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The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 2 December 2025 and came into force on the same day. The background to the Act was described in IRIS 2025-1:1/9. The Act states that digital assets are not prevented from being treated as a form of property merely because they are not easily categorised within existing legal categories of property, namely "things in possession", like a car or land and "things in action", such as stocks and shares.  This new legislation allows the courts to create rules that reflect the unique characteristics...

On 3 December 2025, the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom fined AVS Group Ltd GBP 1 million for failing to deploy "highly effective" age assurance under section 12 of the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA), and a further GBP 50 000 for failing to respond to a statutory information request, backed up with daily penalties if non-compliance persists. The decision covers a portfolio of adult sites and requires compliant age checks to stop children encountering pornographic content. It is the clearest signal yet that Ofcom has moved from programme oversight to active enforcement of the child-protection...

Ofcom determined that an episode of BBC’s, a public service broadcaster, current affairs series Panorama, entitled "Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone" and produced by the independent production company HOYO Films (HOYO), was misleading and breached Rule 2.2 of the Broadcasting Code. This was due to the fact that the father of the 13 year old narratorheld a significant position in the Hamas administration. The Programme was broadcast on terrestrial TV on 17 February 2025 and made available on the BBC’s streaming service, BBC iPlayer, on 17 and 18 February...

On 4 November 2025, the UK’s first court decision concerning generative AI and copyright was made in the High Court’s judgment on Getty Images (US) Inc. and others v. Stability Al Ltd  (the judgment). The judgement provides guidance on the meaning of "article" and "infringing copy" for the purposes of secondary copyright infringement, recognising that an "article" can be intangible. The judgment concerns an AI image generation model, Stable Diffusion, developed and marketed by the AI company Stability AI (the Defendant). Several claimants...

The United Kingdom’s communications regulator, Ofcom, issued new guidance which took effect on 20 October 2025, clarifying how long-standing duties of due accuracy and due impartiality apply when politicians front programmes that include news. In a media environment where formats increasingly blend and news inserts appear within magazine or rolling discussion programmes, the regulator is drawing clearer lines to protect audiences while preserving freedom of expression. Background The legal background to this development is a High Court judgment earlier in 2025, R (on the application...