Simon Bradshaw

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• Commented on Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying, and worse. Much, much worse.
  Having said that a friend points out that the last time Parliament rejected a statutory instrument was around about the time I was born, so it's still very problematic. Much better to change primary legislation via new primary legislation -...
• Commented on Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying, and worse. Much, much worse.
  Lots of nasty stuff but there are some points worth noting. In particular, the mechanism for amending the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act is expressly not allowed to create criminal offences (the new s.302A(7), under Clause 17), and all such...
• Commented on Toyota marketing stalks and terrorizes woman, claims she consented by doing an online personality test
  Over a century ago G K Chesterton's 'The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown' (extract and link to full text here) not only posited the Alternate Reality Game but used as its central conceit the idea of someone caught up in...
• Commented on Brit copyright group says, "No laptops allowed in cinemas"
  I'm not sure what is usual anywhere else, but I've known household insurance policies in the UK to specifically exclude theft of a laptop from a car, or to have a large excess applied to such a claim. I suppose...
• Commented on Britain seeks ban on glass pint-glasses to prevent bar-brawl injuries
  Do a Google Image search for glassing attack and you'll see why this problem gets taken seriously (warning - unicorn chaser likely to be required). A faceful of freshly-broken glass can leave very nasty injuries that even if not life-threatening...
• Commented on Hairstylists could be early-warning systems for senior health problems
  Call me unduly cynical, but how long before this is spun into HAIRSTYLISTS TO GIVE EVIDENCE AT OBAMA'S DEATH PANELS?...
• Commented on Damien Hirst installation owner charges teen art-rival with theft of £500,000 for removing box of pencils from installation
  Ocker3 @15; The Mona Lisa isn't in copyright (and arguably never was, the concept not existing until the Statute of Anne in 1710.) Damien Hirst is alive and well and his work attracts copyright. Whilst I know a lot of...
• Commented on Damien Hirst installation owner charges teen art-rival with theft of £500,000 for removing box of pencils from installation
  If this ever goes to trial, I look forward to the spectacle of Damien Hirst being put on the witness stand and cross-examined in front of a jury as to exactly how a box of pencils is worth half a...
• Commented on Neil Gaiman's library
  Thor23 @ 11 This whole room, many times over, can be replaced by a tiny notebook Also, in the future, every meal will be replaced by a convenient energy and nutrient shake! Meals are more than a way of refuelling...
• Commented on Dude gags on dead frog (or toad?) floating in Pepsi can
  "The retired school staffer says she and her husband are seeking legal advice to examine their options" Well, they do have just about the most famous tort case in legal history as precedent....
• Commented on Space Shuttle Discovery STS-128 launch (Update: it was a real winner.)
  Just saw Discovery and the separated External Tank pass though the pre-dawn sky over London - two bright stars, one white and the other a very clear orange, about twice the width of the Moon apart. (To match orbits...
• Commented on Photos from trip to Falklands & South Georgia Islands and Antarctica
  Morkus @7: Only if you are prepared to ignore the local population, who (having been there myself) I can confirm have pretty strong views on the issue of whether they are living in the 'Falklands' or the 'Malvinas'....
• Commented on Hovercraft's 50th anniversary and a human-powered version
  @10 Via a little-known experimental web app called 'Google' I found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-N1...
• Commented on Brown fat makes you thin
  Back in the 1980s when brown fat was first a fashionable subject for study, New Scientist's job page listed a vacancy from one university for a 'Brown Fat Researcher'. The following week the magazine's funny page noted that (a) this...
• Commented on Judge sentences man to 6 months for yawning in court
  I've heard that one Lord Justice of the English Court of Appeal has been known to acidly remark, when a lawyer has forgotten to turn a phone off or to silent, that "they are called cell phones for a reason..!"...
• Commented on I'm a Photographer Not a Terrorist campaign for photographers' rights
  We're making progress: the Metropolitan Police's revised policy guide on photography may not be all we want, but it does at least acknowledge some important points: ...Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film...
• Commented on Cat burglar falls off three-storey building across from my bedroom window
  @33: Ambulances are for casualties who need immediate hospital treatment and/or life-support on the way there. Police are all trained in first aid and can either take him to A&E if need be or call an ambulance if more help...
• Commented on UK National Portrait Gallery threatens Wikipedia over scans of its public domain art
  Peter Fluck and Roger Law. You'd probably want material from the likes of Martin Rowson and Gerald Scarfe as well though (and Scarfe is shown as having some 17 pictures in the NPG's collection already)....
• Commented on UK National Portrait Gallery threatens Wikipedia over scans of its public domain art
  Takuan @4: I suspect that's what the NPG did a few years ago when the Government told them that major museums and galleries were no longer to charge for admission, but didn't up their funding to compensate. Another group I'm...
• Commented on UK National Portrait Gallery threatens Wikipedia over scans of its public domain art
  I've been discussing this with other ORG legal volunteers, and our conclusion, as I've summarised on my law blog, is that whilst the NPG's legal arguments aren't without foundation they're a whole lot shakier than their letter to Mr Coetzee...
• Commented on Britain will subject everyone who works with kids to multiple, repeated police-checks
  Cory @24: Those 12,000 people weren't branded paedophiles. If you look at the original reference, it says that 12,000 people over five years had been wrongly stated has having a criminal record, which could be anything from a police warning...
• Commented on Britain will subject everyone who works with kids to multiple, repeated police-checks
  Shazbot @ 3: I'm genuinely sorry to hear about what happened to you. But, if I may ask, which category did your abusers fall into? a) Family members b) Permanent staff or regular visitors to a school, social group or...
• Commented on First-Person Shooter Disease
  My friends and I identified Doom Syndrome pretty soon after it first came out in late '93 - a tendency to get nervous as you approached a blind corner, with the pervasive feeling you ought to stop and peek round...
• Commented on Hitler finds out Michael Jackson has died (Der Untergang remix)
  Yes, I have a German friend who is forever denied the simple pleasure of Hitler Subtitle Videos. Actually, this is probably a good rough test for seeing when you reach acceptable competence in spoken German - once you have to...
• Commented on Wear patterns as information leakage from security keypads
  I recall Walter John Williams using this as a plot point in Days of Atonement back in '91 or so, and I expect it was around well before that. Pilots I knew in the RAF claimed that the shiny switches...
• Commented on UK cop: 'War on terror means no pictures of police vans in disabled parking spots'
  Via the British Journal of Photography: UK Home Office says s.58 not aimed at stopping pictures being taken of the police. That ought to bring any prosecutions to a screeching halt, although as a lawyer and a photographer what I...
• Commented on Heartbroken cereal litigant loses suit over non-existence of "Crunchberries"
  My brother works for Trading Standards (responsible, among other things, for investigating complaints about food safety and misleading advertising). A few years ago, someone came to his office with a packet of that well-known starter dish in Chinese restaurants, crispy...
• Commented on Electronic Police States defined, ranked
  I had a look at this 'report' and downloaded the 'analysis'. It's complete garbage that would earn a first-year law or politics student a D and a stern direction to read about research methodology. The 'analysis' consists of taking seventeen...
• Commented on Hospital Food Photo Blog
  Bishophicks @ 5, you've evidently never encountered Mushy Peas, a staple of north English cuisine. They are actually meant to look like that, although I'd bet my left kidney that the ones served up in the meal shown taste of...
• Commented on Britain's secret spy-on-every-call-and-email plan already well underway
  Cory, Of course that's what Jacqui Smith believes. She's a Labour politician - in other words, a raised-from-birth authoritarian socialist with a recent conversion to free-market economics - and so genuinely and sincerely believes that the Government needs to know...