International Law

The High Court began hearing the Ice TV appeal today before six justices (Justice Kirby didn't sit).  The hearing will continue tomorrow.

The transcript of the first day of oral argument is already available on AustLII here (interestingly the Court gave leave to Telstra and the Australian Digital Alliance to appear as amicus). 

Peter Vogel, who was in the courtroom today, has blogged about it here.

By way of background it is worth noting that there has been quite a bit written on this case over the last few years.  I've chimed in (see here), as has Kim Weatherall (see here and here), The House of Commons (see here and here), Bill Patry (see here and here), and David Lindsay in a presentation to the Copyright Society of Australia (see here).  My colleague, Professor Brian Fitzgerald, together with Ben Atkinson, also made available today a paper they have written on the case, "Copyright as an Instrument of Information Flow and Dissemination: the case of ICE TV Pty Ltd v Nine Network Australia Pty Ltd".  You can download that paper from QUT ePrints here.

All very interesting ...