british

A court in the United Kingdom has ordered all Internet Service Providers there to stop providing subscribers access to three well-known file-sharing (or 'torrent') sites, including Kickass Torrents, H33T, and Fenopy. Citing piracy concerns, the UK ... High Court ordered every single Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the United Kingdom to stop providing access to the aforementioned torrent sites. It's certainly a more direct approach than that taken by anti-piracy groups in the United States, which recently unveiled a 'Six Strikes' strategy. ISPs Demand, and Receive, Court Order The ruling ... (view more)

Google is currently getting grilled by French officials over the way it handles customer privacy. At the same time, the search giant is also facing stern criticism from British politicians regarding the way it deals with complaints involving illegal ... websites. The French authority that governs data handling in the country, the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertes, (CNIL) has even slapped the company with a deadline of April 6, by which it must answer to the Commission. The CNIL is currently leading a Europe-wide probe into Google's recent changes to its privacy policies. ... (view more)

Britain and the U.S. use similar tactics fighting 'terrorism,' but Britain has taken the delusions to a new level: it now appears that the British have surpassed U.S. in becoming a police state. Like the U.S. version of George Orwell's book "1984," ... Britain's descent into a full-fledged police state has been building for a long time. We've reported on Britain's super database , remote PC searching and the warnings issued over the egregious surveillance techniques , but there are still other facts to be examined. Spying On Domestic Extremists and Political Dissenters The British have ... (view more)

According to a recent report from the British House of Lords, Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) cameras and the UK's DNA database -- purported to be the "largest in the world" -- are two examples of "pervasive" threats to privacy in British society, and may ... even threaten to undermine democracy. The report warns that pervasive and routine electronic surveillance and the collection and processing of personal information is almost taken for granted. (Source: guardian.co.uk ) Although the government calls CCTV and DNA essential to fight crime, privacy advocates say abuses of power mean that even the ... (view more)

It's a bit cliche, but the message still holds true: when the President of the United States speaks, the world listens. Such was the case when President Obama laid out his recent economic stimulus plan with the desire to invest billions of dollars ... towards the expansion of broadband access across America. Now, Britain is once again following in America's footsteps, this time in the field of technology. If all goes well, the government predicts that every home in Britain could have Internet access by 2012. (Source: nytimes.com ) The U.K. government wants to make broadband a universal signal, ... (view more)

The Internet Watch Foundation has removed a Wikipedia page from its 'banned' list. The page, featuring an album cover by rock band Scorpions, had been blocked by several British Internet providers during the row. The organization, which has no legal ... authority, is a self-regulated charity. It monitors websites for content which is illegal to display in the United Kingdom and maintains a list of such material. What gives the IWF so much power and influence is that many of Britain's largest Internet providers (covering an estimated 95% of users) automatically block any pages that appear on the ... (view more)

British Homeland Security has put a new spin on video surveillance. By introducing CCTV cameras equipped with loudspeakers, security staff may now verbally berate those seen committing crimes. The cameras will have a two-way speaker system that ... allows staff to talk and respond directly to the perpetrator. The British government has high expectations for the talking cameras, because many believe that their presence will deter those considering breaking the law at the risk of public embarrassment. British Homeland Security forces have already reported a significant decline in crime rates in the ... (view more)

Despite very liberal views on sex, drugs, and drinking age, Europe is becoming a conservative force in rooting out peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing. Just weeks after Spain made it a civil offense for individuals to download music and a criminal ... offense for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to allow it, the British music industry is now demanding that two ISPs give up the names of 59 accounts. Although Spain remains the more aggressive of the two countries in weeding out file sharers, Britain's corporate community is forming its own strong-arm policy in making illegal music downloads a thing of ... (view more)