The history of Internet Law is littered with bad legislation and legislative proposals. From the infamous SOPA and PIPA, to the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill, there is no shortage of badly-conceived legislation dealing with the Internet. Sometimes the bad law is the result of powerful lobbying, sometimes it is caused Read more
John Perry Barlow’s A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace was published 20 years ago. While it is something that tends to concern mostly Internet regulation theorists, it is surprising just how relevant it continues to be. The text usually deserves a mention in some of the most cited works on Read more
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has revisited the issue of liability for Internet intermediaries in the case of Magyar Tartalomszolgáltatók Egyesülete and Index.Hu v Hungary. This is the second time in less than a year that the ECHR deals with this issue, as it had already produced a Read more
A judge in California has dismissed a copyright case brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), where the animal rights organisation claimed that it represented the monkey that took the famous selfie depicted above. The case is that of Naruto v Slater, where PETA sued British photographer Read more
In his great documentary The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis explores topics such as consumerism and social control of the masses, but at its heart it is an exploration of collectivism and individualism. It describes the second half of the 20th century as struggle between collective ideals, and the Read more
Over the years I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Facebook: I love to hate it. As an early adopter, I always have felt that my interaction with the social network was very different to what other people were using it for, and the change in the platform has only made Read more
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the EU is not about to make linking illegal. The bad news is that the latest proposal from the EU Commission leaves open the door for the creation of an ancillary copyright that would affect the way in Read more
Patent trolls are a blight on the tech industry, extolling licence fees for “inventions” that they never implemented, sitting on broad claims waiting until enough people are deemed to be using the technology and then suing them. These are not innovators, they are often just shells made up of an Read more
A few months ago we reported on a couple of decisions by the England and Wales Hight Court declaring private copying illegal (here and here). Incredibly, before 2014 making a private copy of a legally-purchased work was illegal in the UK, which didn’t stop anyone ripping CDs or making digital Read more
The announcement that hacktivist collective Anonymous has declared war on the Islamic State has been received positively by the public. After the Paris attack some may think governments are not doing enough to protect civilians, so at least it seems someone is doing something about the terrorist threat. So far Read more