
Apple attorney Harold McElhinny said Apple’s product design is far superior to previous tablets, so Apple’s patents should not be invalidated by designs that came before.
“it was the design that made the difference,” McElhinny said.
Koh frequently remarked on the similarity between each company’s tablets. at one point during the hearing, she held one black glass tablet in each hand above her head, and asked Sullivan if she could identify which company produced which.
“Not at this distance your honor,” said Sullivan, who stood at a podium roughly ten feet away.
“Can any of Samsung’s lawyers tell me which one is Samsung and which one is Apple?” Koh asked. a moment later, one of the lawyers supplied the right answer.
A Dutch court on Friday dismissed Samsung’s claims of patent infringement by Apple, scuppering its bid to ban the sale of iPhones and iPads in the Netherlands. it also rejected Apple’s counterclaims in the case.
The ruling is a blow to Samsung, which has filed patent-infringement claims in France and Italy in order to ban the sale of the iPhone, just as Apple has started marketing the latest edition of the popular gadget, iPhone 4S.
“Apple will be taking French and Italian translations of the Dutch ruling with it. This makes it a long shot for Samsung that it could win an injunction in the EU based on its 3G patents,” independent intellectual property expert Florian Mueller said.
All Android under threat?
Mueller published a new article over the weekend claiming the Australian injunction gave Apple ammunition to go after all Android device makers. it is not clear whether this will pan out, and Summerfield says it may not be viable to launch so many court actions.
But Apple is known for its litigious nature and the Australian court case has revealed that Apple is unwilling to license some of its most valuable iPad patents to competitors, no matter what the price.
Mueller argues that the patents in the case are so broad that they cover all Android products, not just the Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Summerfield, however, says the court has not found that the two patents are certainly infringed or that Apple’s touchscreen patent is valid. these will be considered at the final hearing, likely next year, which will essentially determine whether to make the temporary injunction on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 permanent and whether Samsung is liable for damages.
“There are ways of doing multitouch that do not involve Apple’s ‘heuristics’. Indeed, there is prior art showing other approaches, and if Apple’s patent is really so broad, then it may be invalid on the basis that it encompasses this prior art,” Summerfield said.
- with Reuters
This reporter is on Twitter: @ashermoses
Article source: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/tablets/buyers-dodge–tablet-ban-20111017-1lsdg.html
Tags: news, technology
