Clive Palmer
Clive Palmer (Image: AAP/Dan Peled)

Legal notes There was a significant step yesterday in Australia’s first human rights-based climate change case. Youth Activists the Bimblebox Alliance and Youth Verdict, represented by the Environmental Defenders Office, are arguing that, under Queensland’s new Human Rights Act, Clive Palmer’s Waratah Coal project would impact their human rights (specifically their rights to life and culture) by fueling climate change.

Their case cleared its first hurdle yesterday, with an application by Waratah Coal to strike out the human rights claims rejected by the court.

Blog blocked Following on our item about bloggers finding themselves blocked from sharing their work on Facebook, we think we’ve cracked it. Facebook is updating its conditions, clarifying the rules on posting content that includes music:

If you post content that contains music owned by someone else, your content may be blocked, or may be reviewed by the applicable rights owner and removed if your use of that music is not properly authorised.

This isn’t just bad news for bloggers. As Hypebot points out, performers hoping to replace cancelled concerts with Facebook live streams are suddenly at risk of being removed from the platform if they chuck in a cover version, or even if Facebook just thinks their own songs aren’t actually theirs.

I think we can all agree it’s great that, after years of allowing neo-Nazis, various terrorist groups, conspiracy theorists and democracy warping fake news to flourish, Facebook has finally cut down on the scourge of blog posts featuring Spotify playlists.

A more perfect union A tipster pointed out that the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) is trying to claw back a bit of cred after the Retail and Fast Food Workers’ Union (RAFFWU) took one of McDonalds’ (traditionally the SDA’s territory) biggest franchisees to court over the denial of breaks, and won.

The shoppies’ South Australia and Northern Territory branch took to Facebook last week to remind everyone that actually, they were already across this, thanks:

For years the SDA has been campaigning for McDonald’s workers to receive their 10-minute paid break.Through our campaign we’ve been enforcing compliance with this entitlement …

All of which cleverly elides the fact that the most high profile enforcement wasn’t undertaken by them.