Most of the UK Internet service providers (ISPs) have started blocking access to two websites accused of violating copyright laws. The blocks follows UK courts ruling in favor of the Motion Picture Association, which accused the two sites of breaking the UK Copyright, Design and Patents Act by allowing users to download or stream movies. The sites Movie2K and Download4All have been banned by UK ISPs including BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk and EE.

All seven half-hour episodes of the comedy starring Ricky Gervais - first aired on Channel 4 - will be made available to Netflix subscribers in the US, Canada, Ireland, Latin America, Brazil and the Nordics from Sept. 12. "Ricky Gervais is one of the most distinctive comedy voices of his generation," said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer for Netflix. "With Derek, Ricky takes on new territory and mixes comedy with drama that is sometimes touching and sometimes heartbreaking. We are proud to partner with Ricky to present this unique and wonderful series to our members."

Telegraph Media Group employees began to receive emails purporting to come from external organisations. Containing a polite, formal greeting, they looked just like hundreds of legitimate emails that are received every day. In what turned out to be a classic 'phishing attack', recipients were invited to click a link, and once they had done so asked to enter both their Telegraph user account and password details. After one user entered her details, she soon noticed an alert from Google Apps, which provide Telegraph email services, saying that her account was also being accessed in Russia, and alerted internal IT security …

Despite a surge in the use of BBC Online during last summer's London Olympics, the number of users then fell and is currently at around 60% of adults with internet access, a similar level to late 2010. In a report, the BBC's governing body the BBC Trust calls on the organisation's management to make various changes to the service, including improvements to the provision of local news and information which it said was "not particularly comprehensive".

Apple CEO Tim Cook will face tough questions today when he testifies before a Senate subcommittee on possible billions in tax avoidance. U.S. Democratic Sen. Cal Levin and Republican Sen. John McCain say two Apple subsidiaries were established for the purposes of exploiting the gap between American and Irish tax policy.

The UK HM Revenue and Customs is initiating new lines of investigation into Google's tax affairs upon interviewing the search major's former executive who gave anonymous evidence to parliament. According to Guardian, Barney Jones, who worked for Google between 2002 and 2006, surrendered thousands of electronic documents. The documents reportedly reveal how Google's London sales staff negotiated and signed contracts with British customers, and cash was paid into a UK bank account, while the deals were technically booked via its Dublin office to reduce its legal responsibilities.

Under the mantra "don't publish anything boring", Planet Ivy has grown into a site with a network of more than 150 young writers publishing around 80 articles a week between them and reaching up to 400,000 unique users a month. Six months on and back in at Google Campus, where the three paid employees of Planet Ivy are based, the founder and the editor of the title told Journalism.co.uk about the site's model and how they have received investment from an angel investor and from Ascension Ventures.

When it comes to generating sales via social networks, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) say LinkedIn is by far the most effective tool. This is the finding of a new study from Fasthosts, which well and truly established the key role that online services are having on business development. As reported by freshbusinessthinking.com, the UK-based web hoster surveyed 100 IT and business decision makers to find that most had found their way online in some capacity. In fact, one in three (28%) said they could lose up to GBP30,000 in sales should their internet go down for just one day.

The BBC Trust has said that the BBC needs to merge its Red Button and online services, as well as looking to improve navigation across the different parts of BBC Online, improving links and design consistency and better search functionality. In terms of online and the Red Button, the review found that both services are popular, offer a wide variety of distinctive content that can be accessed on different platforms including computer, mobile device or television, and audiences trust their content. It was, however, noticed that there could be some improvement.

A former Google employee has said that he will provide evidence to the UK tax authorities about how the company avoided paying taxes in the country. BBC reported that Barney Jones, who worked as sales executive at Google from 2002 to 2006, claimed that some arrangements were completed in the UK when he was working. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt is scheduled to meet UK Prime Minister David Cameron at the quarterly meeting of Business Advisory Group in Downing.