"Save the little Children" rallying call leads to "Save our big budget Hollywood Movie"

The announcement from the High Court that British Telecom have to block access to a website that has links to Usenet content is troubling in many ways. Andrew Orlowski at The Register has a damn fine write up on what’s going on, so I’ll point you there rather than rewording it here.

But some immediate points that are sure to be extensively debated:

* The thin edge of the wedge that was CleanFeed, in place to block child pornography, is now being exploited and wedged in by media companies.

* The lawsuit aimed at the weakest point in the UK infrastructure – the biggest ISP with a system already in place. TalkTalk and Virgin lawyers must be expecting a call in the near future as the wedge is levered.

* Will they consider blocking any search engine that points to copyrighted media content, or will Google and Bing get a “you’re more equal in the law than others” pass?

And I’ll finish by paraphrasing Tom Reynolds:

…the internet will route round any obstruction.