This is a case raised by a lawyer as an example on Newsnight, BB2. Video of this available here.

I should also mention that this question was raised in parliament to link the Minton report to Trafigura. The Minton report is still the subject of an injunction and it's contents can not be mentioned at this moment by the UK press but can be found on wikileaks.

Hopefully this will motivate the courts and Parliament to do something about the problem of people coming to our country and using our courts to solve their petty grievances due to our ridiculous libel laws. The wikipedia article on libel tourism is particularly good in this regard. A lawyer on Newsnight (available on iplayer) last night listed the example of a Ukrainian business man who was suing a Ukrainian website for libel in the British courts under the justification that there happened to be some people in the UK who can read Ukrainian. This sort of stuff has simply got to stop. To help, sign the petition on the the no.10 website and the website 38 degrees is also running a campaign.

This is great but unless you manufacture the compound in large quantities commercially in a form that is useable e.g. a wire, it isn't going to make much difference to the average person in the street. I would imagine that is still decades away.

If a search engine is located in another country, how do you stop it linking to your copyright material? Fines that they won't pay? Extradition? Blocking their site?

To all the people mocking his investment, your missing one thing. You do not know what the price of energy is going to do in the next few years. The guy in the article however is guaranteed a minimum amount of power each year from his solar panels at a rate he knows. (His initial investment / Life time of the panels). If the companies decide to hike the prices in two years time due a deterioration in Gulf politics for example, he is sheltered from its effects and lets be honest it's very unlikely the price is going to go down per kwh. He is also sheltered to a certain extent from the failure of the power network so if a situation does arise where there are rolling blackouts again, he knows he will a least have some electricity each day. One of the things that people constantly underestimate the price of is certainty.

Almost right, Russia's already had experience of how to use the net as a weapon from it's experience of Estonia. http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2007/05/massive-ddos-attacks-target-estonia-russia-accused.ars">Ars Technica.Certainly shutting down the communications infrastructure of a country is not a new idea though. TV station are normally on the list of secondary targets (primary ones being military) in any war. What I think is new though is the use of mainstream websites such as twitter, youtube and facebook. An interesting questions is how does this play with western companies adapting their technology in repressive regimes desires to see certain content filtered. Is it better that youtube is present in a country, filtered but at least able to provide some service to disseminate content bythose being repressed?

First link seems like astroturfing. A better link would of been [NDSSL @ Virgina Tech], where the research is being done.