The Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre is one of the research and social justice centres at the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law in Sydney, Australia.
Contents
- Areas of interest
- Geographic focus
- Support from the Profession
- Internships and visitors
- Research Projects
- Net Filtering Young People
- Unlocking IP
- Interpreting Privacy Principles
- Regulating Online Investing
- References
It provides a focus for research, public interest advocacy and education on issues of law and policy arising from digital transactions in cyberspace.
Areas of interest
The Centre's work deals with subjects like privacy and freedom of information in digital records, cloud computing and Web 2.0 issues, content regulation and the interests of young people, e-commerce, provision of government services by Internet, online financial services, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and the use of encryption, Internet governance, intellectual property in digital artefacts, and decision-making technologies in public administration.
Geographic focus
Much of the Centre's work concerns Australian law and policy, but there is also a focus on the development of cyberspace regulation in Asia, the fastest growing part of cyberspace's 'terrestrial footprint'. There is also increasing interest in jurisdictional and other issues created by personal and other data stored outside a person's home country in "the cloud".
Support from the Profession
The Centre's founding sponsors were the local and global partners of Baker & McKenzie, an international law firm. (In recognition of generous startup support provided by the firm in its first years, the original name was the Baker & McKenzie Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre. In 2005, with the advent of substantial Australian Research Council research project funding made possible during that startup phase, the firm's relationship to the Centre changed and the Centre's name was shortened.) The Centre has also increasingly collaborated with lawyers and legal researchers in a range of other firms and organisations, including as Research Associates.
Internships and visitors
The Centre enables experienced external researchers to visit, and law and other students to do internships or volunteer.
Research Projects
Some of the centre's research projects include the following.
Net Filtering & Young People
This research project looks at Internet filtering and censorship proposals developed by recent Australian governments. It generated materials from workshops in 2008 and 2009, and an extensive references list covering those years. It involves collaboration with the UNSW Journalism and Media Research Centre, and a range of industry and community partners.
Unlocking IP
Unlocking IP: New models for sharing and trading IP: "Unlocking IP" is a research project supported by a 2005-2009 ARC Linkage grant to a consortium led by UNSW's Prof Graham Greenleaf, contributions from industry partners, and hosted by the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre. As well as:
the project and its participants also:
Interpreting Privacy Principles
"Interpreting Privacy Principles" was a research project led by UNSW's Prof Graham Greenleaf subtitled "Creating more consistent privacy principles through better interpretation and law reform: an Australasian initiative to resolve an international problem - comparative research into privacy principles." It was supported by an ARC Discovery grant 2006-2009 to a research team based at the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, UNSW Faculty of Law.
As well as a number of events, such as the symposium: International perspectives on privacy regulation: Privacy Principles in Asia Pacific economies compared at UNSW on 3–4 March 2010, numerous publications and submissions such as those to the 2008 ALRC review of privacy law in Australia, the project also supported the Asia Pacific Privacy Charter, work on the APEC Privacy Framework, and the proposed but abandoned national ID card system known as the Access Card.
Regulating Online Investing
"One Day, We’ll All Invest This Way! Regulating Online Investing" is an ARC Discovery research project led by Professor Dimity Kingsford Smith from UNSW, with collaborators from Monash and ANU. The Centre developed and hosts the project's online and offline resources, including a "Selected References" list. Despite the encouragement for individual investors to go online and trade securities, when the project started there had been limited research into the regulatory implications of the non-advisory context of their decision making. Further, outside the United States, there were no significant treatments of the regulation of online investing generally. This Australian Research Council funded project addresses these deficiencies, particularly in relation to Australian online investing.