Does Australia&#39;s News Media Bargaining Code prevent Australian news being displayed outside of Australia? The Australian News Bargaining Code, if passed, will prevent companies like Google and Facebook from displaying images and snippets (and possibly even headlines) on their platforms unless they pay content creators for the right to do so. In response, Facebook today removed all posts from all Australian media sites' facebook pages - a fairly drastic action - so as to prepare for and not fall foul of the new code, leaving media pages with millions of followers appearing to have no posts at all: Under the code, presuming Google also do not agree to the code, Google will not be able to show Australian media articles to Australians in Google News, but will Google News be legally able to display Australian media articles to users outside of Australia? (e.g those whose IPs show them to be from other countries)
Yes, once law is passed and Facebook is designated under it as a &quot;designated digital platform corporation&quot; then it will be obligated either pay remuneration to all &quot;registered news business corporations&quot; in Australia for content they voluntarily post on Facebook, or not allow any Australian news on their site at all. The same applies to Google and in theory any other digital platform corporation designated by the Australian government. The law makes no distinction according to where the content is shown, but only Australian news businesses can benefit from it. The purpose of the law is to &quot;address a bargaining power imbalance that exists between digital platforms and Australian news businesses&quot; and amends the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 to create a &quot;News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code&quot;. Currently Australian news companies, like any other Facebook user voluntarily posting content on the site, are paid nothing by Facebook. Similarly, Google doesn't pay anyone for the content the indexed on their site, essentially also voluntarily, since it's trivial to opt out of this. The Australian government sees this as the result of unfair competition. According to them, Facebook and Google have abused their power to force Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and other Australian news companies to agree to put their content on their sites for free. This new bargaining code seeks to solve this problem by forcing designated digital platform corporations and registered news business corporations into final offer arbitration over remuneration if they can't come to a negotiated agreement. Any arbitration determination would require that Facebook or Google to pay some amount of remuneration, and the determination would be based in part on &quot;the benefit (whether monetary or otherwise) of the registered news business’ covered news content to the designated digital platform service&quot;. This would include the benefit they receive by showing the content outside of Australia. A key part of the law is it's &quot;non-differentiation&quot; requirements. This would prohibit Facebook and Google from showing or indexing Australian news corporations' content differently depending on whether they're forced to pay them money or not, or even whether they're an officially registered news business or not. This means Facebook and Google aren't allowed to choose to show some Australian news businesses' content and not others. If they show any of their content then they must show content from them all. If they show content from a registered Australian news business anywhere in the world then they must pay for it. This leaves Facebook and Google with three options if the law passes: Pay for news content from all registered Australian news business. Don't show or index any Australian news business content. Remove their presence completely from Australia to prevent Australia from enforcing their law on them.
The warning notice is intended for viewers and participants, not for the court to make its own official record of the proceedings. Presumably, it was this court record that the judge released for educational purposes under his own Order via Twitter. In which case, there has been no contempt of court.
At least as of 2011, when regulations under the Information Technology Act related to privacy and data security were issued (some of the relevant statute sections and regulations are linked in this answer at Law.SE), there was no non-contractual right to have your data destroyed, although a terms of service for a site could give you that right contractually. Instead, usually, a term of service agreement will do exactly the opposite and give a site owner an irrevocable right to keep your data forever. I am not aware of any subsequent statutory, regulatory or case law developments in India which have changed this situation, but that kind of tweak of IT Act regulations in India wouldn't necessary make headlines outside of the local IT industry press coverage in obscure trade journals. The EU is the only place of which I am aware that has any individual right to have data destroyed or suppressed even if it doesn't violated copyright, wasn't obtained illegally and isn't fraudulent or defamatory. Even then, as I understand it, in the EU this is not a unilateral right that applies in all circumstances and is instead a specific remedy for certain situations that have a particularly intense privacy aspect to them.
It could be. Accessing any web page is subject to whatever the terms of use are for the page, and if those terms state that the page may only be accessed from within the US, then accessing the page from outside the US is a violation of the TOS (hence use is infringing): see 2.4(h) of the Netflix EULA. There are EU rules that override such terms, within the EU. The usual way to circumvent technological location-restrictions (where the web page says "I'm sorry, I can't let you do that") is to use a VPN and pretend to be somewhere else. Use of a VPN is not per se illegal in most countries (there are exceptions), but using it to circumvent geo-blocking may be. Again returning to the point that the TOS may itself say "No you may not", the interesting question is what to conclude if there is no such statement, for example I did not see anything in the PBS TOS that restricts access to the US (I didn't look very deeply). Terms of service can't be secret: you can't be held to following rules that you cannot reasonably know of. If you attempt to access a page that uses un-announced geo-blocking technology and it informs you that you can't use the page because of your location, then you have effectively been put on notice that there is a rule. If you happen to be using a VPN and access an un-announced, (reasonably) undetectable geo-blocked site, that would not be a breach of the terms (because you have not been put on notice that location is a term of use).
There is no exhaustive list of material banned specifically in WhatsApp profile pictures, but there is an exhaustive list of crimes that § 140 StGB applies to: Whoever rewards or approves of publicly, in a meeting or by disseminating material (section 11 (3)) in a manner which is suitable for causing a disturbance of the public peace one of the unlawful acts referred to in section 138 (1) nos. 2 to 4 and no. 5 last alternative and in section 126 (1) or an unlawful act under section 176 (3), sections 176a and 176b, under section 177 (4) to (8) or section 178 after it has been committed or culpably attempted incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or a fine. In turn, sections 138 and 126 enumerate various crimes, whereas the other mentioned sections relate to (child) sexual abuse. Section 138 (1) no. 5 lists: murder under specific aggravating circumstances (section 211) or murder (section 212) or genocide (section 6 of the Code of Crimes against International Law) or a crime against humanity (section 7 of the Code of Crimes against International Law) or a war crime (section 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 of the Code of Crimes against International Law) or a crime of aggression (section 13 of the Code of Crimes against International Law) The last alternative is indeed a “crime of aggression” which is defined in particular as “the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations”. In Germany, there is a clear consensus that Russia is waging a war of aggression against Ukraine. The “Z” symbol is used in a Russian context in support of this invasion. It is therefore understandable that a prosecutor has the reasonable suspicion that publicly posting a Russian flag with the Z symbol is public approval of this crime of aggression. Spiegel Online reported of 140 similar cases across Germany. Thus, the photo could be real. Of course, the accused should not accept this invitation to talk to the police and instead get themselves a criminal defense attorney. A defense strategy would likely argue that the profile picture was not “suitable for causing a disturbance of the public peace” so that the conditions of § 140 StGB were not fulfilled. More realistically, the defendant would not contest a fine.
For the same reason you can’t ask the parties to a contract what they meant Legislation, once enacted, stands on its own independent of the people who drafted it, introduced it to Parliament and voted for or against it. These are not the same people in any event and since the legislation might have been passed anywhere between the 13th and 21st centuries, a lot of them will be dead. There’s a fundamental issue of fairness here. The people who are obliged to comply with the law (you and I) can’t ask the politicians so neither can the judges who have to decide if we did. Further, the judiciary cannot interact with the executive or the legislature in this way without violating the principle of separation of powers. Imagine you are charged with a crime and your guilt or innocence turns on the interpretation of the statute. Do you really want politicians who are looking at how the case plays out on Twitter telling the judge which interpretation to use i.e. effectively telling them whether you are guilty or not?
It is not obvious that it violates the TOS (which is a complex wall of text and links to chase). §3 states that &quot;we need you to make the following commitments&quot;, followed by some subsections – you can re-interpret this as an agreement on your part to do this stuff. Those subsections relate to &quot;legitimate accounts and users&quot; (not relevant), &quot;what you can do&quot; (potentially relevant), &quot;permissions you give&quot; (granting them license to use your stuff), not infringing on their copyright. The second subsection about what you can &quot;do&quot; says that you can't &quot;violate these or other terms&quot;, or do anything unlawful, or infringing, nor may you upload viruses, or scrape Facebook data. So it turns out that there is nothing specific in that subsection, but it does say that you won;t violate &quot;other terms&quot;. §5 presents a bunch of other possible terms and policies: Community Standards, Commercial Terms, Advertising Policies, Self-Serve Ad Terms, Facebook Pages, Groups and Events Policy, Meta Platform Terms, Developer Payment Terms, Community Payment Terms, Commerce Policies, Meta Brand Resources, Music Guidelines and Live Policies. Those primarily apply to advertisers, group-pages, developers, commercial use and content broadcast via Meta. Community Standard applies to everybody, and as you should predict there is a long list of specific sub-categories such as &quot;Violence and Criminal Behavior&quot;, &quot;Safety&quot;, &quot;Objectionable Content&quot;, &quot;Inauthenticity&quot; etc. You would have to hire a lawyer to do an exhaustive search and interpretation. However, it appears that using an ad blocking app is not forbidden on FB, and that seems to be what that extension is. But you should read it for yourself. All. Of. It. It may have violated the older TOS, but that clause seems to me missing from the present TOS.
You're thinking of &quot;unconscionability.&quot; In the United States, the general rule is that a contract provision will not be deemed unenforceable for unconscionability unless it is both procedurally and substantively unfair. A provision is considered procedurally unfair if it results from some sort of unfair asymmetry in bargaining positions. This could include situations where a party was acting under duress, had a diminished mental capacity, or unequal experience in the . A provision may be considered substantively unfair if it imposes disproportinately unfavorable terms on one party, perhaps by imposing costs far out of line with market prices, or by allocating all risk to that party. If the agreement is not both procedurally and substantively unconscionable, it won't be voided. So the Google TOS may be procedurally unfair because Google's market position gives it disproportionate bargaining power, but because they don't really impose any serious costs on you, they aren't unconscionable. Similarly, a contract provision requiring you to give me your house if you ever forget to turn off the porch lights at night wouldn't be unconscionable if it was agreed to after lengthy negotiations between our lawyers.