Week in Review: Gyarr! Pirate websites in peril!

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Blocking websites is something every business has to consider. You don’t want workers distracted by prurient material, do you? Well unless you work at Dennis Publishing’s own Bizarre magazine of course…

But banning websites altogether does have slightly more serious connotations, as has been highlighted by this week’s High Court decision to make BT block access to Newzbin 2.

On the one side, there are those who think the decision gives businesses a way of tackling the pirates and their pesky ways. On the other, there are those who consider this hugely dangerous, largely because it confirms their worst fears - net neutrality is a load of old rubbish and really ISPs and large corporations control the web.

Essentially, the concept of the internet as a free and open space has been undermined by this decision. You have to ask, did we really not see this coming? The web world is starting to resemble the real, Westernised one in frighteningly similar ways – and that’s upsetting a lot of people.

Best of the rest…

Outside of all that excitement, BT pledged to bring ADSL2+ connections to another 2.5 million residences, on the same day Ofcom raised concerns ISPs were not quite telling the truth in advertising broadband speeds. Vendors misleading customers? Well I never!

BT also reported some positive results, despite losing over 100,000 active consumer line customers. That’s almost old news now though, as its been losing customers from that section of its business for some time. The telecoms giant could still afford itself a little chuckle, however, as rival Virgin lost 36,000 broadband customers.

RIM hasn’t been having its smoothest year yet either, as it announced 2,000 job cuts.

And in yet more bad news for Nokia, Apple was confirmed as the smartphone king, with Samsung doing rather well too. Is Elop’s firm Finnished?

Nokia isn't the only one taking a battering though - the Government was told it had been pandering to tech giants too much, blocking out the little guys.

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