Our cover article is by Sydney University law student, Nicole Underhill. Nicole assesses the new Commonwealth Interactive Gambling Act 2001 and considers whether the government can effectively control the ability of Australians to access illegal interactive gambling services. She argues that there are a range of both legal and technical problems which greatly restrict the capacity of the government to prohibit online gambling and that these problems are evident in the Act and will result in the Act being generally ineffective and un-enforceable. Nicole concludes that in view of this incapacity of the government to prohibit access to illegal gambling services, government policy based on the notion of prohibition is misguided.

In her article, Carolyn Penfold, lecturer at the University of NSW, discusses the current Australian scheme for internet content regulation. Carolyn analyses the approaches taken by other nations to control problematic material. She discusses the complexity of negotiating international agreements in this area and offers some suggestions for restructuring Australia’s content regulation scheme. 

Irene Zeitler, partner at Freehills provides an overview of the Cybercrime Bill 2001 recently introduced by the Federal Government in her article, “Cybercrime: Proposed legislation clamps down on use of technology to commit serious offences”.  

In her article “The Council of Europe Draft Convention on Cyber-Crime: A European Perspective on a Global Problem”, solicitor Jane Rawlings discusses the Draft Convention on Cyber-Crime which was formally adopted by the European Committee on Crime Problems (Council of Europe) on 26 June 2001. Jane notes that if the Draft Convention is adopted by the 43 Council of Europe members and by the observer states (including Canada, the United States and Japan), it will cover a sizeable portion of the world's computer and telecommunications systems and may form the model for a global cyber-crime convention.  

Anna Carboni and Jane Cornwell of Linklaters & Alliance, discuss cybersquatting and on-line trade mark infringement from both a legal and practical perspective. They focus on litigation in the English courts, they address issues such as jurisdiction, causes of actions and limitations, tactics, remedies and risks posed by litigation involving cybersquatting and trade mark infringement. They also consider similar issues under US law, and ICANN and Nominet dispute resolution procedures. The authors conclude their paper with a discussion of recent developments such as word-stuffing, mousetrapping, pagejacking, and spamming, and how these issues are tackled under current procedures.

David Webber of Davies Collison Cave, provides us with a concise casenote on the decision of Welcome Real-Time v Catuity Inc.  

This casenote discusses the enforceability of the terms of a "browse-wrap" licence agreement. 

“........the Court found that the law which applies in Australia involves a low threshold of originality – effort in gathering and listing of data is sufficient for copyright protection”

This article looks at some commonsense lessons that investors and inventors can learn from the circumstances and outcome of Redrock Holdings Pty Limited and Hotline Communications Ltd & Ors v Hinkley.

In her article, law student Megan Drury argues that the United States government asserts its domination of the internet through the allocation of domain names. While the implementation of the new domain name dispute mechanism proposed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation may go some way toward neutralising the US influence. Megan concludes that the cultural imperialism of the US will continue to influence the content of cyberspace.