The launch in Brussels drew in 48 countries pledging to unite their efforts against paedophile networks.

"We're laying the foundation for a more effective international legal framework, to shut down exploitative online enterprises," he told a joint news conference in Brussels.

The German parliament is set to discuss a controversial online copyright bill that is meant to allow news publishers to charge search engines such as Google for reproducing short snippets from their articles.

The draft law proposes that publishers could charge a search engine for republishing snippets of articles, or eventually allow them to sue search engines like Google for copyright infringement.

The search engine "obviously" tries to use its own users for lobbying interests "under the pretext of a so-called project for the freedom of the Internet", wrote Günter Krings and Ansgar Heveling, politicians of the CDU and CSU conservative parties.

The United States government has agreed to defer its controversial prosecution of UK college student Richard O'Dwyer on copyright infringement charges, allowing the UK government to drop the extradition proceedings against him.

"All he'll have to do is fly over to America and appear in court and pay a fine, and then they will basically delay the prosecution forever," said the Guardian's James Ball. "It's a little bit like having it hanging over you, but as long as he doesn't come across them again, he's fine, he clear. That's really good news for him."

Once the lawyers prosecuting these cases can get names of people who they can level their accusations against, they know at least a percentage are going to pay up. It's telling that the sweet spot for mass-copyright suits is pornography; it strongly suggests a strategy of deterring defendants from fighting cases by embarrassing them.

The ISPs have vast legal resources, and being brought directly into the legal fight may actually encourage them to fight against copyright trolling even harder. That's especially true since the practice has been generally disfavored by judges thus far.

Known locally as TTVK, Finnish anti-piracy group CIAPC sent the man a letter informing him that his account had been traced back to an incidence of online file-sharing.

To stop matters progressing further the man was advised to pay a settlement of 600 euros, sign a non-disclosure document, and move on with his life. He chose not to give in to the demands of CIAPC and this week things escalated as promised.

In concluding their search, the police confiscated the girl’s file-sharing weapon of choice – her Winnie The Pooh laptop – and according to her father offered some final words.

“It would have been easier for all concerned if you had paid the compensation,” the police advised.

A Southern California man was arrested at Oakland International Airport after security officers found him wearing an unusual watch they said could be used to make a timing device for a bomb, authorities said Friday.

While no actual explosives were found, McGann was carrying potentially dangerous materials and appeared to have made alterations to his boots, which were unusually large and stuffed with layers of insoles, Nelson said.

A German court in Frankfurt has ruled that a request for mutual legal assistance from the United States regarding stripping assets belonging to Kim Dotcom, has no basis for legal action in Germany.

As a part of the criminal investigation against the file-sharing service Megaupload, certain assets were supposed to be removed. This request was issued by the American FBI when they called for legal assistance from the German authorities.

During a pre-trial hearing in military court today, Manning's attorney, David Coombs, proposed a partial guilty plea covering a subset of the slew of criminal charges that the U.S. Army has lodged against him.

Manning's court-martial is set to begin in February 2013. Last year, the military slapped him with 22 charges, including alleging that Manning caused "to be published on the Internet intelligence belonging to the United States government."

Costas Vaxevanis published a list of Greeks with Swiss bank accounts, including a government minister and other prominent figures in public life.

The list of suspected evaders was reportedly leaked by an employee at the HSBC bank and passed to IMF chief Christine Lagarde when she was French finance minister in 2010.

Ms Lagarde apparently handed the list to the Greek authorities, but they took no action.

Prosecutors had accused him of publicly ridiculing people and delivering them "to a society that is thirsty for blood".

Having won cases against other torrent site hosters in the past, the anti-piracy group was quick to ask XS Networks to shut SumoTorrent down and hand over the personal details of its owner. XS Networks refused, however, and said it would only respond to a court order.

According to BREIN the Dutch hosting provider was to blame for this outcome, and in response went on to sue the company earlier this year in pursuit of damages. BREIN argued that XS Networks acted negligently when it refused to take the site down when asked to do so.

With this ruling in hand BREIN can ask for the shutdown of any site they deem to be infringing, as well asking for the personal details of the site owner. Providers who refuse to cooperate will make themselves liable for damages caused by the website in question.