A woman who shared a pinball game online has been ordered to pay 16,000 pounds in compensation and legal costs to its creator.

The Patents County Court in London ruled in favour of TopWare Interactive, a U.S. computer game developer that said she had infringed its copyright.

The case is the latest attempt by the entertainment industry to try to protect its music, games and films from growing threat of online piracy, which it says is killing business.

Quicker Internet connections have sparked a boom in people swapping music, films or TV programmes.

The Recording Industry Association of America says file sharing has hit profits, put songwriters out of work and made it harder for new bands to get a contract.

“The crime is theft,” it says on its website. “Everyone who makes, enjoys or earns a living in music is hurt.”

File sharers hotly dispute that argument.

Copyright infringement is not the same as theft because the owner is not deprived of their property.

You wouldn’t expect to end up in court if you loaned a book or DVD to a friend, they argue. So why should it be any different with digital tracks or films?

Cracking down on file sharers will simply drive them further underground, making it even harder for companies to make money out of their content, according to contributors on the Open Rights Group website. 

Regardless of the legal arguments, do you think file sharing is morally wrong? Do you think it stifles creativity by reducing the amount available to spend on new acts?

Even the report’s authors say the idea may sound barmy.

But the Policy Exchange, a right-wing thinktank, says it was serious when it called on the government to stop spending money trying to regenerate struggling northern cities and use the cash instead to help their residents relocate to the southeast.

Its report says it is unrealistic to expect cities like Liverpool, Hull and Sunderland to ever regenerate properly. 

They are too isolated and the source of their original wealth — ship-building, ports and other heavy industry– have disappeared.

It would be better to help people to move to places like London, Oxford and Cambridge, the report says.

“Places that enjoyed the conditions for creating wealth in the coal-powered 19th-century often do not do so today,” the report says. “There is no realistic prospect that our
regeneration towns and cities can converge with London and the South East.

“There is, however, a very real prospect of encouraging significant numbers of people to move from those towns to London and the South East.”

Critics say the idea makes no economic, political or social sense.

The southeast is full. Its roads, public transport and services are overcrowded. House prices are sky-high and not enough new homes are being built. The area’s infrastructure, including water supplies, couldn’t cope, they say.

And anyway, why should people uproot their families and move to an alien part of the country?

What do you think? Is it time to admit that some northern towns and cities should be left to fall into decline, while the southeast should get more investment?

What’s in a name?

Perhaps we should ask Jordan’s baby daughter Princess Tiaamii when she grows up. Or Geri Halliwell’s girl Bluebell Madonna and Nicolas Cage’s son Kal-el, named after Superman.

The list of bizarre celeb names goes on and on, but for most of us the choice comes down to classic, cool or slightly quirky.

While official figures show that old-fashioned names are still among the most popular choices, some classic names remain firmly stuck in the history books.

Norman and Gertrude top a list of names that have fallen out of fashion over the last 100 years, according to research for the mother and baby website Gurgle.com.

While Ruby and Olivia are all the rage, Edna, Ethel and Irene are strictly off limits.

Other unloved entries on the list of endangered names include Clifford, Frank, Arnold, Leonard, Ada, Agnes, Elsie and Mabel.

Do they deserve to be neglected? Which of the current crop of quirky celebrity names or classic choices should join them in the history books?

A union leader has called for a windfall tax on oil companies after BP reported a big rise in profits.

Supporters say this “Robin Hood” tactic would help hard-pressed households struggling to meet eye-watering energy and petrol bills.

Critics, however, have variously described the idea as “economically illiterate”, “legalised piracy” and “just plain daft”.

Unite General Secretary Tony Woodley said: “It is high time our government moved to stop the fuel corporates picking the pockets of the poor and needy.”

That would be grossly unfair, say the energy firms. Chief executives say they already pay huge amounts of tax and they should not be penalised just because global oil prices have been rising.

The Association of Electricity Producers said a windfall tax would “send out a dreadful signal” to investors.

“Windfall taxes are not a measure that should be associated with a G8 country,” it said.

Professor Dieter Helm, of Oxford University, argues that windfall taxes are economically illiterate and would not solve underlying problems in the energy markets.

“This is a permanent problem, and cannot be solved by a one-off measure,” he wrote.

Would you support a windfall tax on energy companies? Or do you think it would damage Britain’s economy?

Forget everything you’ve heard about the looming property crash.

In the midst of dire warnings about collapsing house prices comes a lone voice offering a crumb of comfort for hard-pressed homeowners.

A report by the National Housing Federation says that far from falling off a cliff, house prices could actually rise by a quarter by 2013.

It says demand for homes is rising because people are living longer, delaying getting married and are more likely to divorce.

Nearly 1.7 million people are on waiting lists for public housing and thousands of first-time buyers are saving up to buy a home, it says.

“As soon as the economic outlook improves house prices will resume their previous upward trajectory,” said the federation’s Chief Executive David Orr.

The Federation also says the supply of new homes still lags behind demand.

Not everyone agrees, however.

A report by Deloitte this week forecast that house prices will fall by a third and that the slump will last until 2010.

Inflation, shrinking incomes and the economic downturn will all take their toll, it said.

Where do you think the market is heading? Do you expect the price of your house to rise or fall in the next few years?

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell wants long-term job-seekers to work for their state benefits.

If they have been jobless for a year, they will have to do four weeks of community work with a government-backed private or public body. After two years, they will have to take a full-time job.

People who abuse the system could also be made to work in return for benefits.

Purnell says the welfare system needs a radical overhaul to force people to take more responsibility for themselves.

“One of the reasons Labour lost the trust of the country and the chance of power for 18 years was that we convinced ourselves that you help the poor only by handing out more and more in benefits,” he wrote in the Guardian. “We left individual responsibility - so important to the founders of the welfare state - out of the equation.”

The minister also wants to get one million people off incapacity benefit by 2015.

The Conservatives have welcomed the proposed reforms, but say Labour has stolen some of its key ideas. Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Chris Grayling said the government has wasted billions of pounds by failing to reform the welfare system sooner.

Do you support the government’s welfare reforms? Should jobseekers be made to work for their benefits?

Should women be allowed to fight on the frontline? Is it time for complete equality in the armed forces? Is society ready for the idea of female soldiers routinely fighting and dying in combat?

The death of Sergeant Sarah Bryant, the first female British soldier to be killed in Afghanistan, has reignited the long-running debate over women’s role in modern warfare.

The existing rules that exclude women from situations where the primary duty is “to close with and kill the enemy” are irrelevant in Afghanistan and Iraq where there is no single front line, according to some commentators.

Instead, British forces are engaged in a “360-degree war” where all soldiers, male or female, could be in the line of fire at any time, Catherine Philp wrote in the Times.

“In times gone by, rules like these kept women far behind the men,” she writes. “In the heat of the Iraq insurgency, however, all that began to change. In reality, the rules are already stretched to breaking point.”

The old arguments that women are not physically capable to fight or might disrupt “unit cohesiveness” no longer hold water, she added.

The Ministry of Defence says there are now about 18,000 women in the armed forces, just under 10 percent of the total. The Sex Discrimination Act (1975) allows the armed forces to exclude women from some posts.

That’s the right approach, according to one contributor to an online military forum.

“I’ve yet to see a woman who could withstand the mental and physical pressure of infantry work,” he wrote.

Not so, said Jo Salter, the RAF’s first female fighter pilot. She said society’s attitudes have changed over the years and the sex of a soldier is no longer the issue it once was.

“It’s always so sad when there’s any death at all. Gender isn’t the issue,” she told the Daily Telegraph.

That view was echoed by the parents of Flight Lieutenant Sarah-Jayne Mulvihill, who died in Iraq in 2006.

“Sarah did not distinguish between herself and the boys she served with,” her father Terry told the Daily Mirror. His wife Sue added: “There were four others with her and their families’ grief is equal.”

A quick look at the front pages after Bryant’s death suggests newspaper editors may not see it that way.

Pictures of Sgt Bryant in her wedding dress were splashed across several front pages under headlines such as “Our Afghan Heroine”. Most ran long stories on inside pages about her life and career in the army. The deaths of male soldiers typically receive far less coverage. There were few details of the three male colleagues killed with her.

Whether the media coverage of Bryant’s death reflects the wider views of society is hard to tell.

The last word goes to an unnamed military source who told the Herald newspaper: “Every man - and woman - is born equal under the 7.62mm gun law”.

“He might not  have been the easiest of allies, but an ally he has been.”

That’s the verdict of the Daily Telegraph in an editorial to mark President George W. Bush’s farewell tour of Europe.

Despite concerns over issues such as Iraq,  the economy and extradition treaties, Bush was “never disloyal or ungrateful”, the paper said.

He acknowledged Britain’s unparalleled support after the Sept. 11 attacks, the newspaper noted. And Bush backed Britain over Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Palestine roadmap, the paper said.

“A country, like a man, can have friends who are difficult. But sticking to them is the essence of friendship,” the paper said.

The Independent wasn’t quite so gracious.

It featured a cartoon of Bush, caricatured as a duck with a leg in plaster and carrying a crutch, greeting Gordon Brown, portrayed with a large beak and tail feathers. The pair are standing next to the bony corpse of the dove of peace under the caption “Rendezvous”.

Bush says to Brown: “The Dodo of Downing Street - Yo!.” Brown replies: “The Lame Duck of the Lone Star State, I presume?”

The tabloid Daily Mirror went further.

“Goodbye and good riddance,” it said in an editorial.

“He has been one of the worst presidents in American history,” it said. “His shameful legacy can be summed up in one word: Iraq.”

Some commentators suggest the historic “special relationship” between London and Washington has changed for good since the departure of Tony Blair.

One media report said diplomats have stopped using the phrase, preferring instead the term “close bilateral relationship”.

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has spoken of the need to “recalibrate” the relationship to make the two sides more equal.

With Bush leaving the White House soon, where do you see Anglo-U.S. relations heading?

 Gordon Brown may have won the 42-day detention vote, but the victory was ”hollow”, ”shameful” or “tactical”, depending on which newspaper you read. 

Under the headline “Westminster for Sale”, The Times said Brown had humiliated parliament with a victory secured through bribery and bartering.

“The prime minister staked his reputation on 42 days to look strong. Instead, he looks weaker. He has failed to win the argument, so has chosen to strike a deal,” it said in an editorial.

“This hollow victory will buy him time in the Westminster village, but at a sad and further cost to parliament’s prestige.”

Brown scraped through thanks to the support from Democratic Unionist MPs, the Daily Telegraph said in an editorial. And he made so many concessions that the legislation ended up looking like a “dog’s breakfast”.

“Why does it feel so much like a defeat?” the paper asked.

It’s because he “lost the argument and shredded his majority”, the Guardian said. He only won “thanks to backroom deals”.

“It was a forced victory in the worst of circumstances, a law no one wants imposed by a government that wanted to look strong, but ended up too weak to accept the obvious,” it said in a leader.

The Daily Mirror said Brown had been “lucky” and must now move on to focus on key issues such as high petrol and food prices. 

“He must take control of the agenda and show families, workers and pensioners what a Labour government is doing for them,” its editorial said.

A lone voice of support came from The Sun.

“Gordon Brown is entitled to considerable satisfaction after his victory,” it said. “He stood up for the fight against extremism in the face of deeply hostile criticism.”

 The 42-day limit is backed by police and security chiefs and will help protect the country, the paper added.

However, The Independent said it was now up to the House of Lords to challenge the legislation and continue its “doughty defence of Britain’s threatened freedoms”.

“We trust that…the Lords and Ladies will show their mettle,” the paper said.

As MPs prepare to vote on cutting the time limit for abortions, the Daily Mail says the current system “shames our nation”.

Foetuses are being aborted at a late stage in their development when they would have had a good chance of survival outside the womb, the Mail says in an editorial.

“An attack on women? Utter nonsense. The campaign to cut the time-limit is an attack on an everyday practice that shames our nation,” it says.

Rubbish, says Times columnist David Aaronovitch.

There is no significant evidence to support the claim that the foetus is more viable at up to 24 weeks than in 1967 or 1990 when the law was last changed.

“If viability isn’t the test - as it was claimed to be back in 1990 when the limit was reduced from 28 weeks - then the judgment must be that some folk simply don’t like abortions and wish to restrict them as much as possible,” he writes.

There is little doubt that the “temperature of the debate about abortion” has changed in recent times, says the Independent.

“The introduction of 4-D ultrasound techniques, showing foetuses of just 12 weeks with apparent facial expressions, has dramatised the debate,” it says in an editorial. “So have couples coming back from hospital and proudly showing off photos of their baby at its 12-week scan.”

But there is an even more pressing matter than the upper time limit for abortions, according to a Daily Telegraph editorial.

It says that only a small number of terminations take place at more than 22 weeks. However, there are 200,000 abortions in Britain each year at 12 weeks or less.

“Governments routinely launch campaigns telling us not to drink, smoke, take drugs or eat to excess; yet there is no sense of a similar effort being expended on advising women about the medical and psychological trauma of abortion,” the paper says.

Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley says the debates over abortion and research on embryos highlight a wider divide between the two main political parties.

She argues that there is a real difference between a progressive, pro-science Labour government and a backward-looking, “finger-wagging” Conservative opposition.

“If the reactionary arguments are successful, throwing out vital medical advances and criminalising frightened, often young, women, then it will mark a real turning point,” she writes.

“Whatever you think of the New Labour years, it has been a decade of social liberalism, when racism, homophobia and anti-science voodoo became steadily less respectable.”