Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Volunteers sought for 4G trial

Volunteers in an area of Cornwall are being sought to trial new high-speed 4G broadband as part of a joint project by Everything Everywhere and BT.

The trial, from September to December in South Newquay, will be focusing on offering broadband in expensive-to-reach rural areas.

It will be the first chance for UK customers to test 4G technology, which is set to roll out nationally by 2014.

UK networks will bid for use of the 4G spectrum early next year.

The auction will follow a consultation period that has already begun into how the 4G spectrum will be distributed among networks in the UK.

For the Cornwall trial, Everything Everywhere - the name given to the partnership of T-Mobile and Orange - and BT have been granted part of the 800Mhz spectrum for test purposes.

The spectrum is currently being used across the UK for analogue television but is in the process of gradually being switched off.

Black spots

The trial will act as an experiment to see if 4G LTE could provide a cheap solution to getting high-speed internet to places currently regarded as black spots with slow or no broadband connection.

LTE, which stands for Long Term Evolution, is a particular type of 4G system that allows data download speeds of 100 megabits per second while on the move, and faster speeds for stationary wireless connections.

"Start Quote

They're trying to avoid digging up the roads, so that removes the large cost of getting superfast broadband to those rural areas"

End Quote Sebastien Lahtinen Thinkbroadband.com

This faster capability means that rather than providing physical cabling to less urban areas, BT will instead be able to use masts from Everything Everywhere to distribute its broadband wirelessly.

"Instead of building two networks, we're trying to do it with one," explained Emin Gurdeneli, VP of network services at Everything Everywhere.

"The customer will enjoy a broadband service at their premises, at their home etc, as if they had acquired it in the usual way. What will be different is our delivery mechanism."

The trial is being supported by Nokia, Siemens and Huawei, as well as the Cornwall Development Company.

People living in the St Newlyn East area of South Newquay have been asked to register their interest in the trial via a website. They will receive all the necessary equipment.

Half of the people in the trial will have their homes fitted with modified wireless routers, which will be able to pick up the area's 4G connection to give the household access to the internet.

The other half will be given 4G dongles with which to try out the connection on individual devices such as laptops.

'Next generation'

Speeds of uploads and downloads will be measured to determine the technology's success. Until now, 4G LTE's capabilities in the UK have been measured only in laboratory conditions.

Sebastien Lahtinen, from thinkbroadband.com, says money is a large motivator behind the trial.

"They're trying to avoid digging up the roads, so that removes the large cost of getting superfast broadband to those rural areas," he told the BBC.

He added that the 4G broadband could provide those in the trial with faster connections than most current fixed-line broadband customers.

"It has the potential to jump them into the next generation world."

However, the UK still lags behind other countries with its 4G rollout. Germany, Sweden, Japan and the US already have public 4G networks in use.



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Sarkozy questions 'neutral' net

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Internet bosses are meeting in Paris at a two-day forum arranged by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, as Christian Fraser explains

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy has opened the first ever e-G8 forum in Paris.

The event brings together leading figures from the technology industry to discus the impact of the internet.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and Google's Eric Schmidt are among those due to speak.

Critics have claimed that the e-G8 is too focused on handing net control to companies and governments.

Moral rules

Addressing those concerns, President Sarkozy said that states were subject to the will of their citizens who were currently engaged in a revolution, empowered by the internet.

"The global revolution that you incarnate is a peaceful one. It did not emerge on battlefields but on university campuses," he said.

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy tells internet heads at the eG8 conference in Paris that they do not live in a parallel, moral-free universe

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However, President Sarkozy claimed that countries could not remain neutral and allow completely unchecked internet use.

"The world you represent is not a parallel universe where legal and moral rules and more generally all the basic rules that govern society in democratic countries do not apply."

In the past, the French President has been characterised as someone who favours the rights of content creators and rights holders over internet users.

France has passed one of the toughest laws to crack down on people who download content without paying for it, with a three-strikes-and-out law for illegal filesharers.

Repeat offenders face a range of punishments, including disconnection from the web.

No harm

A number of prominent rights-holders including News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch and BBC director general Mark Thompson were also due to speak at the event.

Addressing delegates, Mr Sarkozy said the role of government regulation was to promote creativity and prevent criminality, but he also acknowledged the claims of his critics.

"I know and I understand that our French idea of copyright laws is not the same as in the United States and other countries.

"Start Quote

It is too soon to regulate the beast"

End Quote Jeff Jarvis Media commentator

"Nobody can have his ideas, work, imagination and intellectual property expropriated without punishment," he said.

American media commentator Jeff Jarvis challenged President Sarkozy, during a question and answer session, to sign-up to an oath to "do no harm" to the internet.

The suggestion was met with some indignation, with the President suggesting that asserting controls on illegal activity could never be regarded as harmful.

Speaking to the BBC afterwards, Mr Jarvis said that President Sarkozy's comments betrayed the true intent of many world leaders.

"At least Sarkozy acknowledged that he doesn't own the internet and his government doesn't own the internet. Nonetheless, he is claiming sovereignty here and so will the G8 and I have fear in that.

"Perhaps out of best intentions they will try to change the architecture of the internet and how it operates, but we don't even know what it is yet. It is too soon to regulate the beast," he said.



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Robots develop their own language

Robots are developing their own language to help them navigate and improve their intellectual ability.

The Lingodroid research project lets robots generate random sounds for the places they visit in both simulations and a real office.

The "words" are shared and the robots play games to establish which sound represents which location.

The lexicon has proved so sophisticated that it can be used to help robots find places other robots direct them to.

The machines are being allowed to generate their own words because human language is so loaded with information that robots found it hard to understand, said project leader Dr Ruth Schulz from the University of Queensland.

"Robot-robot languages take the human out of the loop," she said. "This is important because the robots demonstrate that they understand the meaning of the words they invent independent of humans."

One set of the trials with Lingodroids sees wheeled robots fitted with a camera, laser-range finder, and sonar used to map their world - roaming around at an office at the University. The robots also have a microphone and speakers onboard so they can communicate with each other.

The wheeled robots travel about and, when they reach a place that does not have a name, they generate a random combination of syllables that represent that place.

When that robot meets another robot it tells it about the places it has been. Slowly, as the robots travel and talk, they narrow down their lexicon of place names until a mutual gazeteer of their world has been generated.

The robots generated place names such as "kuzo", "jaro" and "fexo".

Each location was broadly tied to the sensory horizon of the sonar and laser-range finder they have on board, said Dr Schulz. Each chunk of territory was typically a couple of metres in diameter, she said.

This enabled the names to be used as rough distance measures and allowed the robots to play other games which communicate distance, travel time and direction.

Some games involve swapping sounds but others, such as the "go-to-game" involve the robots trying to meet up at a distant location.

The power of the language being created by the Lingodroids was starting to become apparent, said Dr Schulz.

"They enable the robots to refer to places they haven't been or even places that they imagine beyond the edges of their explored world," she said.

Dr Schulz said work was continuing to enable the robots to generate and understand more place names and make their appreciation of their geography more subtle.



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Brussels readies net piracy purge

Europeans who pirate pop songs or movies online could face a new crackdown as Brussels proposes updates to intellectual property laws.

The re-written strategy may draft ISPs into the battle against those who pirate and share content online.

Critics said the strategy threatened to harm privacy in the name of identifying persistent pirates.

The European Commission will publish its strategy for updating IP laws on 24 May.

The refreshed Commission strategy aims to standardise the way all member nations treat patents, trademarks and copyright. It also plans to bring in new customs regulations to cover the treatment of suspected counterfeit goods.

Copyright laws needed revising, said a Commission statement, because the different ways they were handled in member states was hampering economic growth. Many online entertainment services held back from launching their services throughout the region because of the difficulties, it said.

Four times as much legal music is downloaded in the US than in the EU because copyright is easier to sort out in America, it said.

Jobs are being lost because of growing production of counterfeit goods while the pirating of creative works also hit national budgets through lost tax revenue, said the statement.

Diametric opposition

Details of the strategy have leaked out and reveal that the Commission plans to make greater use of intermediaries such as ISPs to tackle copyright infringement at source.

Online rights and consumers groups have criticised the revamped strategy and its focus on copyright infringement.

BEUC, an umbrella group that represents consumer groups across Europe, said the IP strategy was "woefully out-dated" in the way it treated copyright.

Peter Bradwell, a campaigner for the UK's Open Rights Group, said the broad crackdown being suggested was misplaced.

"Currently they are in danger of weakening privacy in favour of rights holders," he said.

The strategy could prove problematic for the UK government, said Mr Bradwell, if it adopts the recommendations of the Hargreaves report.

Written by Professor Ian Hargreaves, the report aims to update UK copyright laws and recommends legalising some copying of music and films.

Many of its conclusions were "diametrically opposed" to those in the Commission's strategy, he said.

"The UK government is going to have its work cut out to implement Hargreaves given the direction that the European Commission is pursuing," said Mr Bradwell.



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Monday, May 23, 2011

Courts &#39;could target&#39; Twitter UK

Twitter's decision to open a UK office could leave it more vulnerable to prosecution over what its users write.

Lawyers who spoke to the BBC agreed that the move meant the company may no longer be able to claim to be solely US-based and immune to English law.

The micro-blogging site is the subject of a High Court legal challenge in relation to the naming of a footballer who had obtained a privacy injunction.

Twitter has so far declined to comment on the case.

Until recently, Twitter's operations were largely confined to Silicon Valley in California.

Last month, the company began advertising for staff to work at new European headquarters in London.

Among the posts on offer are Account Executive and Communications Manager.

Vulnerable

Many legal experts believe that having a physical presence in the country would potentially expose Twitter to local sanctions.

Kim Walker, a partner at law firm Pinsent Masons said: "Opening an office in the UK would unquestionably make Twitter more vulnerable to lawsuits.

"The law enforcement authorities would be able to argue that it is Twitter UK which has been involved in the contempt of court or which has published the defamatory statement, so is directly responsible for the misdeed."

Mr Walker suggested that the company could claim its UK office existed for specific purposes, such as sales and marketing, and was not directly involved with the business of tweeting.

"Start Quote

Opening an office in the UK would unquestionably make Twitter more vulnerable to lawsuits."

End Quote Kim Walker Pinsent Masons

However, he warned that the argument might not convince the courts.

"If Twitter has any assets in the UK - assets in this instance is a fairly loose term, and covers staff as well as buildings and equipment - then those would be at risk if it chose not to obey rulings imposed upon it by the High Court."

That view was echoed by Simon McAleese, a defamation lawyer based in Dublin, where many US technology companies have their European headquarters.

"It is back to the very basic rule that possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you have possessions and staff then you are going to be very vulnerable to the laws of that jurisdiction," he told BBC News.

The exact nature of Twitter's London office, as well as the number of staff, is not yet known.

Access only

Industry insiders told the BBC that while lawyers may have strong views on the matter, it would take a test case to properly establish the law's authority.

They also pointed out that, although UK injunctions do not apply in the United States, individuals who feel they have been defamed are free to raise a legal action in the American courts.

Even among those lawyers who believe the law is clear-cut, there was doubt that a real-world action would be straightforward.

"Twitter would say their site operates in the States and they are simply facilitating access," said Paul Tweed, a senior partner at Johnson's Solicitors.

Mr Tweed suggested that internet companies, operating in the UK, might seek to limit their potential liability by leasing rather than buying property and limiting staff numbers.

He warned that similar cases would continue to appear if the issue of internet jurisdiction was not addressed at a higher level.

"We have to get some sort of international arbitration set up which the Americans would need to be involved in," said Mr Tweed.

Twitter was unavailable to comment on the story at the time of writing.



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Sony eyes annual loss of $3.2bn

Japanese electronics giant Sony says it expects to report an annual loss of $3.2bn (�2bn), after previously predicting a return to profit.

Sony had earlier indicated it would make a $860m profit in the financial year to the end of March.

It said the loss was largely due to writing off $4.4bn related to a tax credit booked in a previous quarter.

The firm has been hit recently by March's earthquake and tsunami, and a series of computing hacking attacks.

Among its range of products, Sony makes PlayStation video games and Vaio computers.

The earthquake and tsunami on 11 March hit plants in north-east Japan, which affected the firm's supply chain, and in the wider economy led to fall in consumer spending.

Sony is aiming to have resolved the hacking issues that caused the shutdown of its PlayStation Network by the end of May.

Cyber attacks involved the theft of personal data that included names, passwords and addresses from more than 100 million accounts.

It now says said the data breach will result in a $170m drain, at least, on operating profits in terms of insurance and damages costs.



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Laser smashes data rate records

Researchers have set a new record for the rate of data transfer using a single laser: 26 terabits per second.

At those speeds, the entire Library of Congress collections could be sent down an optical fibre in 10 seconds.

The trick is to use what is known as a "fast Fourier transform" to unpick more than 300 separate colours of light in a laser beam, each encoded with its own string of information.

The technique is described in the journal Nature Photonics.

The push for higher data rates in light-based telecommunications technologies has seen a number of significant leaps in recent years.

While the earliest optical fibre technologies encoded a string of data as "wiggles" within a single colour of light sent down a fibre, newer approaches have used a number of tricks to increase data rates.

Among them is what is known as "orthogonal frequency division multiplexing", which uses a number of lasers to encode different strings of data on different colours of light, all sent through the fibre together.

At the receiving end, another set of laser oscillators can be used to pick up these light signals, reversing the process.

Check the pulse

While the total data rate possible using such schemes is limited only by the number of lasers available, there are costs, says Wolfgang Freude, a co-author of the current paper from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.

"Already a 100 terabits per second experiment has been demonstrated," he told BBC News.

"The problem was they didn't have just one laser, they had something like 370 lasers, which is an incredibly expensive thing. If you can imagine 370 lasers, they fill racks and consume several kilowatts of power."

Professor Freude and his colleagues have instead worked out how to create comparable data rates using just one laser with exceedingly short pulses.

Within these pulses are a number of discrete colours of light in what is known as a "frequency comb".

When these pulses are sent into an optical fibre, the different colours can add or subtract, mixing together and creating about 325 different colours in total, each of which can be encoded with its own data stream.

Last year, Professor Freude and his collaborators first demonstrated how to use a smaller number of these colours to transmit over 10 terabits per second.

At the receiving end, traditional methods to separate the different colours will not work. In the current experiment, the team sent their signals down 50km of optical fibre and then implemented what is known as an optical fast Fourier transform to unpick the data streams.

Colours everywhere

The Fourier transform is a well-known mathematical trick that can in essence extract the different colours from an input beam, based solely on the times that the different parts of the beam arrive.

The team does this optically - rather than mathematically, which at these data rates would be impossible - by splitting the incoming beam into different paths that arrive at different times, recombining them on a detector.

In this way, stringing together all the data in the different colours turns into the simpler problem of organising data that essentially arrive at different times.

Professor Freude said that the current design outperforms earlier approaches simply by moving all the time delays further apart, and that it is a technology that could be integrated onto a silicon chip - making it a better candidate for scaling up to commercial use.

He concedes that the idea is a complex one, but is convinced that it will come into its own as the demand for ever-higher data rates drives innovation.

"Think of all the tremendous progress in silicon photonics," he said. "Nobody could have imagined 10 years ago that nowadays it would be so common to integrate relatively complicated optical circuits on to a silicon chip."



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Sunday, May 22, 2011

Paper names Twitter claims player

A Scottish newspaper has named a footballer accused of being linked to a privacy injunction by users of social networking website Twitter.

The Sunday Herald is the first mainstream UK publication to do this.

Its front page has an image of a man whose eyes are covered with a black bar which features the word "censored".

It comes after Twitter users reacted to a footballer's bid to find out who is putting information about him on the website by posting new messages online.

The player, who an injunction says can only be identified as CTB, is involved in proceedings against former Miss Wales and ex-Big Brother star Imogen Thomas and the Sun newspaper.

'Unsustainable'

In recent weeks there has been heightened scrutiny of gagging orders such as injunctions and so-called super-injunctions - court orders that prevent the media from revealing even the fact that an injunction has been granted.

In its editorial explaining the move, the Scottish Herald said it named the sportsman being linked to the injunction on Twitter because it was "unsustainable" for newspapers to be prevented from sharing information which is easily available on the internet.

It said: "We should point out immediately that we are not accusing the footballer concerned of any misdeed. Whether the allegations against him are true or not has no relevance to this debate.

"The issue is one of freedom of information and of a growing argument in favour of more restrictive privacy laws."

The paper also says the injunction "holds no legal force in Scotland, where a separate court order is needed".

As of 1430 BST on Sunday the Herald's website was not carrying the name of the footballer or the picture used on the front page of its printed newspaper.

'Out of control'

There has been widespread speculation on social media websites in recent days naming high profile individuals who have allegedly used the English courts to protect their identities.

On Sunday it emerged that the attorney general is being asked to consider prosecuting a journalist who allegedly broke a privacy order on Twitter.

The unnamed writer allegedly named a footballer, who is accused of having an affair, known in court papers as TSE.

The attorney general's office said it would "consider the matter carefully" but had not yet received the request.

On Friday, the findings of a year-long inquiry by a committee of judges and lawyers into the use of injunctions and so-called super-injunctions were revealed.

The committee's report said super-injunctions were now being granted for "short periods" and only where "secrecy is necessary".

Committee chairman Lord Neuberger, who is the most senior civil judge in England and Wales, said the internet "does add to difficulties of enforcement at the moment".

He said the internet had "by no means the same degree of intrusion into privacy as the story being emblazoned on the front pages of newspapers", which "people trust more".

However, he warned that modern technology was "totally out of control" and society should consider other ways to bring Twitter and other websites under control.



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Saturday, May 21, 2011

Footballer sparks Twitter storm

Hundreds of Twitter users have reacted to a footballer's bid to find out who is putting information about him on the website by posting new messages online.

The player, who an injunction says can only be identified as CTB, is taking action against ex-Big Brother star Imogen Thomas and the Sun newspaper.

He has now obtained a High Court order asking Twitter to reveal details of users who had revealed his identity.

Twitter has not commented but hundreds of users have repeated his name online.

'Fully entitled'

Papers lodged in the High Court against Twitter and "persons unknown" request disclosure of Twitter users said to have published confidential details.

The order against the US-based micro-blogging website requires Twitter to disclose the requested information within seven days - or within the appropriate time required by the law in California, where it has its headquarters.

Lawyers at Schillings, who represent CTB, have issued a statement clarifying the action it has taken.

It said it was not suing Twitter but had made an application "to obtain limited information concerning the unlawful use of Twitter by a small number of individuals who may have breached a court order".

ANALYSIS

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Once again Twitter finds itself centre stage in the debate over privacy.

Two weeks ago, one Twitter follower made a concerted attempt to challenge the law by pulling together, in a short burst of tweets, the names of celebrities thought to have taken out gagging orders.

Jemima Khan poured petrol on the flames by tweeting a denial, giving broadcasters and newspapers a legitimate peg to run the story.

Websites such as Twitter have put a huge strain on the ability of the courts to enforce gagging orders and it has been widely assumed there is no legal redress against them.

The Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said this week that digital media had made an ass of the law and it was hard to enforce injunctions against Twitter because it was incorporated in the United States.

Now it seems the law is about to be tested.

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It comes days after a High Court judge said the footballer was "fully entitled" to anonymity.

Justice Eady has reserved judgement on lifting the injunction after a private hearing with the man's lawyers, the Sun and former Miss Wales Imogen Thomas in London.

However, since news of the disclosure order became public on Friday hundreds of people have tweeted information revealing the footballer's identity.

One message being re-tweeted on the micro-blogging site, stated: "xx xx is suing Twitter. I can't Imogen why."

The legal move by the footballer comes two weeks after a Twitter user tried to unmask some celebrities who have obtained privacy injunctions to prevent publication of details of their private lives.

The Twitter user claimed to "out" a number of UK public figures, although the tweets appeared to contain errors.

Media commentator Steve Hewlett said CTB's lawyers were, in all likelihood, "trying to establish the real identity" of that user.

He said the privacy injunction preventing CTB's identity being revealed had been challenged on the grounds that it was already in the public domain because it was already available on the internet.

Mr Hewlett said "arguing that it's in the public domain because it's already on Twitter" would "put you in a very serious position in terms of contempt of court" if it transpired that "you had anything to do with putting it on Twitter".

There are precedents for legal action to find out the names of individuals behind some Twitter accounts.

'Everybody knows anyway'

Publicist Max Clifford told the BBC that while leaked information on Twitter has a limited impact, journalists can try to use it as leverage.

"It appears to be out of control. It's a strong bargaining chip as journalists want to say, 'Everybody knows anyway,'" he said.

Mr Clifford said some kind of balance must be struck to protect privacy and freedom of speech.

The publicist said: "Super-injunctions and injunctions are purely a law for the rich, and purely there to protect the rich.

"What you need is some halfway house between the invading of people's privacy and freedom of the press and information both of which are vital in a democracy."

Twitter has been resisting attempts by the US government to subpoena information on a number of users in relation to the Wikileaks affair.

Media lawyer Nick Lockett said the legal action against Twitter may not have much effect.

"What will have to be established is that Twitter was subject to the jurisdiction of the court," he said. While UK courts claim worldwide jurisdiction this has often proved hard to enforce.

In the case of the US, said Mr Lockett, the situation was complicated by the Communications Decency Act which grants immunity from prosecution for providers of "interactive computer services" under certain circumstances.

Lawyers acting for CTB may struggle to prove that Twitter does not deserve this immunity, said Mr Lockett.



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Friday, May 20, 2011

Footballer acts against Twitter

Legal proceedings are being taken by a professional footballer against Twitter for allegedly publishing information covered by a super-injunction.

The player, identified only by the initials CTB, is also known to be taking action against the Sun newspaper and ex-Big Brother star Imogen Thomas.

Papers lodged in the High Court are against Twitter and "persons unknown".

They request disclosure of Twitter users said to be behind the publication of confidential information.

Legal fight

The order requires Twitter to disclose the requested information within seven days - or within the appropriate time required by Californian law.

Lawyers at Schillings who represent CTB have issued a statement clarifying the action it has taken.

It said it was not suing Twitter but had made an application "to obtain limited information concerning the unlawful use of Twitter by a small number of individuals who may have breached a court order".

Twitter has refused to comment on the matter.

There are precedents for legal action to find out the names of individuals behind some Twitter accounts.

ANALYSIS

<!-- pullout-items--> <!-- pullout-body-->

Once again Twitter finds itself centre stage in the debate over privacy.

Two weeks ago, one Twitter follower made a concerted attempt to challenge the law by pulling together, in a short burst of tweets, the names of celebrities thought to have taken out gagging orders.

Jemima Khan poured petrol on the flames by tweeting a denial, giving broadcasters and newspapers a legitimate peg to run the story.

Websites such as Twitter have put a huge strain on the ability of the courts to enforce gagging orders and it has been widely assumed there is no legal redress against them.

The Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said this week that digital media had made an ass of the law and it was hard to enforce injunctions against Twitter because it was incorporated in the United States.

Now it seems the law is about to be tested.

<!-- pullout-links-->

Twitter has been resisting attempts by the US government to subpoena information on a number of users in relation to the Wikileaks debacle.

However, the legal action is taking place within the United States, where the company has its headquarters.

To date, there have been no such actions against users who published anonymously or under assumed names.

Media lawyer Nick Lockett said the legal action against Twitter may not have much effect.

"What will have to be established is that Twitter was subject to the jurisdiction of the court," he said. While UK courts claim worldwide jurisdiction this has often proved hard to enforce.

In the case of the US, said Mr Lockett, the situation was complicated by the Communications Decency Act which grants immunity from prosecution for providers of "interactive computer services" under certain circumstances.

Lawyers acting for CTB may struggle to prove that Twitter does not deserve this immunity, said Mr Lockett.



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