28/03/2012

Available for over a year

Almost a year after the furore over superinjunctions, there is a joint Lords and Commons report on what should be done to safeguard privacy. Among the recommendations is a call for search engines such as Google to do more to limit potential breach of court orders, with legislation to back that up if needed. Max Mosley has been calling for tighter control and he discusses this with John Kampfner, the outgoing director of Index on Censorship. John Whittingdale MP chaired the committee behind the report and Steve questions him over the findings on privacy and press regulation. BBC Panorama has been reporting on claims that a NewsCorp business, NDS, hacked into rivals' software in the pay-TV business in the UK and Italy and the front page story in the Financial Times today widens this to Australia. NDS denies any wrongdoing. Stewart Purvis, formerly of ITN and Ofcom, gives his view of where, if anywhere, the story is going. And there's a legal threat to The Only Way is Essex, ITV's "dramality" show, from the people behind a pilot programme, Totally Essex, which they say TOWIE's makers lifted from them. TOWIE's producers, Lime Pictures, say it's entirely their own work. Lawyer Rebecca Swindells outlines the issues when trying to protect any rights in a TV format. The producer is Simon Tillotson.