Informationoverlord

Ofcom fined you and me £400,000 this morning. Didn’t you get the letter?? Ah, that may have been because they tried to hide the fact by saying they were fining the BBC £400,000, which as the BBC is funded by you and me (and others) through the licence fee, £400,000 of that money is now going back to the Treasury, via HM Paymaster General. (I should say this is only costing licence payers about 1p each, so my Daily Mail style indignation is not too serious).

Ofcom explains “While recognising that any fine would be taken from monies paid by the public (the licence fee payer), the Committee noted that Parliament had decided that it was appropriate in certain circumstances for Ofcom to impose a financial penalty on the BBC (though at a lower threshold to other Public Service Broadcasters, i.e. set at a maximum of £250,000 on any occasion).”

The fine, whilst not the first given out to the Beeb - remember the ’socks the cat’ scandal? - is the largest ever imposed by Ofcom against the BBC. The fines here relate to unfair conduct of viewer and listener competitions, including faking winners in eight radio and TV programmes between 2005 and 2007. The investigations found that in some cases, the production team had taken pre-mediated decisions to broadcast competitions and encourage listeners to enter in the full knowledge that the audience stood no chance of winning. In other cases, programmes faced with technical problems, made up the names of winners. Ofcom found that the BBC failed to have adequate management oversight of its compliance and training procedures to ensure that the audience was not misled.

We already knew what the programmes at fault were , as the BBC had already admitted to all the problems as part of its own investigation. Here they are with the associated fines:

Television
Comic Relief, BBC1 on 16 March 2007 £45,000
Sport Relief, BBC1 on 15 July 2006 £45,000
Children in Need, BBC1 (Scotland) on 18 November 2005 £35,000
TMi, BBC2 and CBBC on 16 September 2006 £50,000
Radio
Liz Kershaw Show, BBC 6 Music between 25 July 2005 - 6 January 2007 £115,000
The Jo Whiley Show, BBC Radio 1 between 20 April - 12 May 2006 £75,000
Russell Brand, BBC 6 Music on 9 April 2006 £17,500
The Clare McDonnell Show, BBC 6 Music from September 2006 £17,500

The Liz Kershaw Show came in for the most criticism. Ofcom gave it the biggest fine due to what it called “repeated instances of pre-meditated, deliberate deception” over a period spanning nearly 17 months. Ofcom was “concerned that the deliberate decisions to fake ‘winners’ in pre-recorded editions of Liz Kershaw were taken with the full knowledge of the production team and the presenter.” (This was in cases where the pre-recorded show was broadcast ‘as live’ and listeners were still encouraged to phone/text/email in).

Still, we’ve already ponied up the money, so now I think the Beeb should ask us were we want the fine money to come from. I, for one, would be happy if paying this fine meant no more series of ‘My Family’ , ‘Little Miss Jocelyn’ or that dreadful Only Fools and Horses spin off. In fact, if we cannot get rid of all of those can Ofcom please fine the BBC a larger amount until we can??

Via Emily Chang, I have just found Zrc2, a  new community and networking venue specifically aimed at individuals working in or associated with the IT and Telecom industries. Has links to news, jobs,  and some interesting forum discussions. Free to sign up, and anyone can join - although they do ask that you at least have some connection with the IT and Telecoms industries.

Oh,  and Zrc2 is a “Z” code that is/was commonly used in Morse telegraphy.

I did my first podcast over the weekend - or at least I participated in someone else’s to be precise. So, on Saturday am, there I was sat in my Dressing Gown, armed with a cup of Coffee as I had the pleasure of conversing with CharonQC for one of his regular podcasts. We talked about the issue of illegal downloading - in the wake of the launch of the government’s consultation on getting the industry and ISPs to better tackle the problem, and also about how the internet has changed the way law is researched.

It was fun to do, with Mike trying his best to make those he is speaking to feel at ease and hopefully make some sense - although I do sound like a rambling idiot in parts (this may just be because I am actually a rambling idiot in part) Overall I don’t sound too bad though (although listening to one’s self is a very strange experience)

Anyway, for those wanting to listen to my words of wisdom, they are available here

The WIPO Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy unit have ordered Richard Saville-Smith to turn over the narnia.mobi domain to C.S. Lewis (PTE.) Ltd, which owns trademark, copyright and other proprietary rights in the literary works of C.S. Lewis. This includes valid and subsisting trademark registrations in various countries for the term “narnia” and other NARNIA-composite marks. “Narnia” is the name of a fictional country in C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia”, a series of seven children’s books. They also own and operate web sites at narnia.com and narnia.co.uk, which provide information about the “The Chronicles of Narnia” books and the movies, their history and characters.

In September 2006, Richard Saville-Smith registered the domain narnia.mobi

Now Richard Saville-Smith contented, and certainly told the press when the CS Lewis’ estate went after him, that all he had done was the register the narnia.mobi domain name, as a gift for his son’s 11th birthday, so that his son, an avid fan of the Chronicles of Narnia books, might receive emails at that address direct to his mobile phone. The plan was to present this to his son on his 11th birthday in May 2008. It was terrible, he said, that the estate were trying to “ruthlessly snatch away a gift intended for a young boy who loves his Narnia books”

I must confess when I first read about this story I had some sympathy with Saville-Smith. I knew he’d probably have to hand over the domain, but it sounded like the kind of thing a parent could do with out realising the legal stuff. I then learned that he and his wife ran a media and PR agency and they had experience registering domains for clients, and that far from being used by his son, the domain had been permanently parked to a page run by Sedo, which contains sponsored links to websites offering for sale merchandize and apparel related to “The Chronicles of Narnia” books and movies. (although there was no evidence that he made any money from click-revenue that Sedo was obviously generating)

Added to this, around the time he registered the dot mobi name, he also registered the following domain names: drwho.mobi, mi5.mobi, mi6.mobi, middleearth.mobi, spooks.mobi, tardis.mobi, ovaloffice.mobi, pentagon.mobi, primeminister.mobi, scottishparliament.mobi,
thequeen.mobi, and uspresident.mobi. With the exception of middleearth.mobi, all of these domain names resolve to parked websites provided by Sedo. By this point you’re either thinking that Saville-Smith has a big family with varied tastes that he wanted to gift domains to, as birthday presents, or any sympathy you might have had is starting to go - if not gone.

Proving that he does at least have a sense of humour on June 17, 2008, two weeks after the filing of this Complaint, he registered the domain names freenarnia.com and freenarnia.mobi. A sense of humour, but not much common sense, when part of his argument was that whilst he had registered a number of “generic” domain names, they “do not implicate third-party trademark rights”

The panel didn’t find this too clever either, finding it ” disturbing” that Saville-Smith has registered the additional domains appropriating the Complainant’s mark. They stated that they could not envision any plausible, good faith basis upon which Saville-Smith could have concluded that he was free to appropriate the Complainant’s distinctive and widely known NARNIA mark for use as a personal email address. The equally dismissed his claim that he wasn’t personally using it for commercial use, so the registration was not in bad faith, saying: “while the Respondent denies making any active use of the disputed domain name, the passive holding of a domain name can be considered as bad faith where it is not possible to conceive of any plausible actual or contemplated active use of the disputed domain name that would be legitimate.”

The panel were also not buying the birthday present story, finding that since the registration of the domain on September 29, 2006, there “is no indication in the record that the Respondent had used or made any preparations to use the disputed domain name as an email address before being placed on notice of this dispute by the Complainant some twenty (20) months later in May 2008.” Now this may or may not be fair. I’d still like to think there was a genuine intention to give his son the domain as a gift. Either way, it was never going to happen.

I looked out with interest this morning the government’s announcement of plans to tackle file-sharing, after reading the front page of today’s Independent which told me that the introduction of a yearly levy of around £30 for each broadband subscriber was going to be one of the things the government were pushing for. Well, I hope the Indy will also have a front page tomorrow informing us who feed them this information, as the official consultation and collective press releases from the government, ISPs and the music industry do not mention this at all. I love the Indy, but a front page story with the headline: £30 ‘licence fee’ set to revolutionise illegal file sharing - Music Industry to tax downloaders’ is just about as wrong as you could be. [This isn’t to say that the music industry would love the idea.]

Anyway, onto what the government did say. Looking at regulating illegal file-sharing was one of the recommendations from the Gowers Report, and one which the government - to be fair - had held off on for longer than expected in the hopes that the industry and the ISPs would work out a voluntary system between themselves. Indeed, the consultation contains a Memorandum of Understanding which has been signed by the UK’s six largest ISPs Virgin Media, Sky, Carphone Warehouse, BT, Orange and Tiscali along with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and endorsed by the Anti-Film Theft Taskforce, pledging to address the problem.

The Government welcomes this progress but says despite this effort an industry wide voluntary agreement still appears highly unlikely, as it would need the voluntary participation of all the UK’s ISPs and this is still a way off. The government therefore believes that further progress is more likely to happen if the MOU forms the core of a co-regulatory approach, which would have the advantage of ensuring that its provisions were applied to all stakeholders.

This co-regulatory approach, is the government’s preferred option and consists of: A self-regulatory industry approach, designing codes of practice covering both rights holders and ISPs, overseen by Ofcom who would have the responsibility for approving codes of practice. These Codes would address a number of key issues, such as: standards of evidence; actions against alleged infringers; actions against persistent or criminal infringers; indemnity and compensation resulting from incorrect allegations of file sharing; and routes of appeal for consumers.

This approach would see the industry: Engage with and educate users about unlawful file sharing; Make material legally available online in a wide range of user-friendly formats; and Create a self-regulatory environment, with the involvement of Ofcom, including informing consumers of the illegality of file sharing and pointing to alternative legal methods available.

In addition to this approach, the government outlines alternative regulatory options considered:

• Streamlining the existing process by requiring ISPs to provide personal data relating to a given IP address to rights holders on request without them needing to go to Court

• Requiring ISPs to take direct action against users who are identified (by the rights holder) as infringing copyright through P2P (this is essentially the same legal obligation as in the preferred option in section 8, but without any selfregulatory element).

• Allocating a third party body to consider evidence provided by rights holders and to direct ISPs to take action against individual users as required, or to take action directly against individual users

• Requiring that ISPs allow the installation of filtering equipment that will block infringing content (to reduce the level of copyright infringement taking place over the internet) or requiring ISPs themselves to install filtering equipment that will block infringing content.

The government have said that it is possible that with further help and support from Ofcom and Government a solution based on the MOU can be agreed that delivers the objective of reducing significantly the amount of unlawful P2P. In those circumstances it wouold be prepared to halt the regulatory process.

I actually think the government’s proposals are capable of being surprisingly fair if not abused. The proof would be in the detail of any concrete proposal and the text of the codes of practice, of course.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a District Court ruling (remanded from the Supreme Court) that, the 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA) is unconstitutional, was not the least restrictive means of accomplishing the government’s objectives, and violated the First Amendment rights of US website operators. In particular, the court found that COPA cannot withstand a strict scrutiny, vagueness, or overbreadth analysis and thus is unconstitutional.

COPA was the US Government’s second attempt at protecting children online. Its first attempt, the 1996 Communications Decency Act (the CDA), was struck down by the Supreme Court’s finding in Reno v American Civil Liberties Union (521 US 844 (1997)) that the Act’s ‘indecent’ and ‘patently offensive’ provision abridged freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment. COPA has not faired much better, with the courts blocking Congress from enforcing it.

COPA set out to restrict access by those under 18 to harmful material contained on ‘commercial websites’. As was the case with the CDA, ‘community standards’ would be one of the tests by which ‘harmful material’ was measured. COPA makes it a crime for those ‘commercial websites’ to make material that is ‘harmful to minors’ publicly available. Those found guilty of breaking the law faced up to six months imprisonment, and up to $50,000 in fines.

In February 1999, District Court Judge Lowell Reed Jnr barred the enforcement of COPA, stating that the new law was so unconstitutionally broad that it would invariably also affect non-pornographic websites. In June 2000, the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this position in no uncertain terms, stating:

‘To avoid liability under COPA, affected web publishers would either need to severely censor their publications or implement an age or credit card verification system, whereby any material that might be deemed harmful by the most puritan of communities in any state is shielded behind such a verification system … COPA essentially requires that every web publisher, subject to the statute, abide by the most restrictive and conservative state’s “community standards” in order to avoid criminal liability.’

The Supreme Court (in a five-to-four ruling) eventually affirmed the District Court’s original views on the unconstitutionality of the Act. However, it found that it interfered with the First Amendment free speech rights of adults, rather than upholding the Appeal Court’s additional arguments that a number of terms - such as ‘material that is harmful to minors’ and ‘commercial purposes’ - were too broad. The court held that COPA was not ‘narrowly tailored to proscribe commercial pornographers and their ilk, as the Government contends, but instead prohibits a wide range of protected expression’.

The case was then remanded back to the District Court for trial on the merits, where the District Court once again found:

“COPA facially violates the First and Fifth Amendment rights of the plaintiffs because: (1) COPA is not narrowly tailored to the compelling interest of Congress; (2) defendant has failed to meet his burden of showing that COPA is the least restrictive and most effective alternative in achieving the compelling interest; and (3) COPA is impermissibly vague and overbroad.”

Not one to ignore the fact they don’t have a case, the Government, once more appealed the District Court decision to the Third Circuit.

All along, the government have argued that COPA only applies to commercial pornographers and to older minors. However, as the District, Third Circuit, and Supreme Court all pointed out, the text of the statue does not actually say that. They also pointed to the fact that, if enacted, and if it functioned as the Government said it would, all COPA would do was place restrictions on access to content from US providers and material posted on the web in the US. Users would still be able to see ‘harmful material’ posted in any other country.

The US government has persisted with arguing that filters, which could block access to content wherever in the world it was hosted not just the estimated 50% hosted in the US that would be covered by COPA, are just not as effective as COPA would be. This is despite arguing in the case of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which makes federal funding of libraries conditional upon their use of filters, that filters were a good thing for protecting children from accessing the very same content.

The court was in no doubt which was more effective. “Given the vast quantity of speech that COPA does not cover but that filters do cover, it is apparent that filters are more effective in advancing Congress’s interest, as it made plain it is in COPA. Moreover, filters are more flexible than COPA because parents can tailor them to their own values and needs and to the age and maturity of their children and thus use an appropriate flexible approach differing from COPA’s “one size fits all” approach. Finally, the evidence makes clear that, although not flawless, with proper use filters are highly effective in preventing minors from accessing sexually explicit material on the Web.”

This decision is interesting because at pretty much every stage the Court’s have been in agreement that the statute is badly worded, and good intentions aside would not achieve the government’s aims. Indeed many, myself included, would argue that the case should never have been remanded back to the District Court, and the Supreme Court bottled out on making a ruling that would have put an end to this case sooner. As Justice Breyer wrote in his dissenting opinion, when the Supreme Court heard the case ‘If this statute does not pass the Court’s “less restrictive alternative” test, what does? If nothing does, then the Court should say so clearly.’ This seemed a valid point then, and remains a valid point now: if the Supreme Court felt filters were less restrictive than COPA - which the majority clearly did - why send the case back to the District Court?

It’s only two weeks since I reported that Ofcom had fined ‘babe channel’ , Square 1 Management Ltd £17,500 for breaches of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code in respect of its service Smile TV (now operating as Blue Kiss TV), but they are at it again. This time Portland Enterprises take centre stage, getting fined £25,00for breaching Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code in respect of its service Television X - The Fantasy Channel. In particular, it was fined for “transmitting - under encryption - material that Ofcom judged to be the equivalent of ‘R18′ - i.e. highly explicit sex material - which is prohibited under the Code; and for transmitting - free-to-air - explicit sexual content, which Ofcom considered to be ‘adult-sex’ material.”

All the action - so to speak - took place in a live ‘babe’ programme on 8 June 2007. Leaving aside the fact that it apparently takes Ofcom over a year to investigate and decide these cases, the Smile TV decision was from material broadcast in May 2007, what did we miss this time?

According to Ofcom:

The material transmitted under PIN encryption on 8 June 2007 between 22.10 and 22.40 featured two naked female presenters engaging in very explicit sexual acts. This included: frequent and prolonged masturbation, shown in close-up; explicit scenes of oral sex; and explicitly depicted scenes of vaginal penetration by fingers and dildos.

The ten minute free-to-air trailer transmitted immediately prior to the encrypted output on the same night (8 June 2007) featured the same presenters. During this section one of the ‘babes’ removed her knickers and was then depicted in relative close up touching and being touched between her legs. Labial detail was apparent. Throughout, the ‘babes’ invited viewers to subscribe to the encrypted service using explicit language, such as: “…I can’t wait to bring my head in between those luscious thighs and get sucking on that juicy pussy!” and “…If you wanna see me fucking this pussy I‘ve got all kinds of toys…. that you can see me fucking Tiffany with….”

Portland, to their credit, fessed up to the charges that the material shown encrypted did include material that would be classed as R18; although it argued that the language used in free to air broadcast was not in breach of the code. Ofcom disagreed.

The broadcast free-to-air of content depicting presenters engaged in explicit sexual activity, such as masturbation, and which contains insufficient editorial justification for the inclusion of such images, is totally unacceptable. It has the potential to cause offence to the audience and harm to under-eighteens, and children in particular. Similarly, the showing of ‘R-18’-rated material at any time on an encrypted channel is also unacceptable and a serious breach of the Code. Broadcasters in the ‘adult’ television sector in particular must understand the importance of robust compliance.

If, like me, you’re curious by nature, you may be wondering just who actually complained that their ‘adult-sex’ material was too explicit and should be stopped. You wouldn’t have thought someone who was paying for access to this material would be too upset if they actually saw something that was actually of a sexual nature. And, you’d be right. The complaints in this case were made by rival broadcasters, not viewing punters.

I got sent a link this morning to a fascinating conversation on KM between Patrick Lambe with Dave Snowden and Larry Prusak. (it last 42 mins)

In the video they talk about the history of KM and whether KM is an idea that is dead. They speak about the 3 generations of KM: (i) just information management; (ii) collaborative technologies, and (iii) now an approach which is more set of principles - not one size fits all - and is more organic.

Dave Snowden points out that the fundamental assumptions of the dominant theories of KM don’t match the organic nature of human interaction. Building on this idea they say that the traditional view of KM is dead but wont lie down: What’s dead?

• that it is mostly a technological subject;
• that documents in repositories equals knowledge;
• taking IM and calling it KM;
• that a large Bureaucracy, run by the central part of the organisation, is a good idea for working with knowledge;
• that knowledge exists outside of people;
• that knowledge itself can be measured in some way, that you can ROI knowledge.

Asked, will still be Knowledge Managers in 5yrs time ?

Dave said Yes, but they will be junior members of IT department. Larry, on the other hand thought the job title would die, and they would be called practice coordinators/knowledge brokers - whose job it would be to keep track of ‘ the knowledge of the group’ . Patrick chimed in here with “or even librarians.”

This was interesting as they then made the point that librarians who are interesting in knowledge often leave librarianship in order to seek roles within KM. The reason’s they see for this are that: whilst being a librarian is very valuable work , it’s often a poorly paid position, with low status within the organisations, and as Larry quips, is also something everyone thinks they can do.

The latter point is certainly a true one, although I sometimes think that we librarians are partly to blame for this, as we often fail to promote ourselves and what we do within an organisation. How is the head of the organisation to know what you ‘actually’ do and the ‘actual’ value you provide without highlighting these aspects of our work, our skills, and the resources that we utilise. The initial point of librarians often leaving the profession in search of knowledge (so to speak) is, again, one with which I am all too familiar. We do have a profession that puts you in a box and wants to keep you there, and it is often only by dropping the ‘L’ word, that more expansive and challenging roles and opportunities present themselves. This in some ways could lead onto a question , not of is KM dead, but are librarians and librarianship dead or dying? One to ponder.

Patrick, Dave and Larry also discuss the codification concept of KM, and how blanket codification of things doesn’t work. Larry argues that whilst codified repositories, are not bad in themselves, they are often mistaken for being actual knowledge. He states it is “wrong to say you are going to work with something as elusive, human, complex, contextual and local as knowledge, by managing knowledge in a repository - It’s like saying I’m going to mange an apple tree by building a cabinet”. He see this as part of the myth that knowledge, which is a very human thing, can be managed by technological means.

Dave is even more forthright stating there is “no excuse for document libraries other than as archivists. Active documents should now be in dynamic information structures, which is the wiki type concept, and variations - possible with publication points, possibly with authorisation.” This is an interesting view, which basically sees two type of document: - active and archive. I think this is a good approach, although people like the think of things as finished/final/complete, and not as a work-in-progress. You want to say: look these guidelines are finished. In truth the guidelines almost always will not be finished, and the document for them should be live and open, until the need for the guideline has ceased.

Dave comments - and this is something I agree with wholeheartedly - that social computing is doing a lot of what were the original intentions of KM, but accidentally, and from the bottom up. He sees blogs as replicating the school/university common room - bringing together people from different disciplines to chat and exchange ideas. This, for me, is right on the money. Social computing allows KM to be transformed and allows for that organic growth by allowing networks to form in organisations, and for the learning and exchanging of ideas to no longer be confined to set groups who purportedly ‘know’ about the subject matter under discussion.

It isn’t a panacea for everything, but it starts to capture and replicate the way people interact in ‘the real world’ , and how they really think - the terms someone might use to tag a document/web page etc says a lot about how that person’s mind operates, when not tied down by rigid taxonomies. This is why facebook etc work and most organisation intranets don’t, because the trust is being placed with the individual to manage their relationships instead of the organisation trying to manage their relationships.

I could go on and on, but I will just say that if you have any interest in how knowledge and information are handled within an organisation, then listening to this is a must. I will also add that there is - some might say controversial - stuff in the discussion that I would have liked to have heard Dave and Larry expand on, especially their views on eLearning (which they think is a waste of time), and Myers-Briggs (ditto). I obviously need to go in search of more of their work.

I have now had my iPhone for just over a week, so I thought it was time to jot down a few comments on it. Do I like it / Am I in love with it? I would be lying if I said I didn’t like it a lot, but I want to start with the negatives.

Battery: If you have 3G connection active it just eats the battery life. A couple of calls and some reasonable surfing and mail checking and it is time to recharge.MMS: Text but no MMS? why? Yes, I can send an email, but that wont be of much use to my friend with an MMS capable phone.

Camera: Ok, it does at least have one, but 2mpx and no zoom function. A bit crap. It is also a bit shaky compared to the one on my Nokia  6332 making getting a clear picture a challenge.

Video Recording: Thanks for the phone but why can’t I record video with it?

Cut & Paste: Yep, still no C&P, something that would be a huge thing for the internet side of things.App Store Hype: Most of the things available are, frankly, crap.

Phone: I think it has gotten better as a phone, but making and receiving calls is still not up to the quality you get from any nokia handset. There are a number of other issues too, but I don’t want to make you thing it is all bad.

On the plus side, the phone looks great, it feels good in the hand, and whilst wider than my Nokia, is not much different than handling a blackberry. If like me, you are not a big phone call maker, but do text, email and surf a lot, this is the internet in your pocket and is capable of being a true hand held computer, if Apple lets go a bit. You just want to go on the internet at every opportunity - because you can. Suddenly, you can be there when Twitter is down, even on the move.

Text: I like that text messages between me and any other person are grouped and displayed in a conversation - a bit like iChat.

Typing: This actually works quite well. Having an iTouch probably helped but, you can quickly get to two thumb blackberry pose, and be pretty quick due to the iphone predicting what you are trying to type even when you’re mistyping, and just hitting the spacebar will insert the predicted word.

GPS: The GPS on it is a bit hit and miss. My default is not to let the phone tell apps where I am, but on occasion it can be useful for googlemaps or for an app such as urban spoon - although the latter incorrectly identified where in London I was. However, it often fails to find where you are even with 4 bar reception on 3g.

So what about the Apps? Download and tried several. RSS Reader: Newsgator do a nice rss reader app, but I am still finding that just using the mobile version of google reader is better.

Twitterrific: The big twitter app. This is pretty good. Clean interface and easy to use. BUT they seem to have chosen not to make responding to twits easy - in fact it is a pain. As a result one might again be tempted to just stick with mobile internet and just use Hahlo instead. More options, and just better.

Pownse: Like many people, I have an account but do not really use it very often, unless using ping to post to multiple platforms. Again this is very clean looking and posting and commenting are both a dream - unlike TwitterrificFacebook: I still like facebook, and still think it has the ability to be my first stop every day - a friendfeed+ if you will. It isn’t, but this app. is handy for letting you see your inbox, the latest updates from your friends, your friends list, and chat. What I do not like is that there does not seem to be any way to view a friends wall or post to that wall.

Ok, this is now beyond a joke. The Competition Appeal Tribunal website has now been down for a month, and there are still no signs of it coming back up. They did manage to put a temporary page up 10 days ago ‘whilst technical issues with the Tribunal main website are being resolved’ but it seems even updating/changing that is too much of a task. I believe the issue was/is a javascript malware infection.

That said, how can you not manage to get the site back up and running after a month? You could have rebuilt the whole thing from scratch in that time. For that matter, my mom could have probably had them back up and running given that much time, and she can barely send an email.

In the meantime, judgments can still be accessed on bailii