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Oodles of problems for Google

Prize dirtA recent quiz by a UK legal magazine asks its 9,000 subscribers to lift the lid on debauchery in the nation’s law firms. Legal Business asked subscribers to identify two lawyers who…

user iconLawyers Weekly 17 February 2004 SME Law
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Prize dirt

A recent quiz by a UK legal magazine asks its 9,000 subscribers to lift the lid on debauchery in the nation’s law firms. Legal Business asked subscribers to identify two lawyers who were moonlighting as lap dancers, the name of the lawyer who enjoyed a threesome with a BBC children’s TV presenter at his home, and which senior partner was leaving an industry awards night when a high-class prostitute confronted him and used his first name.

More shockingly, the question “which US partner was afflicted by a boil on his backside so large that before conducting client meetings he had to blow up an inflatable cushion to sit on”, was perhaps a little too much information already.

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Readers are also questioned as to what QC, and Tottenham Hotspur supporter, was seen by his instructing solicitor screaming at one game: “Referee, you are a f****** c***”.

The magazine gives no hints about the answers to its probes. “The protagonists must live with their degradation in private turmoil or quiet pride,” said editor Tom Freeman.

Opera for your sins

In a case of giving what you get, a man has been sentenced to listen to an opera as punishment for playing loud rap music in his car. The ironically named Michael Carreras was told by judge Jeffrey Swartz: “you impose your music on me and I’m going to impose my music on you”.

Officers gave Carreras a ticket after he was caught with his music pounding from his car stereo, on the basis of Miami Beach’s strict noise ordinance. It states that police can prosecute a person if the music can be heard from 100 feet away.

Carreras chose to listen to an opera over the alternative of a $700 fine. He spent over two and a half hours in the judge’s chambers listening to La Traviata and apparently enjoyed the experience, reportedly tapping his foot during the final movement.

Oodles of problems for Google

It’s that slip of the finger when typing in the name of search engine Google that they are worried about. Type in Booble.com and you reach another site altogether. Google has issued a legal warning to the copycat website that searches for adult material.

Google is demanding that the rascal website change its name and identity and “permanently refrain” from using Google’s name or any variation on it “that is likely to cause confusion or dilution”.

Despite bearing a remarkable resemblance to Google in design, the website makes it clear that it is an adult website, and offers a link to the Google site. Booble insists that the pornographic site is a harmless parody, that it is funny, and that its presence shows that the site has a “sense of humour”.

But Google is not laughing, and has issued a writ against Booble and has reportedly delayed plans to float next week on the New York Stock Exchange. Possibly in an attempt to counter those inevitable mistypes, a website Boogle.tk, powered by Google, asks viewers to “see the difference”.

Google is refusing to acknowledge that Booble is harmless mimicry however, and said that “for a work to constitute a parody, it must use some elements of a prior author’s compositions to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on the original author’s works”.

Booble’s reaction was light hearted. “The entire universe gets the joke. Only a lawyer could say ‘Booble’ without smiling,” it said.

Ignorance of the law

Despite being illegal in Australia, online gambling appears to be taking hold. Australians’ most favoured site is Casino on Net, which receives about 11 per cent of gambling site hits, according to one survey.

But Jan McMillen, of the ANU Centre for Gambling Research, says that the illegal status of the hobby, or addiction, is in fact exposing Australians to sites offshore which may have lower standards of player protection than Australian sites.

About 40 per cent of hits by Australians gambling on the internet are on overseas based gambling and sports betting sites. This is due to the fact that although Australia’s federal Interactive Gambling Act 2001 makes it illegal to advertise or provide interactive gambling sites online, the law does not apply to the people actually using the sites.

Immigrations Big Brother

When in Rome ... they say. An illegal immigrant palpably took heed of the old adage and did precisely that, by going to work at a detention centre for illegal immigrants.

The man had obtained work as a sub-contractor and was unfortunately (for him) sent on a job at Melbourne’s Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre.He was soon spied by a visiting immigration officer who remembered the man’s case. An official commented on the case, noting that “the illegal worker did not leave the detention centre”. “The point is, compliance officials are never off duty,” he said. Evidently.

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