The many legal issues raised as media digitises
Given all of the attention on the banning of Web sites in the UK (read Wikipedia / Scorpions album), we thought we’d give you the inside view on how it comes about.
The setup
If a member of the public raises an objection to a Web site to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the IWF takes a look at it to judge if it’s objectionable (btw – they’re one of the few bodies in the UK legally allowed to view the child pr0n)
Finally Sky and Virgin Media are holding hands again following their bust up dating back to Feb 2007.
The overview? Sky will carry some of Virgin’s channels on their service and Virgin will carry some of Sky’s channels – both agreements last until 2011. They’ll both drop the outstanding High Court actions against each other.
Below is the press release from Sky in full …
Just had this latest update in from Gary McKinnon‘s legal representative. His legal struggles have been long.
This afternoon, the Secretary of State has advised via the Treasury Solicitors, that despite Mr McKinnon’s diagnosis with Aspergers she will now be making arrangements for his extradition pursuant to her order for Extradition of 4th July 2006. She has failed to make any request for repatriation to the UK when other countries make similar requests on behalf of their citizens.
We are now considering whether or not Mr McKinnon has a further judicial remedy and we are urgently investigating this issue.
We heard news from Gary McKinnon’s law firm, Kaim Todner, that the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’) has ruled against their recent application to have Gary’s extradition to the US halted.
The temporary prohibition of McKinnon’s extradition, as granted by the ECtHR on 12 August, is now effectively lifted and the authorities of the United Kingdom are now free to extradite our client to the United States.
There’s a big potential of this story being such a classic own goal by the UK Government, it’s hilarious – what’s not been clear are the facts.
Downing Street, the UK Prime Minister’s official office has launched a new Website based on WordPress.
Three students who were carrying out academic research into the security vulnerabilities of Boston’s transit fare payment system have had a court order that forbade them to discuss the issues, reversed.
You might have thought that in the ‘land of the free,’ forbidding free speech is the kind of thing that could never happen. Thank goodness this reversal restores a balance.
An unnamed woman in UK has been ordered to pay £16,000 after having been found guilty of sharing a game, Dream Pinball 3D, on P2P networks.
The initial default judgement was made against her was at the London County Court on 27 May.
Subsequently the Patents County Court in London handed down damages of £6,086.56 plus costs and disbursements of £10,000.
Recent UK actions
Davenport Lyons, a UK law firm, has been instructed by Topware Interactive, a video game company started in Germany, to pursue UK residents who have been sharing their games on P2P network.
We all know that law is a slow moving beast, but as far back as March, 2007 there was discussion on P2P sites about letters that had been received from Davenport Lyons, which had targeted 500 people at that point.
You’ll remember that UK ‘hacker’ Gary McKinnon had lost his House of Lords Appeal at the tail end of July.
He’s attempting to stop his deportation to America to be tried on hacking charges.
He and those in his defence camp, including his lawyers, Kaim Todner LLP, will be breathing a sigh of relief, for the next two weeks at least.
We’ve just heard that the Presidents of the European Court Human Rights will hear his application, before the full Chamber, on 28th August 2008.
YouTube will be hiring more lawyers and policy wonks, we suspect, following a week of complaints and legal challenges to the content that is stored on their servers and show to people around the world.
Yesterday the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport Committee published a report (PDF) with included “Risks from the Internet, particularly social networking sites and sites hosting user-generated content.” Most of the media used this to focus on YouTube and how evil it is.
Gary McKinnon, who is accused by the US government of being a ‘computer hacker,’ lost his appeal to the House of Lords yesterday.
He was appealing against being extradited to the US, but in a unanimous decision, the Lords said to find in favour of McKinnon would, “imperil the integrity of the extradition process.”