Tech Legal

By Bryan Tan

Decipher courtroom jargons, stay on the right side of IT law

Archives for 2009

In remembrance: DRMs

Monday, November 02 2009 10:07 AM

Last week, I was at a WIPO-organized forum on copyright and related rights in Singapore.

Several persons spoke about digital rights management (or DRMs). DRMs are access control measure technologies used by copyright owners to control use of their rights, by controlling the usage of digital content and devices. Depending on which camp you are from, there are various views.

A content owner would say that DRMs are "enablers" because they enable copyright holders to offer more choices--for example, you can now buy a one-time only viewing DVD for $10 instead of multiple-viewing DVD if you only wanted to..... Read more ť

Tags: DRM, WIPO, DMCA, copyright, law, DVD, prosthetics, access control, digital-rights management, copyright law

How tech-savvy should lawyers be?

Wednesday, September 16 2009 01:02 AM

I recently attended an event for lawyers involved in the technology field.

When one of the speakers went up, he asked how many lawyers in the audience had recently completed an eBay transaction. He asked the question because he was illustrating a point about eBay's mechanism. To his horror, only one person put up his hand!

I wonder, how really tech-savvy are lawyers?

We see many businesses using Web sites and social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter to reach their clients. Have you seen lawyers using the same to effectively reach out to their customers? Do you think..... Read more ť

Tags: Twitter Inc., eBay Inc., Web Site, social networking tool, Social Networking, tool, Facebook, lawyer, Web 2.0, Web

Singapore blazes into e-discovery of evidence

Monday, August 03 2009 02:17 PM

The Singapore courts operate the dispute resolution mechanism by the application of the Rules of Court, as well as various practice directions issued and compiled from time to time.

An important part of the litigation process is the discovery process, where parties in the course of preparation leading to the trial, seek to uncover evidence held by other parties. The main danger is that the courts will not allow discovery to be used as a "fishing expedition"--to gather more than what is fair.

Increasingly, a lot of litigation involves some element of electronic document--e-mail, SMS messages, to even entire hard..... Read more ť

Tags: Discovery, U.K., Electronic Document, Litigation, hard drive, Recycle Bin, SMS, Singapore, computer, lawyer

The day tech saved me

Friday, June 26 2009 02:58 PM

A few months ago, I accepted an invitation from my car manufacturer to attend a driver orientation program. During that course, we were shown some fancy features of the bar. Other than ABS and air bags, which are pretty standard, the car had some kind of crash-warning technology. This feature triggers with a sudden lifting off the accelerator and causes the car to prepare for a crash by locking the doors, closing the windows and activating the brakes, amongst others. It did not seem like very important information at that time.

On Friday, I was at a traffic junction and followed..... Read more ť

Tags: Manufacturer, H1N1 Flu, Car, accident, asset based security, Window, SARS, automobile company, blog, lawyer

What landlords can learn from techies

Sunday, June 14 2009 06:38 PM

Now and then, I get this urge to make the world a better place. Then there are these quirky ideas that come along.

There is legend that says Bill Gates once commented on what the car industry could learn from the software industry. Well, seeing how the car industry has turned out, perhaps those words could have been heeded. But in any case, I think another industry can learn from the software industry.

The turmoil that the world is in has hit home in some ways--there are a number of new small businesses established in mid-2008 that have suffered. Conceived at..... Read more ť

Tags: Inflation, Car, tenant, Bill Gates, Software, software company, small business, revenue

Software makers to be held more accountable?

Monday, June 01 2009 10:40 AM

Software companies throughout the world are taking note of moves in Europe to subject software to the same consumer protection standards as other goods, such as cars and home appliances. My firm has just written a written alert on it.

Some of the proposals include making manufacturers legally liable for software code and enforcing the provision of a two-year working guarantee. The proposal does sound attractive--after all, since my toaster is increasingly going to have software in it, shouldn't software be judged on performance like a toaster? My toaster looks the same as when my mom bought hers..... Read more ť

Tags: Car, consumer protection, business software, freeware, shareware, Open-source Software, Business Software Association, Software, software company, game

How confidential is confidential?

Monday, May 25 2009 10:06 AM

Although this post is about the Aware's instructor guide, I would like to state from the outset that I am not going to comment about the Old Guard, the New Guard, the Old New Guard, homosexuality or religion (if you are not aware of these terms, then you do not need to know them for the purpose of this blog).

What you need to know is that the new president of the Aware (Association of Women for Action and Research) claimed that its instructor guide, which was used for the teaching of its comprehensive sexuality education in Singapore's public school, and..... Read more ť

Tags: Netcom, Web Site, Scientology, Aware, Internet, Agreement, DMCA, RTC, Singapore, public domain

What in the world is Internet self-regulation?

Monday, May 04 2009 07:25 PM

A few months ago, Singapore Minister Lui Tuck Yew commented that the Internet community in Singapore missed the chance to show that it could shoulder a higher degree of self-regulation by not rebutting many of the online attacks on Member of Parliament Seng Han Thong who was physically attacked.

To be fair, everyone has been throwing about the term "self-regulation" long enough but we are not quite sure what kind of creature this is. This got me thinking: What does this self-regulation look like? Is this a panel of some kind or are there appointed moderators? Who becomes "god"?

Is this "regulator"..... Read more ť

Tags: Internet, Singapore

Scholars living in glasshouses

Monday, April 13 2009 10:38 AM

This is not about Alice in Wonderland but about a Singapore government scholar by the name of Eng Kai Er. It seems Eng, who graduated from Cambridge University, is a 2007 A*Star National Science Scholarship (NSS) recipient doing her Ph.D. in Infection Biology at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. She was charged in court for walking around nude in Holland Village, a popular watering hole in Singapore.

For the benefit of non-Singaporeans, government scholars are the cream of the crop--the best and the brightest--upon whom expensive scholarships and an accelerated career track are showered upon. I guess the best is expected from such..... Read more ť

Tags: Scholar, Web Site, storage, digital copying, Singapore, University of Cambridge, career, Sweden, Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp.

Pushing the limits of harassment

Monday, March 16 2009 04:02 PM

In Talking Cock the Movie, a parody portrayed a young man who had joined his father's loan-shark business and hatched the idea of using e-mail messages to make demands for repayment. Such notices would otherwise have required the pasting of notices on one's door. Some past practices have progressed in recent years.

A recent report tells of a Singapore architect who was harassed by an unknown caller who made hundreds of phone calls to his home and his mobile phone in a matter of days. The police are investigating this matter while the High Court also granted an application to..... Read more ť

Tags: Harassment, Movie, China, South Korea, Singapore, phone, telecommunications company, e-Mail Message, U.S., cell phone

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About the blogger

Bryan Tan

Called to the Singapore and English Bars, Bryan Tan has practised in two of Singapores largest law firms and an international law firm. Bryan led many industry firsts including the first mass e-mail defamation case in the world, Singapores first publicised telecoms competition dispute, a pan-Asian co-branded travel portal, the first privately-funded cable landing project in Singapore and the world's first registrar-level domain name dispute. His areas of practice include information technology, telecommunications, biotechnology and bioinformatics, Chinese intellectual property, entertainment law and corporate work. He is also an author of Halsbury's Laws of Malaysia: E-Commerce. He also co-wrote the Singapore chapter of 'Digital Evidence' with Prof. Daniel Seng and is writing Halsbury's Laws of Singapore: E-Commerce.