Torrents of Court Orders…UK High Court orders UK ISPs to block Pirate Bay

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See article from torrentfreak.com

The UK High Court has ruled that several ISPs including Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must censor The Pirate Bay file sharing website. The blocking process was established in law by the media industry action against the Newzbin2 Usenet indexing site last year. A few weeks later a conglomerate of music labels filed a lawsuit against several Internet providers, demanding that they block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay. Nine labels including EMI, Polydor, Sony, Virgin and Warner said that The Pirate Bay infringes their copyrights and that several ISPs including TalkTalk and Virgin Media should implement a blockade under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. In February the High Court agreed that The Pirate Bay and its users do indeed breach copyright on a major scale, and this decision has now been followed by a court order. ISPs Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must censor The Pirate Bay website in the weeks to come. A sixth ISP, BT, has asked for more time to consider its position. The Open Rights Group says the court-ordered block represents the thin end of the wedge. Blocking the Pirate Bay is pointless and dangerous. It will fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for Internet censorship of many kinds, from pornography to extremism, ORG Executive Director Jim Killock said: Internet censorship is growing in scope and becoming easier. Yet it never has the effect desired. It simply turns criminals into heroes.

In the Age of Facebook…Government know better than parents when their kids are ready to use Facebook

Read more UK Government Watch at MelonFarmers.co.uk

See article from telegraph.co.uk

Tim Loughton, the Children’s Minister, has accused mothers and fathers of aiding and abetting pre-teens to open accounts on Facebook. His whinge was in response to Labour MP Ann Coffey who urged the Government and mobile phone companies to do more to combat sexting, where teenagers send sexual pictures of themselves to each other using camera phones. Loughton said parents had a responsibility to monitor youngsters online, adding: Having a Facebook page, you should be at least 13 to do that. That is not legally enforceable. We know, and I know from personal experience, the temptations for younger children to set up a Facebook site and get involved with those social media. And I also know that in too many cases they do that aided and abetted by parents. So it’s not just a question of giving information to parents, it’s making sure parents are acting responsibly on behalf of their children too. A Facebook spokesman said: Facebook is currently designed for two age groups (13-18 year olds and 18 and up), and we provide extensive safety and privacy controls based on the age provided. If someone reports an underage account to use then we will remove it, and use back-end end technology to try and prevent them signing up again. However, recent reports have highlighted just how difficult it is to implement age restrictions on the Internet and that there is no single solution to ensuring younger children don’t circumvent a system or lie about their age. However, we agree with safety experts that communication between parents/guardians and kids about their use of the Internet is vital. Just as parents are always teaching and reminding kids how to cross the road safely, talking about internet safety should be just as important a lesson to learn.