In this leaked, six-page email, Richard Mollet, the Director of Public Affairs for the British Phonographic Institute (the UK's record-industry lobbyists), sets out the BPI's strategy for ramming through the Digital Economy Bill, a sweeping, backwards reform to UK copyright law that will further sacrifice privacy and due process in the name of preserving copyright, without actually preserving copyright. Mollet's memo, entitled "Digital Economy Bill weekly update 11 March 2010," appears to be ..   show all text

InVinceCable, the apolitical campaign that is seeking to instigate conversations around the need for a qualified candidate to hold the position of Chancellor, now comprises 20-people (including myself) from across the industry. By the end of the month there will almost certainly be 50-people working on the campaign. It’s a very real application of social technologies. Here’s Phil Sheldrake in this week’s leader in Marcom Professional: “I’ve had the pleasure in the last two weeks of working wit..   show all text

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will hold separate talks in London later with Gordon Brown and Tory leader David Cameron.

Social networking site fears reputation permanently damaged by false claim that it let older men pressure teenage girls for sex Facebook has threatened to sue the Daily Mail for damages after the paper wrongly claimed in a piece published on Wednesday that 14-year-old girls who create a profile on the social networking site could be approached "within seconds" by older men who "wanted to perform a sex act" in front of them. The paper apologised in print today and online yesterday for the err..   show all text

More than 100 firefighters tackle a major fire at a restaurant and office block in central London.

A new study from security firm Barracuda Labs provides some interesting insights into the state of the Twitterverse. Unfortunately for the microblogging startup, the stats say that most of its users aren’t very active. The study looked at around 19 million Twitter accounts (PDF) in order to figure out how people are using Twitter. It started with one assumption: an active or “True” Twitter user has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people, and had tweeted at least 10 times. By tha..   show all text

[Important updates below - Facebook says the Daily Mail knew its story was untrue, but printed it anyway. Legal action is promised.] In the early hours of this morning, the Daily Mail published an astonishing attack on Facebook under the title “I posed as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook. What followed will sicken you.” Here’s the opener: Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on Facebook posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90..   show all text

Bikers rejoice, Google has just added intelligent biking directions for more than 12,000 U.S. bike trails as a new option inside Google Maps. The company writes that the new biking features will “include as much bike trail data as possible, provide efficient routes, allow riders to customize their trip, make use of bike lanes, calculate rider-friendly routes that avoid big hills and customize the look of the map for cycling to encourage folks to hop on their bikes.” The new option now sits..   show all text

Caroline Thomson, the BBC chief operating officer, defends 'tough' decision to close digital radio station 6 Music Caroline Thomson, the BBC's chief operating officer, has defended the decision unveiled in the corporation's strategy review last week to close BBC 6 Music. Thomson told an audience of media executives in London that the digital radio station, which is now the subject of a high-profile public campaign to save it, competed directly with commercial radio. "The average age of its l..   show all text

A Downing Street request was denied after the BBC decided it would be inappropriate this close to a general election Gordon Brown is a sports fanatic whose passion for Raith Rovers, the football team he has supported since childhood, is a matter of public record. But the BBC has barred the prime minister from appearing on its Sunday night Premier League highlights programme Match of the Day 2, saying it is too close to an election to have him on as a guest. Downing Street asked if Brown coul..   show all text

Passengers will be able to travel by train from King's Cross to Beijing in just two days on trains that travel almost as fast as aeroplanes under ambitious new plans from the Chinese.

Communication students leaving university have never had so much opportunity as in the workplace. This is generation that has grown up with the technology and the tools that so many businesses have yet to embrace. They already have many of the skills that agencies and communication teams are striving to build. But there is more that the current generation of PR graduates could do to kickstart their PR careers. Developing and demonstrating your digital communication skills will improve your emp..   show all text

The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space. Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; YouTube; Wordpress: these companies, built from the ground-up, are mainstays in social media. None of them were created by a large tech company, and all but one remains independent. It’s an interesting phenomenon, when you think about it. Large tech companies have had limited to no success creating their..   show all text

Today at the #140tc Twitter Conference in Seattle, Washington (which I keynoted this morning), HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes announced that its popular Twitter application will be integrating with both MySpace and Foursquare, starting this week at the South by Southwest Interactive conference. HootSuite is one of the more popular Twitter applications, one specifically geared towards power users and businesses. It has been on a roll recently, launching integration with Wordpress and rolling out..   show all text

The Guardian’s politics podcast is going on the road next week – destination Manchester. In front of a live audience, for which tickets are still available, some of the newspaper’s biggest names and sharpest minds will consider the big issues in the run up to the General Election. Polly Toynbee, Michael White and John Harris will be at Politics Weekly Live on Tuesday 16 March, 7pm at the Renold Building, Sackville Street campus, University of Manchester. Audience members are being invited to ..   show all text

BBC News has a very cool interactive chart up, showing how Internet had grown from 1998 to 2008 in various parts of the world. In 1998., the only countries with significant Internet usage were USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden. Of course, I remember using the Internet in Croatia every day back then, but it’s true: for most people, it was “this new thing” and it didn’t play a very important part of our everyday lives. Moving the slide..   show all text

Almost four in five people worldwide see internet access as a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

No broadcaster in the world can match the BBC and its critics should stop belittling it When the Conservatives' deputy chairman, Lord Ashcroft, revealed that his party donations are dwarfed by the sums he's withholding from the nation by tax avoidance, the Tories didn't panic. They decided the crisis didn't require large-scale political fire-fighting – a little squirt would do. But George Osborne's terribly busy these days so they plumped for Michael Gove. I doubt he was thrilled. Ashcroft i..   show all text

It seems hundreds of Twitter accounts have started to Tweet out “weight loss” product spam today. Specifically, users who have had their accounts hijacked are Tweeting the message “I lost 20 lbs in 2 weeks!” and links to diet sites. Our source counts over 200 rogue tweets so far tonight. It’s not just new users getting caught out: famous tech pundit John C. Dvorak (@therealdvorak) got caught up in the attack, and was none too pleased. At this point we’re unsure of the cause: Access coul..   show all text

Enterprising hobbyists Tim Heath and Ryan Hickman have created cellbots — with names like Tankbot and Truckbot — that are simply robots powered by Android devices. With just $30, an Android device, and a little creativity the pair were able to create the cellbots which process commands via telnet on PCs. The bots can move around in specified directions thanks to the built-in compass functionally on certain Android phones. While actual robot activity is minimal, the focus of the project was..   show all text