The way people in the UK might navigate the internet is changing. Under the Online Safety Act, platforms must take action – such as carrying out age checks – to stop children seeing illegal and harmful material from July. Services face large fines if they fail to comply with UK’s sweeping online safety rules. But what do they mean for children? Here’s what you need to know. What is the Online Safety Act and how will it protect children? The Online Safety Act’s central aim is to make the internet safer for people in the UK, especially children. It is a set of laws and duties that online platforms must follow, being implemented and enforced by Ofcom, the media regulator. Under its Children’s Codes, platforms must prevent young people from encountering harmful content relating to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and pornography from 25 July. This will see some services, notably porn sites, start checking the age of UK users. Ofcom’s rules are also designed to protect children from misogynistic, violent, hateful or abusive material, online bullying and dangerous challenges. Firms which wish to continue operating in the UK must adopt measures including: Failure to comply could result in businesses being fined £18m or 10% of their global revenues – whichever is higher – or their executives being jailed. In very serious cases Ofcom says it can apply for a court order to prevent the site or app from being available in the UK. What else is in the Online Safety Act? The bill also requires firms to show they are committed to removing illegal content, including: The Act has also created new offences, such as: Why has it been criticised? A number of campaigners want to see even stricter rules for tech firms, and some want under-16s banned from social media completely. Ian Russell, chairman of the Molly Rose Foundation – which was set up in memory of his daughter who took her own life aged 14 – said he was “dismayed by the lack of ambition” in Ofcom’s codes.

A group of young English-speaking hackers are claiming to be behind the cyber attack which has halted the global production lines of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). The group is bragging about the hack on the messaging app Telegram, sharing screenshots apparently taken from inside the car maker’s IT networks. The gang is also responsible for a wave of cyber attacks on UK retailers including M&S in the spring – and are calling themselves “Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters”. “Where is my new car, Land Rover,” the hackers – who are thought to be teens – posted to taunt the company. JLR told the BBC it was aware of the claims and was investigating. In private text conversations with one of the criminals, who claims to be a spokesperson for the group, they explained how the gang allegedly accessed the car maker. It’s understood they are now trying to extort the firm for money. But the hacker would not say if they have successfully stolen private data from JLR or installed malicious software onto the company’s network. The hacker wouldn’t provide any more evidence – and these types of criminal gangs are known to exaggerate to get attention. But two images posted by the group show apparent internal instructions for troubleshooting a car charging issue and internal computer logs. One security expert has speculated the screenshots suggest the criminals have access to information they should not have. “Based on the information provided by the attackers and open source intelligence, the attack has access to JLR’s internal systems and network,” security researcher Kevin Beaumont said. A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner’s Office said: “Jaguar Land Rover has reported an incident and we are assessing the information provided.” ‘Took immediate action’ Car production at sites including the Halewood plant in Merseyside and another in Solihull have been heavily disrupted since the attack was discovered on Sunday. Staff have been sent home and JLR has said it’s working to get manufacturing back online. The company has not disclosed the nature of the attack. “We took immediate action to mitigate its impact by proactively shutting down our systems, it said in a statement. “We are now working at pace to restart our global applications in a controlled manner. “At this stage there is no evidence any customer data has been stolen but our retail and production activities have been severely disrupted.” The hackers chose the name Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters to reflect the merging of various youth-orientated cyber criminals who are all associated with a network called The Com. Earlier this year the National Crime Agency warned of the growing threat from cyber criminals in The Com. The newly named group is a mixture of hackers who have been part of the groups Shiny Hunters, Lapsus$ and Scattered Spider – all notorious young hacking groups of the last few years that emerged from The Com. The Telegram channel used by the criminals now has nearly 52,000 subscribers. The group has been bragging about hacks and sharing incomprehensible in-jokes for days. It’s the fourth such Telegram channel as previous ones have been closed down. Scattered Spider is name of a loosely linked group of hackers responsible for high profile attacks on M&S, Co-op and Harrods in April and May. In July the National Crime Agency arrested 4 people in connection to the hacks. A 20-year-old woman was arrested in Staffordshire, and three males – aged between 17 and 19 – were detained in London and the West Midlands. All have since been released on bail.

A US judge has ruled that using books to train artificial intelligence (AI) software is not a violation of US copyright law. The decision came out of a lawsuit brought last year against AI firm Anthropic by three authors, including best-selling mystery thriller writer Andrea Bartz, who accused it of stealing her work to train its Claude AI model and build a multi-billion dollar business. In his ruling, Judge William Alsup said Anthropic’s use of the authors’ books was “exceedingly transformative” and therefore allowed under US law. But he rejected Anthropic’s request to dismiss the case, ruling the firm would have to stand trial over its use of pirated copies to build its library of material. Bringing the lawsuit alongside Ms Bartz, whose novels include We Were Never Here and The Last Ferry Out, were non-fiction writers Charles Graeber, author of The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder and Kirk Wallace Johnson who wrote The Feather Thief. Anthropic, a firm backed by Amazon and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, could face up to $150,000 in damages per copyrighted work. The firm holds more than seven million pirated books in a “central library” according to the judge. The ruling is among the first to weigh in on a question that is the subject of numerous legal battles across the industry – how Large Language Models (LLMs) can legitimately learn from existing material. “Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic’s LLMs trained upon works, not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different,” Judge Alsup wrote. “If this training process reasonably required making copies within the LLM or otherwise, those copies were engaged in a transformative use,” he said. He noted that the authors did not claim that the training led to “infringing knockoffs” with replicas of their works being generated for users of the Claude tool. If they had, he wrote, “this would be a different case”. Similar legal battles have emerged over the AI industry’s use of other media and content, from journalistic articles to music and video. This month, Disney and Universal filed a lawsuit against AI image generator Midjourney, accusing it of piracy. The BBC is also considering legal action over the unauthorised use of its content. In response to the legal battles, some AI companies have responded by striking deals with creators of the original materials, or their publishers, to license material for use. Judge Alsup allowed Anthropic’s “fair use” defence, paving the way for future legal judgements.