New Labour are not as stupid as they seem. I have now had a chance to take legal advice, and that advice is as follows. To defend this case would cost the price of a London house. I don’t have a house, in London or anywhere else. I am therefore obliged to give in to force majeure and remove some of the documents from my own site. This reeking government is therefore able to mask its stink on this particular miniscule corner of the internet.
Here is another piece of legal advice I received. Copyright cases cover one instance of publication in one place. Anyone else who has published any government documents that might be Crown Copyright, or not, (and I believe there are hundreds of thousands of documents on the web on which the government could, by the argument in Mr Buttrill’s letter, claim copyright), is an individual case and can wait to hear from Mr Buttrill.
Force Majeure wields a two-edged sword.
Craig
Has Murder in Samarkand been reviewed by any mainstream British newspaper?
Not yet. This Sunday I believe the Sunday Times will, but it's by Sir Max Hastings who has strongly supported both the war in Iraq and George Bush's Middle East policy, so it might not be exactly friendly.