Sitting in the Court of Appeal today it was hard not to get the impression that Golden Eye may well get a decision in its favour and be allowed to have the details of over 6,000 O2 and Be customers, who are allegedly guilty of copyright infringement.

Far be it from me to second guess the judges' ruling before they hand it down and I may be completely wrong. Hey it has been known sometimes! And this was only the feeling I got from the remarks made in court, so no one should take my musings as gospel. But chatting after the hearing I was not the only person to have reached this conclusion and by that I mean those who have far more legal expertise than me.

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The exercise in mud-slinging currently being carried out by some of the biggest names in tech descended into farce yesterday when the High Court ruled that Samsung wasn't ‘cool' enough to copy Apple.

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So Baroness Howe of Idlicote wants all ISPs to block pornographic images and websites unless the subscriber actively ‘opts-in'.

Like many online child safety proposals the intentions are good, but the proposals are unworkable. As a colleague aptly put it - "there are people who think that there are things on the internet you can just turn off like taps".

On many levels the proposals are deeply flawed.

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I get asked a lot of curious questions from readers about their rights when they email the Consumeractive consumer rights inbox.

Often I can fully understand their frustration, have huge sympathy for their predicament, but what people believe that they can do, or what they think their legal rights are tend to be far removed from reality.

Take for example one of the latest queries I have just had to answer on the topical subject of the Game Group.

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When I sat in the court room on 9 March this year to hear Golden Eye International's case for obtaining a Norwich Pharmacal Order to allow it to get the personal details of O2 customers it said were illegally downloading its films, I was pretty sure they would win.

Mr Justice Arnold is known to be sympathetic to rights holders who are battling illegal file sharing. He has after all been instrumental in setting precedent which is now forcing major ISPs BT, Talk Talk, Sky and pretty soon Virgin Media to block access to Newzbin2 website.

The only amusing thing about this case is the publicity boost given to Newzbin2 because so few ordinary people in the UK had even heard of it. And listening to Mr Justice Arnold  earlier this month,I got the strong impression that he felt that Golden Eye was putting forward a pretty strong case on behalf of itself and Ben Dover Productions.

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With the news that Andrew Crossley has been banned from practising law for two years, plus Golden Eye, yet another firm engaged in speculative invoicing failing to convince a judge of the merits of its cases, is this the end of speculative invoicing?

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