Op-ed pieces from 2008

Continuing my end-of-year wrap ...

Over the next few days I'll be linking to some of the "best" posts from 2008 on this blog, but I thought I'd start by linking to the op-ed pieces I have had published in 2008:

• "Court judgment online through Facebook a sign of the times" published in The Courier Mail on 19 December - an an analysis of the decision by Master David Harper of the ACT Supreme Court to order that a default judgment of the court could be served on the defendants by notification through Facebook.
• "Online networks ready to solve life's burning issues" published in The Courier Mail on 4 December - inspired by a news story that a juror in a sexual assault and child abduction trial in Lancashire posted sensitive details of the case on which she was a juror to her Facebook page, and asked her friends to help decide on the guilt or innocence of the accused.
• "Net filter an assault on freedom that just won't work" published in The Courier Mail on 30 October - my contribution to the debate surrounding the Federal Government's internet filtering policy.
• "Google maths test will prove no barrier to determined drunk" published in The Courier Mail on 10 October - a silly piece on Google's Mail Goggles.
• "If it’s out on public view what’s the privacy issue?" published in The Courier Mail on 7 August - this piece turned out (much to my surprise) to be my most controversial of the year as I argued that Google Street View did not pose a privacy problem; after all, why should the public view be private?
• "Case coverage at our fingertips" published in The Courier Mail on 23 July - this piece suggested that Dr Jayent Patel may not be able to receive a fair trial because of the considerable prejudicial pre-trial publicity available on the internet.
• "Who is watching YouTube: The US courts want to know" published on ABC News Online on 18 July - an analysis of an order by a US judge that Google  turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube.
• "Roller coaster of cewebrity rascals" published in The Courier Mail on 15 April - a fun little piece on internet celebrity (or cewebrity) that The Courier Mail asked me to write.
• "The new digital paparazzi" published on Online Opinion on 14 April - this piece on privacy on the internet was my first attempt at an op-ed piece (it was knocked back by The Courier Mail before being published by Online Opinion).