In what is a slightly different slant on our recent 'Web 2.0 Breeds Corporate Paranoia' story, here's a Channel 4 news release on how people of Radley village in Oxfordshire, UK, after protesting against the destruction of a local beauty spot and birdlife habitat, were served an injunction threatening five years in prison if they continued their actions, or took any photographs or video footage. These injunctions also applied to press trying to cover the story. According to the feature, this legal precedent has now been taken up by other corporations through the UK.

Heightened environmental awareness and an increasingly concerned public may cause polluting corporations to get heavy handed and seek to draw an iron curtain around their activities. But where should the line be drawn as far as basic freedoms like the freedom of the press, the freedom to peaceably gather and protest, etc., be drawn?

NPower, the electricity company featured in the story, has used the Protection from Harassment Act of 1997 to convince a judge to rule in their favour, despite the fact that the people who are the recipients of this injunction never knew the hearing was taking place, and so had no opportunity to tell their side of the story.

So there you have it. Freedoms which people in this land fought long and hard for over centuries, are dispensed with at a stroke by uncontested evidence in a court.

Make no mistake. It's coming to a protest near you, unless somebody, somewhere, somehow gets up and decides that the Protection from Harassment Act needs rethinking from top to bottom. - Channel 4