Research Projects and Supervision
Research Projects
The following projects are conducted by or with the support of the Centre.
- Internet Filtering and Censorship Proposals (proposed ARC Research Project)
- Unlocking IP project, including the Unlocking IP conferences 2004, 2006, 2009
- Interpreting Privacy Principles ARC research project
- Malware (under development)
- Virtual Worlds, Virtual Communities (under development)
- Regulating Online Investing ARC research project
- Asia Pacific Privacy Charter
- Making Privacy Laws Work
- Digital Document Retention and Destruction Policies
- Spam: practical, policy and legal responses
Postgraduate research supervision
Current postgraduate research
The following postgraduate research theses relating to cyberspace, IT and intellectual property law are currently being completed by students supervised by our Research Associates:
- Alana Maurushat - PhD - 'Legal and ethical issues in computer malware propagation' (supervised by Prof Graham Greenleaf and Dr Roger Clarke)
- Catherine Bond - PhD - 'Mapping Australia's Copyright Commons' - analysis of the state of Australia's copyright commons and how licensing can be used to broaden the commons (Prof Graham Greenleaf and Prof Kathy Bowrey).
- Ben Bildstein - PhD - Technology Creating Commons - To develop and apply new methodologies for quantifying and measuring trends in national and global online copyright commons, part of the Unlocking IP research project ( Prof Graham Greenleaf and Achim Hoffman)
- Sophia Christou - LLM by research - 'The 'User' under law in the online environment: Beyond the legal perspective' (Prof Kathy Bowrey and Michael Handler)
- Ka Yu (Joeson) Wong - PhD - 'The development of e-government in Hong Kong with particular reference to privacy, freedom of information and related aspects of internet governance' (Prof Graham Greenleaf and Dr Roger Clarke)
- Gillian North - PhD- 'Financial reporting in Australia in the digital age: Information asymmetries between institutional and retail investors' (Prof Dimity Kingsford Smith/Jeff Coulton)
- John Selby - PhD - 'An institutional analysis of the .au Domain Name Space' (Prof Graham Greenleaf and Dr Roger Clarke)
Completed postgraduate research
The following postgraduate research degree relating to cyberspace law has been completed by students supervised by Centre Research Associates (completions since 2000):- Dan Svantesson - LLM (International Law) - Conflict of law in cyberspace: Sweden, Canada and Australia (Holly Raiche), and PhD - ‘Private international law and the Internet’ (Prof Graham Greenleaf and Holly Raiche)
- Carolyn Penfold - LLM by research - Incidental effects of Internet censorship laws (Professor Michael Chesterman and Professor Graham Greenleaf)
- Christine Burns -PhD - 'Online legal services: The revolution that failed?' (Prof Graham Greenleaf)
- Luigi Palombi - PhD - Patentability of gene sequence information (Prof Jill McKeough)
- Dr Kate Reid - Risk-e-business: A framework for legal risk management
developed through an analysis of selected legal risks in Internet commerce (PhD) - Supervised by Professor Graham Greenleaf, Associate Professor
Rodger Jameison, and Brent Fisse (Gilbert + Tobin)
ABSTRACT
The research in this thesis investigates the extent to which risk management can be used in the context of legal risk. In addition, this thesis examines the usefulness of using risk management methodology for this purpose.
These issues are analysed using a two step process.The first part of this thesis involves examining risk management methodology and determining whether it can be used in the context of legal risk. The research then turns to developing a framework for legal risk management. The second part of this thesis involves testing the effectiveness and usefulness of the legal risk management framework developed. This is achieved by applying the legal risk management framework developed in relation to a particular commercial activity, the conduct of Internet commerce.
The research demonstrates that risk management methodology can be adapted for use in the context of legal risk. Not surprisingly, the research indicates that risk management methodology is best used when its purpose is to identify, analyse and manage legal risks affecting a specific business in a systematic and consistent way.
However, the research suggests that legal risk management may have wider uses, including its use as a technique for identifying areas of true legal uncertainty and areas for which law reform is required. In relation to Internet commerce, the research showed that whilst there are several contractual risks associated with Internet commerce their impact on the conduct of Internet commerce is not as great as has been previously suggested and, moreover, the effect of these risks can often be minimised if certain risk management strategies are implemented. The overall research conclusion in this thesis is that risk management can and should be used in the context of legal risk.