Judicial Review of the Digital Economy Act

BT & Talk Talk, the two largest UK internet Service Providers (ISP) went to court towards the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 to obtain a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act, a law passed in the dying days of the last Labour Government. This law is designed to place duties on internet service providers to act on the instruction and on behalf of copyright holders and to authorise Web site blocking. On the 20th April, Mr. Justice Parker delivered his judgement.

This article is a personal summary of that ruling. The judgement is awfully hard to read and understand. I have an economics degree and nine years of Civil Service training! Actual quotes should be obvious, other representations are in my words, not those of the judgement. In some places I have got lost in the text of the judgement and while my summary is much shorter than the original, it remains pretty long. The impatient or easily satisfied can skip straight to the summary. …

Xmas Markets

I am staying in London this year for my Birthday holiday. I was very tempted by the Guardian’s Xmas markets and winter glacier trip, particularly Prague & Berlin but we decided to stay in London. I am throwing the paper advert away today. So this year, I expect to visit the British Museum and see_Avatar. I’ll have to make up on the WinterFests by having lunch at the Canary Wharf barbecues.

Perhaps we’ll do Prague & Berlin next year, the Guardian promised a train trip to Brussels, then onto Prague for three nights, and home via Berlin. It’d be good to do it, perhaps next year. …

You can’t keep the Spies out

While continuing to think about the privacy and regulatory issues that Cloud computing raises, I was point at this article in the NY Times, called “Does Cloud Computing Mean More Risks to Privacy?“, which looks at the US legal position and points out that the US police and even civil investigators will find it easier to get data from third parties than from the entities originally authorised to have access to private data. The article seems to have been categorised as news due to the release of the World Privacy Forum’s latest report, “Privacy in the Clouds“, …

Brussels: business & pleasure

I have visited Brussels twice on NESSI business and on holiday with Mrs. L. These trips were originally blogged on my sun/oracle blog as series of article, I have brought the articles across here, and presented them as two articles, This article chronicles the social visit, including the European Parliament meeting, the “Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts” and the Comics museum. …

Visiting Berlin

I travelled with the family to Berlin over the bank holiday weekend. I’ve never been there before and I thoroughly enjoyed my stay. The city is at the social, historical and physical centre of Europe. I’d hoped to avoid much of the history; its a sad tale of totalitarian success and much democratic failure but the Berliners have found ways to celebrate their resistance and successes and its hard to avoid, from the remaining bullet holes in some walls, to the new & rebuilt landmarks of the past and the remnants of the wall, the many T34s and Check Point Charlie. …