This is the extension of an existing law for âoecollecting or making a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorismâ, or possessing such information.

Apparently, as it stands, it does not cover streaming, so will be extended to reference it. The proposal would also change the penalty from a maximum of 10 years in prison to a maximum of 15 years.

With apologies for my own ineptitude, this time with some html:

1) Check whether it could possibly be traffic from your network. Do friends have access? Children? Poor Wi-Fi security? Open proxy server?

2) Subject access request (s7 Data Protection Act 1998) to BT, for the record which Get it Right sent to them. You want the IP address, port number and UTC timestamp, which enabled BT to do the matching to identify your account. It might cost you £10.

3) If you are willing to identify yourself to Get it Right (more so than you have done by posting the letter online, I suppose), a SAR to GiR, asking for the information which they hold on you, which led them to send the notice to BT. If they quibble about whether they hold your personal data, point out the case of Breyer, dealing with IP addresses and personal data.

4) If you are sure that it was not you, once you've seen GiR's record, consider complaining to them about inaccurate processing of your personal data. Ask for rectification under the Data Protection Act. If they refuse, complain to the Information Commissioner's Office. They may not do anything but, the more complaints, the higher the likelihood.

5) You might even consider a small claims court action for the distress caused by their processing, if you can demonstrate inaccuracy. But I'd talk to a solicitor first at that point as, while the SCC generally shields from paying the other party's legal fees, that is at the discretion of the court.

6) Vote with your wallet, and switch to an ISP which has not voluntarily entered into this scheme. If you do this, tell BT that you've moved and why.

7) Ignore it, notwithstanding the frustration of its inaccuracy / inappropriateness.

(The last one I saw was a speculative invoice for a pornographic film. My advice in that case was to simply ignore it. Nothing further was heard. (YMMV etc.))

1) Check whether it could possibly be traffic from your network. Do friends have access? Children? Poor Wi-Fi security? Open proxy server? 2) Subject access request (s7 Data Protection Act 1998) to BT, for the record which Get it Right sent to them. You want the IP address, port number and UTC timestamp, which enabled BT to do the matching to identify your account. It might cost you £10. 3) If you are willing to identify yourself to Get it Right (more so than you have done by posting the letter online, I suppose), a SAR to GiR, asking for the information which they hold on you, which led them to send the notice to BT. If they quibble about whether they hold your personal data, point out the case of Breyer, dealing with IP addresses and personal data (http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=184668&doclang=EN&cid=1095511) 4) If you are sure that it was not you, once you've seen GiR's record, consider complaining to them about inaccurate processing of your personal data. Ask for rectification under the Data Protection Act. If they refuse, complain to the Information Commissioner's Office. They may not do anything but, the more complaints, the higher the likelihood. 5) You might even consider a small claims court action for the distress caused by their processing, if you can demonstrate inaccuracy. But I'd talk to a solicitor first at that point as, while the SCC generally shields from paying the other party's legal fees, that is at the discretion of the court. 6) Switch to an ISP which has not voluntarily entered into this scheme. 7) Ignore it, notwithstanding the frustration of its inaccuracy / inappropriateness. (The last one I saw was a speculative invoice for a pornographic film. My advice in that case was to simply ignore it. Nothing further was heard. (YMMV etc.))

Ruling

Correct - non-penile penetration would fall under "assault by penetration".

Oops — an extraneous "you" in the first line.

The product page for the Sony Dash does not really shed any more light on what it is, but the pictures indicate it is a clunky tablet-like device which you can be stood on a table against a backdrop of different home furnishings, mostly in soft focus.

A Sony press release from 2010 says that:

Apparently "Chumby Industries" is a service provider for this sort of device which, according to its own website, had "year-long hiatus sometime relatively recently.

So it looks as if those who stuck with the device, despite an apparent year-long absence of some of the services, suffered a bug at some point which prevented them from using it, and that Sony has released a patch to fix it.

I agree on the likely "number of years" front, although I suspect that this might be perceived by some as an opportunity to make an example. Whether the judge goes for it, of course...

We will need to wait to see the detail, but my guess would be that the "property" is probably money to do with some kind of advertising, or other slightly tangential activity. Potentially a bit "Al Capone" like.

And under European law, in its current form:

Injunctive relief (such as a blocking injunction) is specifically recognised as acceptable by the law which grants ISPs "mere conduit" status:

Of course, this is just law, and could be struck down by a court on, for example, human rights grounds, and the CJEU's Advocate General made some interesting comments on human rights considerations in the context of blocking of open, free Wi-Fi recently but, to date, the courts have been relatively comfortable granting blocking injunctions.

It is worth bearing in mind that the charges in question do not appear to be charges under copyright law. They are, apparently:

Converting criminal property falls under s327 Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and has a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.

Possession of an article for use in fraud is covered by s6 Fraud Act 2006, which carries up to 5 years imprisonment.

In the EU, there is no requirement of data retention at all any more – there was, for some years, but this was struck down by the CJEU in the Digital Rights Ireland case.

However, the European directive would have covered providers of Wi-Fi services: it uses the term "publicly available electronic communications services". (Article 3(1) directive 2006/24/EC).

This definition comes from the telecommunications regulatory framework – Article 2 directive 2002/21/EC defines "electronic communications service" as "a service normally provided for remuneration which consists wholly or mainly in the conveyance of signals on electronic communications networks".

Whether the Wi-Fi service would generate or process in the course of its operation of the types of data to which a retention notice could relate (list here, Part 3 in particular) is perhaps a different matter, and likely depends on the service in question. A service requiring subscriber registration, for example, or entering an email address, may well have been in scope (for example, paragraph 11(3)).

The most interesting part of the opinion, in my view, was the clear statement that someone offering free public Wi-Fi to their customers did so as part of the "economic context" of their shop, even though they do not charge directly for it.

The reason why this is important is that the shielding law in question here — Art. 212, directive 2000/31/EC — can be invoked only by those providing an "information society service". This is defined as:

As you'll have noticed, to be protected, the service must be "provided for remuneration". In this opinion, the Advocate General argues that it need not be direct remuneration, and that a link to a broader economic context is sufficient. This is logical, in the sense that it follows previous decisions, but it is an important clarification. (There is a previous decision, for example, (Papasavvas) which held that a website funded by advertising was an "information society service", even though the remuneration to the sites comes not directly from the site's users, but from the advertising broker.)

The Advocate General expressly stated that he was not considering the situation where there was no other economic context.

There is no specific European case law relating to the liability of someone running a Tor exit node. However, following the principles of the opinion (not yet a court ruling) here, someone running a Tor exit node would probably be well-advised to try to bring their activities within the scope of an economic context. That could be running the exit node alongside some other business, or offering subscription plans (well, supporter plans, I suspect) for would-be users of Tor (even if not of that specific exit node) to contribute to the running of the system, or something else which made it part of an economic activity. Someone running a Tor exit node, or an open Wi-Fi connection, from their home network, without an economic context, looks unlikely to be shielded by this law, if the court chooses to follow the Advocate General's ruling.

(My general comments on the opinion are here.)

In the UK, there is no monopoly on giving legal advice — only six things in the legal sphere require particular entitlement ("reserved activities"):

• (a) the exercise of a right of audience;
• (b) the conduct of litigation;
• (c) reserved instrument activities;
• (d) probate activities;
• (e) notarial activities;
• (f) the administration of oaths.

Anyone can give legal advice, so prohibiting just software from doing so would seem a very odd move.

The professional body for solicitors in England and Wales — the Law Society — recently released a report on "The Future Of Legal Services" and, at section 4.2, it talks through (very briefly) a number of the technology changes which will either be useful to solicitors or else challenging them.