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LONDON (AP) The High Court has endorsed Britain's new copyright rules, siding with the music industry over Internet providers in a battle over online filesharing.

The Digital Economy Act similar to rules already in place in France and Ireland forces Internet service providers to send an escalating series of warnings to users suspected of illegally swapping movies and music. Eventually, service providers can suspend repeat offenders' access to the Web.

The controversy over the British rules has mirrored debates over online copyright enforcement in the United States and elsewhere. Film studios, record labels and other creative groups argue that the rules are needed to stanch the flow of illegal content flooding the Internet; while service providers and civil liberties groups fear that the regime will choke off free expression.

Leading Internet companies BT Group PLC and the TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC took their case to court, arguing that the act would be unnecessarily expensive and invade users' privacy. A lower court rebuffed BT and TalkTalk, and on Tuesday a three-judge panel at London's Court of Appeal endorsed the earlier judgment, to the delight of entertainment lobbying groups.

"Once again the court is on the side of the almost two million workers in the creative industries whose livelihoods are put at risk because creative content is stolen on a daily basis," said Christine Payne, who leads actors' union Equity.

David Puttnam, the president of the Film Distributors' Association, said he hoped the judgment would bring an end to "a long chapter of uncertainty," saying he hoped the Digital Economy Act could help alert consumers, particularly young people, to "the damage piracy inflicts on the whole of the creative community."

Link:
UK Internet providers lose copyright court battle

LONDON (Reuters) - British Web users face having their Internet connections throttled or suspended if they are found to have downloaded music or movies illegally after Internet service providers (ISPs) BT and TalkTalk lost a court appeal on Tuesday.

The ruling by Britain's Court of Appeal means that ISPs will have to send warning letters to customers suspected by film studios or record labels of having illegally accessed material to which they own the rights.

If a customer accumulates too many warnings, the ISP may be required to slow down the person's Internet access or suspend the account.

The move echoes measures adopted in recent years in countries including France and New Zealand, which have adopted a so-called three-strikes policy in which subscribers can be disconnected after receiving three warning letters.

But the tide may be turning as the Hollywood-led push for tougher penalties on copyright pirates faces a backlash. Media companies claim that piracy costs them billions of dollars in lost revenues every year.

In January, a massive online protest by consumers, activists and Internet companies including Wikipedia - which staged a 24 hour blackout - stopped U.S. anti-piracy legislation in its tracks.

"Those protests show that governments might find it politically unattractive to protect rights holders in too draconian a way," copyright specialist Adam Rendle of international law firm Taylor Wessing told Reuters.

"There's much greater mobilization of the free Internet movement than there was 18 months ago."

BT and TalkTalk had argued that the British legislation -- which will entail costs, complexity and possible opposition from customers -- was incompatible with European law.

"Now that the court has made its decision, we will look at the judgment carefully to understand its implications and consider our next steps," BT said in a statement.

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UK moves towards "three strikes" Internet policy

This day has been coming for a long long time - in fact, Webmasters have been asking for an easier and more secure way to grant access to their Google Webmaster Tools area since Google Webmaster Tools launched.

Jonathan Simon announced on the Google Webmaster Central blog that those controls are now here.

You can give both "Full" and "Restricted" access.

Here is how a user knows if they have "restricted access":

To add/edit/remove users go to the home page when you click the "Manage site" drop-down menu you'll see the menu option that was previously titled "Add or remove owners" is now "Add or remove users." Selecting the "Add or remove users" menu item will take you to the new User administration page where you can add or delete up to 100 users and specify each user's access as "Full" or "Restricted."

I recommend everyone remove change however they did this before and switch to this method asap.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Original post:
User Access Added To Google Webmaster Tools

Google announced the launch of a new Webmaster Tools feature, which lets verified site owners grant limited access to their sites data and settings to other people.

You can do this from the home page, by clicking Manage Site and going to the Add or remove users option, which has replaced the Add or remove owners option. This will take you to a new User admin page. From here, you can add or delete up to 100 users. Users can be identified as full or restricted depending on the rights you want to assign them.

Full means they can view all data and take most actions. Restricted means they only have access to view most data, but can only take some actions, such as using Fetch as Googlebot and configuring message forwarding.

Heres who can do what:

Youve had the ability to grant full verified access to others for a couple of years, says Google Webmaster Trends analyst Jonathan Simon on the Webmaster Central blog. Since then weve heard lots of requests from site owners for the ability to grant limited permission for others to view a sites data in Webmaster Tools without being able to modify all the settings. Now you can do exactly that with our new User administration feature.

Users added via the User administration page are tied to a specific site, he explains. If you become unverified for that site any users that youve added will lose their access to that site in Webmaster Tools. Adding or removing verified site owners is still done on the owner verification page which is linked from the User administration page.

Hopefully the new feature will make site management easier for webmasters with a lot of employees and colleagues, and save a lot of hassle when changes are needed, or need to be retracted.

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Google Webmaster Tools Gets New Admin Feature

One of the most sought after features in Google Webmaster Tools was to easily give third-party people access to your Google Webmaster Tools account without giving over your own username and password and without giving them full control of your site.

Google has finally satisfied this request by adding user administration to Google Webmaster Tools.

Now, site owners, who are defined as an owner if they go through the verification process in Google Webmaster Tools, can add access for others without making them go through the verification process. The access granted is either owner, full or restricted access.

You can add users either on the overview page where it says manage site and then by clicking on Add or remove users or under the site configuration section where it says user administration.

Those with restricted access will see this label when accessing the tool:

For more details on the access rights based on permission, see this help document.

Related Topics: Google: Webmaster Central | Top News

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Google Webmaster Tools Finally Adds User Administration