The excellent Meryl-Streep-channels-Margaret-Thatcher movie The Iron Lady is still running in Australian cinemas and hasn’t been released on DVD anywhere in the world, but I legally watched a copy on the small screen on the weekend. How? I happened to get on the right plane. More »
This week’s Federal Court ruling that Optus customers are able to view sporting matches minutes after they are streamed live without breaching copyright is a landmark decision that alters our understanding of copyright law, and has significant implications for the AFL’s broadcasting rights deal. More »
While judicious shopping around can find you a better deal on some older products, pricing for Apple’s gadgets tends to be remarkably consistent. How does the technology giant ensure that all its retailers play ball? More »
If you’re a copyright owner and you believe someone is illegally distributing your material, what should you do? It’s not a question that lends itself to an easy answer, but choosing to sue the alleged offender somewhere they don’t live doesn’t look too good. More »
The Christmas season TV schedules is a wasteland that makes you grateful for your DVD collection/iView/Channel BT backlog. But there are a few programs that are worth hunting down when they’re broadcast. Here’s Lifehacker’s top five. More »
Hi Lifehacker, I have been trying to find some cheaper alternatives to the iTunes store for purchasing electronic music legally. I came across LegalSounds. They seem to be selling tracks at $0.09 and albums for $1.99. In their copyright statement they mention that they pay royalties to artists according to Russian laws. However, I wanted to find out if it is actually legal for me to download tracks from this site in Australia? It does sound too good to be true! Thanks, Careful Cheapskate More »
We’ve spent a lot of time this week looking at proposals for how ISPs should deal with allegations of piracy via torrents and how those would work in practice. There’s broad agreement that the proposals aren’t perfect and that a dedicated downloader could easily work around them, but there’s also clearly some widely-held misunderstandings about the nature of the proposals and the alternative business models which might drive entertainment in the future. Let’s bust through a few of them. More »
The actual Zune music player may be long dead and buried, but Microsoft is sticking by Zune as a service until the bitter end. This month it even expanded its services, launching the long awaited Zune Pass music streaming platform in Australia. How does it stack up? More »
It seems Australians have overcome any lingering prejudice that “phones are just for talking”: a new study found 83 per cent of us use our mobiles for purposes other than calling and SMS. But we still favour personal and leisure activities over working on our phones. More »
