[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website]
It has always been difficult to stay completely on the right side of the law, however law-abiding one tries to be.
I try to check the copyright status of every picture I use in my presentations, but may sometimes slip up. Copying CDs I own to my iPod may – or may not be – illegal, and copying DVDs I own certainly is. And like all drivers I sometimes see the speedometer creep up above the speed limit when I’m not paying attention to it on a quiet motorway.
But now it seems I could face prosecution for the wide range of user accounts I’ve created on MySpace, Facebook, Googlemail, Flickr and Bebo to support the various projects I’m involved with. The ‘Norfolk and Norwich Festival’, ‘Tyneside 100’ and ‘Wysing Arts Centre’ identities I have lovingly crafted may well fall foul of a US decision that breaking the terms and conditions of a social network site can count as unauthorised access, turning what would seem to be at most a civil offence into a criminal act under computer misuse laws.