I may take the opportunity to give it a bit of a face lift, if I get time. Was there anything about the old design that particularly annoyed people?

Non-techies can look away now.

For the technically interested, this is a complete kludge. The beta Bailli recent decisions RSS feed is filtered through a Yahoo pipe, adapted from one by Nick Holmes, to give only Admin decisions. But the resulting RSS feed from the Yahoo pipe wouldn’t show up in the WordPress RSS widget whatever I did to it, so the Yahoo feed has been redirected through Feedburner to give a feed that does show up. If anybody wants the feed for their own use, the URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/ CopyOfBailiiRecentDecisionsEwcaAdmin

Next, I’m going to play with combining Admin and Court of Appeal feeds into one and filtering the results. This may, or then again may not work out

The problem is that so few sites actually have RSS feeds for their news pages. I’ve done what I can with various tools that try to turn fixed web pages into RSS feeds, with limited success.

Remarkably, the Communities.gov.uk site is very well provided with news feeds and Inside Housing has one. But other organisations, like Shelter, don’t have a feed, even on their ‘latest news’ page. I haven’t been able to scrape Shelter’s news page with any success. Somewhat perversely, the Shelter Chief Exec has a blog with RSS feed, so I’ve included that. After considerable trial and error, I’ve managed to successfully scrape Shelter’s news page into a feed.

Chambers often provide updates, but none of these that I could find have feeds either, and in the case of Garden Court, once again I can’t successfully turn it into a feed it was tricky to turn it into a working feed. Arden Chambers ‘eflashes’ list turns into a feed- but the links are to PDFs.

Come on, people. RSS is hardly bleeding edge any more, and just think how effective it would be to have your news releases and briefings instantly circulated to subscribers and further disseminated by helpful elves like me.

This is a work in progress, so any helpful suggestions welcome. When I have some more time, I’ll have a further go at the CSS styling of the lists and layout, which has room for improvement.

Later on. I’ve changed the page scraper for Arden Chambers and other pages, because Feedity was adding adverts. Naughty, they don’t tell you about that. Unfortunately the result for the Arden Chambers feed is not picking up each single entry. I blame their downright erratic html. The css styling is going to be even more tricky now, dammit. I’ll also see if I can remove the branding of a particular page scraper. Branding removal from the page scraper is now done.

While Musharraf tries to overcome the rule of law by imprisoning all the lawyers and the Lord Chief Justice pleads, probably in vain, for a genuine discussion of prison policy, Nearly Legal’s scarce free moments today have been largely consumed by the ramifications of the posturing of a small ex-pop star.

NB: What follows is based on a cursory acquaintance with copyright law, here and abroad. All corrections and clarifications from proper IP lawyers and international private law lawyers (looking at you, Martin) are welcomed.

The artist formerly known as Prince (hereinafter ‘ex-Prince’) won plaudits, even from Geeklawyer, for giving away his last album with a certain ‘newspaper’. From hero to zero, he then promptly employed the services of ‘Websheriff’, a copyright protection firm in the US, to get fan sites to take down copyright images. Not, in itself, a good move – threatening to sue your most ardent fans.

A largely British online community of mickey takers, b3ta (Not safe for work), promptly decided that Prince was the target of its weekly parodic photoshoparama.

Websheriff turned up and issued both b3ta and the individual posters with DCMA take down notices. After a few days b3ta pulled the forum pages, replacing them with, to anyone who knows the site, a very obviously ‘dictated by the other side’s lawyers’ statement.

Now bear with me, because this is where it gets complicated. The owners of b3ta, and most of the posters, are British and live in the UK. To that extent, they are not subject to US law. However i) the English courts will likely enforce a civil judgment of a US court, meaning that a prosecution in the US is a problem; and ii) b3ta’s servers are based in the US, meaning that the hosts are vulnerable to the after effects of a DCMA takedown notice.

Not complicated enough? Try this. English copyright law, as it stands, does not admit a defence of parody or satire under fair use. Under English law, then, the utterly parodic use of copyright imagery of ex-Prince may well fall foul of copyright law. But Websheriff used US law, specifically the DCMA. In US law, there is an established and well tested defence of parodic or satiric use. There is also a potential counter claim for a false take down request under the DCMA. (There is apparently some question over Websheriff’s legal ability to issue DCMA takedown notices – more on this to come if I can find anything).

So, b3ta’s position was probably stronger under US law than English law, but, as a very popular but not hugely wealthy site, it is not surprising that they declined to defend a US based case. They were also no doubt under considerable pressure from the US hosting company.

Of course, as a PR move, taking on a site like b3ta is a catastrophically stupid thing to do. That forum thread might have gone, but the ramifications will spread out far and wide across the interweb. Maybe involving googlebombs or mass infringement, the result will inevitably be the destruction of the ex-Prince’s reputation. It is likely that the ex-Prince will find himself facing an exponentially increasing bill from Websheriff for the service of destroying his public image.

Still, the sense of panic, bewilderment and deprivation the 3 day outage instilled has set me wondering about little things like dependency, addiction and the whole quality of life issue…

By the way, if anyone emailed me between Friday night 16/11/07 and now you will probably have to send it again. Yes, email went as well.

[20/11/07 - and now comments are working again after some server level tweaking. Thanks for the tip off, John. Any other problems people come across, please let me  know, but it seems OK now.]

The topic is crappy internet service providers. To be specific, Pipex Internet. I am a Pipex subscriber, although not for very much longer. I have been for years. It used to be a reliable and not overly expensive provider for a 1Mps ADSL connection.

Over the last year or so, things have gone badly wrong.

First was the upgrade fiasco. With the introduction of new subscriptions and the promise of ‘up to’ 8Mps connections, I was naturally interested in transferring – paying less for a faster connection. The online upgrade application page was mysteriously ‘coming soon’ for months. Eventually I called. It appears my connection has been Local Loop Unbundled (LLU), where Pipex take control over the equipment in my local telephone exchange. Ah, I thought, surely this is a good thing. Haven’t all the internet providers been telling us that LLU would enable them to upgrade the connections far more easily and provide a better service?

Not according to Pipex. They couldn’t upgrade the LLU equipment to an ‘up to’ 8 Mps connection because of ‘technical problems’, although the remainder of the BT controlled exchange was already at 8 Mps. When would these ‘technical problems’ be resolved? They had no idea, there was no projected timescale. So, I asked, was I in a worse position that if I had a BT account or a non-LLU account? Yes, they said. Why was I paying more than their 8 Mps offering then? They agreed to reduce the price of my account to the mid range 8Mps account price (I wanted to retain the unlimited useage). Did they upgrade my account to a 2 Mps one, which the current equipment supports? No.

Fine. Begin researching about switching.

Three months later – a few days ago – I received an email stating that, as I had not responded to ‘previous communications’ about a missed direct debit, my account would be cancelled in 10 days unless the problem was sorted. I had received no previous communications, either by phone or email.

I called the next day – but to the main number because this ultimatum looked like a phishing attempt. After 21 minutes on hold, (I timed it and have a record), I found out that it was a credit card expiry date issue. Fine, easily sorted. But why was the first I knew about it an email threatening disconnection?

It’s an automated email.

I guessed that, but why does it refer to previous communications?

There was a first email.

When? I did not receive it.

It’s an automated process.

Well, it failed.

Anyway, now you have sorted the payment out, your account will be taken off suspension.

Suspension? What suspension?

It was suspended this morning.

I knew nothing about this. There was no warning.

It was in the first email.

I didn’t receive the first bloody email

Sorry about that. The account should be unsuspended after 2 hours. you will need to restart your router.

I get home some 5 hours later. Restart router. Nada. Restart router. Nada.

Call Pipex, explain situation.

Yes it is on the list to be unsuspended, it will be done within 24 hours.

I was told 2 hours.

Yes, 2 to 24 hours.

So where is it on the list?

Within 24 hours.

The connection came back up about 11.30 pm, so I suppose it was only 11 hours.

What can I say, at least without spitting invective. I can’t blame the call centre monkeys, I can only blame the stunning incompetence of Pipex in managing, organising and running both their customer service and their technical departments. What I have had from them is cheap, lazy nonsense. They were happy to take my money for an over priced, out of contract, out of date connection, but they can’t actually put any effort in to sort out their own technical cock-up on the LLU or to make sure their automated ‘service’ systems actually work. Plus they resort to an automated threat (that resembles phishing) at the earliest opportunity. I’m a litigator, I don’t respond well to threats.

In the face of this colossal arrogance and abrogation of responsibility, I’m off to a service provider that actually provides a service. I await the conversation with Pipex’s rentention department with interest, as they are already on record as fibbing to people that no other service provider will accept a transfer of their LLU accounts. Not all will, granted, but there are plenty of exceptions.

A pity. Pipex used to be a good company. Still they were purchased by Tiscali, so there should be no surprise that it is now crap in all regards.

16/08/08] Comments on this post are now closed. But think on, Pipex, think on.

Unfortunately, having spent an evening wrestling with it, I’d damned if I can get specific search feeds to display on this blog. The feeds either aren’t recognised by the WordPress plugins I’m using, or involve some not insignificant code hacking to display at all, albeit badly, on a separate page.

I’m going to spend some more time trying to sort this out, when I have time, but for now here are the links for search feeds on ‘Council Tenancies‘, ‘Social Housing‘, ‘Housing Associations‘, and ‘Landlord Tenant‘. Enjoy.

I now have trial bundles to prepare in a multi party claim that stretches back over 3 years. I may be silent for some time. Or longer.

A new wordpress theme (self-modified K2), new layout and some very shiny additional toys.

Try, for instance, the search box at the top right. Oh yes – direct page update ajaxy goodness.

Likewise try the archive page (via the top menu), then try selecting date (and sub date) or categories (and sub category. Again instant update fabulousness thanks to ajax. [Having the archives effects turned on broke the permanent link structure. Sorry to anyone affected. Links to posts here should work again now. 9/5/07]

It has taken a day and a bit of fiddling to get it all to work, and it does as far as I can tell. Let me know if it doesn’t work for you (browser, OS and detailed notes please). Obviously you need javascript turned on.

There is much fine tuning of the style of the blog to come, but the change is worth it for that search facility alone.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Your mileage may vary (although Charon is superb as ever).

Field Fisher Waterhouse have opened an office in Second Life.

This is just wrong in so many ways.

The media hype about ‘real world’ businesses and politicians setting up in Second Life has faded after the first rush about 6 months ago, so the publicity value is low – I didn’t see mention of it before yesterday in the mainstream media and that a minor one – so it becomes a classic too-late jump on the bandwagon by a law firm.

And then, in a virtual world where architectural feats of imagination far beyond the dreams of those bound by gravity and engineering are possible, Field Fisher Waterhouse appear to have built (or had built for them) a generic late modern corporate office building (with roof garden for entertaining clients, naturally). Thusly, the message is ‘Lawyers – they’re not too far behind the times but wherever they go they spread corporate greyness’.

Thirdly, as SQMLaw points out, Second Life as a virtual realm, rather than as a company property, is not subject to the laws of any jurisdiction – that is more or less the point – except for the rules set down and policed by Linden, who own and run it (despite vociferous objections from the inhabitants at times). However, given that the currency of Second Life – Lindens – is convertible into dollars, it is probably only a matter of time before questions of jurisdiction emerge.

Lastly – to the suggestion that this could be a virtual meeting place for the firm – do they want their trainees turning up as Daleks, purple baboons and winged dominatrixes? Or to have a crucial meeting gatecrashed by a group of furries? (As I understand it, privacy is a only matter of consent or obscurity in Second Life, but I could be wrong).

I mean what the hell is the point of a virtual world that is exactly like the physical world, complete with Gap, Nike, accountants and lawyers, only with less gravity?

Although less gravity would be nice.