The battle between copyright holders and free speech advocates is hotting up in the US, with the decision by a US federal appeals court at the end of November that the publication of DVD decryption technology constituted a breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998.
The world’s biggest music companies successfully sued Napster in December 1999 on the basis that it was a haven for copyright piracy that would cost them billions of dollars in lost music sales.
In a Techlaw column in February we talked about actions under the Fair Trading Act 1986 for misleading and deceptive conduct that occurred before entering into a contract (see Who's liable when complex projects go wrong?). However, misleading and deceptive conduct claims can also arise during in-contract performance.