History of copyright law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Copyright was invented after the advent of the printing press and subsequent widening of public literacy. As a legal concept, its origins in Britain were from a reaction to printers' monopolies at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In Britain the King of England and Scotland was concerned by the unregulated copying of books and used the royal prerogative to pass the Licensing Act of 1662 which established a register of licensed books and required a copy to be deposited with the Stationers Company, essentially continuing the licensing of material for the benefit of printers that had long been in effect. The Statute of Anne in 1709 was the first real copyright act, and gave the author in the new nation of Britain rights for a fixed period, after which the copyright expired. Internationally, the Berne Convention in 1887 set out the scope of copyright protection, and is still in force to this day. Copyright has grown from a legal concept regulating copying rights in the publishing of books and maps to one with a significant effect on nearly every modern industry, covering such items as sound recordings, films, photographs, software, and architectural works.
Chronology
Prehistory of copyright
Authors, patrons, and owners of works throughout the ages have tried to direct and control how copies of such works could be used once disseminated to others. Mozart's patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, allowed his compositions created for her to be performed, while Handel's patron, George I, jealously guarded "Water Music."
Modern copyright has been influenced by an array of older legal rights that have been recognized throughout history, including the moral rights of the author who created a work, the economic rights of a benefactor who paid to have a copy made, the property rights of the individual owner of a copy, and a sovereign's right to censor and to regulate the printing industry. Prior to the invention of movable type in the West in the mid-fifteenth century, texts were copied by hand and the small number of texts generated few occasions for these rights to be tested. Even during a period of a prospering book trade, during the Roman Empire when no copyright or similar regulations existed,[1] copying by those other than professional booksellers was rare. This is because books were, typically, copied by literate slaves, who were expensive to buy and maintain. Thus, any copier would have had to pay much the same expense as a professional publisher. Roman book sellers would sometimes pay a well regarded author for first access to a text for copying, but they had no exclusive rights to a work and authors were not normally paid anything for their work.[2]
During the centuries following the destruction of the Roman Empire, European literary undertakings were confined almost entirely to the monasteries. The Roman usage, under which authors could dispose of their works to booksellers and the latter could be secure of some commercial control of the property purchased, was entirely forgotten. (In Ken Follet's novel The Pillars of the Earth, a character is astonished to meet a woman who actually owns books, which were normally owned only by churches and monasteries.)
Before legal and economic restrictions on print ownership came into being, one would occasionally find an author's or archivist's book curse inscribed in a given volume. Beyond this, however, two major developments in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries seem to have provoked the development of modern copyright. First, the expansion of mercantile trade in major European cities and the appearance of the secular university helped produce an educated bourgeois class interested in the information of the day. This helped spur the emergence of a public sphere, which was increasingly served by entrepreneurial stationers who produced copies of books on demand. Second, Gutenberg's development of movable type and the development and spread of the printing press made mass reproduction of printed works quick and much cheaper than ever before. Before printing, the process of copying a work could be nearly as labor intensive and expensive as creating the original, and was largely relegated to monastic scribes. It appears that publishers, rather than authors, were the first to seek restrictions on the copying of printed works. Given that publishers of music and films in particular commonly now obtain the copyright from a creator (although rarely a book author) as a condition of mass reproduction of a work, one of the criticisms of the current system is that it benefits publishers more than it does creators. This is one of the chief arguments in favor of peer-to-peer file sharing systems, making an analogy with the changes wrought by printing.
An interesting attempt at copyright in the early modern period was the notice attached to the ha- Shirim asher li-Shelomo , a setting of the Psalms by the composer Salomone Rossi, which happened to be the first music to be printed with a Hebrew type-face text (1623). It included a rabbinical curse on anyone who copied the contents.
Movable type
The printing press brought the possibility of compensation for literary labor. Very speedily, however, the unrestricted rivalry of printers brought into existence competing and unauthorized editions of various works, which diminished prospects of any payment, or even entailed loss, for the authors, editors, and printers of the original issue, and thus discouraged further undertaking. Any person with a press and some skills could use movable type to publish books and other items. Scribes and scriveners were no longer needed.
Protection for the authors and their representatives was sought through special privileges obtained for separate works as issued. According to Elizabeth Armstrong (whom the Curators of the Bodleian Library awarded the Gordon Duff Prize in 1965 for her essay on Printers' and authors' privileges in France and the Low Countries in the sixteenth century), "The republic of Venice granted its first privilege for a particular book in 1486. It was a special case, being the history of the city itself, the 'Rerum venetarum ab urbe condita opus' of Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus".[3] "Venice began regularly granting privileges for particular books in 1492. The first, 3 January that year, went to Petrus Franciscus de Ravenna, a teacher of canon law at Padua University, who had devised a system of training the memory, which he embodied in a book entitled "Foenix". [4]
Most early Italian enactments in regard to literature were framed not so much with reference to the protection of authors as for the purpose of inducing printers (acting as publishers) to undertake certain literary enterprises which were believed to be important to the community. The Republic of Venice, the dukes of Florence, and Leo X and other Popes conceded at different times to certain printers the exclusive privilege of printing for specific terms (rarely exceeding 14 years) editions of classic authors; not so much to secure profits for the printers, but rather to encourage, for the benefit of the community, literary ventures on the part of the editors and printers.
The first copyright privilege in England bears date 1518 and was issued to Richard Pynson, King's Printer, the successor to William Caxton. The privilege gives a monopoly for the term of two years. The date is 15 years later than that of the first privilege issued in France. Early copyright privileges were called "monopolies," particularly during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who frequently gave grants of monopolies in articles of common use, such as salt, leather, coal, soap, cards, beer, and wine. The practice was continued until the Statute of Monopolies was enacted in 1623, ending most monopolies, with certain exceptions, such as patents; after 1623, grants of Letters patent to publishers became common. The period of common-law copyright for Great Britain was brought to a close by the Act of Queen Anne in 1709. The Act had a certain effect in the British Colonies, therefore it is regarded as being the first copyright law that affected the future United States.
The earliest German privilege of which there is trustworthy record was issued in 1501 by the Aulic Council to an association entitled the Sodalitas Rhenana Celtica, for the publication of an edition of the dramas of Hroswitha of Gandersheim, which had been prepared for the press by Konrad Keltes. In 1512 an Imperial privilege was issued to the historiographer John Stadius for all that he should print, the first European privilege which was made to cover more than a single work, or undertaking to protect books not yet published. In 1794 legislation was enacted in the Prussian Parliament which was accepted by the other states of Germany (except Württemberg and Mecklenburg), under which all German authors, and foreign authors whose works were represented by publishers taking part in the book fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig, were to be protected throughout the states of Germany against unauthorized reprints. This Berlin enactment may be credited as the first step towards a practical recognition of international copyright. Enforcement of the provisions of interstate enactments proved to be difficult, at least until after 1815.[citation needed]
Earliest copyright disputations
One of the earliest copyright disputes reputedly took place in 557 A.D. between Abbot Finnian of Moville and St. Columba over St. Columba's copying of a Psalter belonging to an Abbot. The dispute over ownership of the copy led to the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne (also know as Battle of Cooldrumman), in which 3,000 men were killed.[5] In 1557, the English monarch, Mary I, chartered a London guild of printers, bookbinders, and booksellers known as the Stationers' Company, probably in an attempt to prevent the spread of the Protestant Reformation. Only Guild members were allowed to practice the art of printing and the master and wardens of the society were empowered to search, seize, and burn all prohibited books, and to imprison any person found to be printing without a license. In return for their role in preventing the publication of books deemed heretical or seditious, the Guild's members enjoyed the economic benefits of a monopoly over the printing industry. From 1557 to 1641, the English Crown exercised authority over printing and the Stationers' Company through the Star Chamber. After the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641, the English Parliament continued to extend the Stationers' Company's censorship/monopoly arrangement through a series of ordinances and Licensing Acts between 1643 and 1692.
During its time, the Stationers' Company developed a private system for handling disputes between its members (sometimes referred to as a Stationer's Copyright). Under this system, specific Guild members held monopoly rights in a particular work that were treated as being perpetual. Although Guild members could purchase a manuscript from an author, authors could not become members of the Guild and were not entitled to any royalties or additional payments after purchase. Members were allowed to buy and sell rights over particular works to each other. As a method to keep track of which members claimed rights in what works, the Guild required that copyrights be recorded in a registration book at the Guild's Hall. The Licensing Act of 1662 also required printers to deposit a copy of each work with the Guild to prevent changes to the work after it was reviewed by censors. Many aspects of the Stationers' system were later incorporated into modern copyright laws.
Following the English Civil War, which was partly fought over the Crown's abuse of monopolies, the Stationers' power was threatened when the last Licensing Act expired in 1694. Without their monopolies, London's booksellers faced an unregulated influx of cheap texts printed outside Britain, and in Scotland, that began flooding the English market. After years of lobbying Parliament by authors and members of the Conger, the world's first modern copyright statute was enacted – the Statute of Anne, 8 Anne, ch. 19 (1710).
The birth of modern copyright
England's Statute of Anne (1710) is widely regarded as the first copyright law. The statute's full title was "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned." This statute first accorded exclusive rights to authors (i.e., creators) rather than publishers, and it included protections for consumers of printed work ensuring that publishers could not control their use after sale. It also limited the duration of such exclusive rights to 28 years, after which all works would pass into the public domain. Although the Statute of Anne created a system of monopoly rights similar in many ways to the Stationers' Company's private system, it introduced three major changes.
Unlike previous laws that gave broad monopoly power to the Stationers' Company, who would then administer a private system of copyright between Guild members, the Statute of Anne directly outlined a public copyright system that applied to the public in general. Second, the Statute recognized a copyright as originating in the author, rather than a Guild member. Lastly, it placed a time limitation on the monopoly enjoyed by holders of a copyright. Specifically, the Act provided that an owner of the copyright in any book already printed should have the exclusive right of publishing it for twenty-one years. For works not yet published, the act provided an exclusive right to publish for fourteen years from the time of first publication, with the stipulation that the right could be extended by an author for another 14 years. However, printers argued that the texts were property owned by the authors, and therefore could be sold as such to the printers, who would then own the rights.
There were territorial loopholes in the 1710 Act. It did not extend to all British territories, but only covered England, Scotland and Wales. Many reprints of British copyright works were consequently issued both in Ireland and in North American colonies, without any license from the copyright holder required. These works were frequently issued without payment to British copyright holders, so they were cheaper than London editions. They were popular with book-buyers, but were not copyright infringements in the formal sense of the word, being within the law. The term was used, however.
In Ireland and North America there were reprint publishers who sought out formal arrangements with and made payments to British copyright holders. This illicit reprint trade was also engaged in by some Scottish publishers. These publishers were sometimes prosecuted.
Irish reprints became a matter of great concern to London publishers. Their reprints undermined direct sales to Ireland. They also crossed the border into England, and were especially sold in English provincial markets which were becoming increasingly important to London publishers. Booksellers who sold these reprints in England, Scotland, and Wales were subject to prosecution.
Between 1710-1774 there was legal debate about what length of time was meant in the 1710 act.
In the 1730s, publishers in Scotland began to reprint titles that they no longer considered to be covered by copyright. Scottish publishers printed what they perceived to be public domain English works whose copyright had expired. They sold these titles in Scotland, and in the English provinces. English publishers objected to this, on the basis of what they saw as common-law rights and property (under the concept of common-law rights in the English system), which predated the Copyright Act. Under common-law rights, rights in published works were held to continue into perpetuity.
The case of Donaldson vs Beckett, in 1774, brought disagreements on the length of copyright to an end. The outcome of the case resulted in the decision that Parliament could, and had, put a limit on copyright length. This decision reflected a shift in English ideas of copyright. The English lords who made the decision in 1774 decided that it was not in the public's best interest to have London publishers control books in perpetuity, particularly as English publishers commonly kept prices high. There were some notions that this was a cultural or class issue. Works in perpetual copyright were seen to have limited access by some citizens to the cultural history of their own land.
Concepts of the roles of the author and publisher, of copyright law, and of general Enlightenment notions, interacted in this period. Authors had been previously seen to be divinely inspired. Patronage was a legitimate way to support authors, in part because of this. Authors who were paid, rather than entering into patron-relationships, were often regarded as hacks, and looked down upon. However, the notion of individual genius was becoming more common during the 1770s (the generation after Donaldson v Beckett), and being a paid author therefore became more accepted.
In Great Britain's North American colonies, reprinting British copyright works without permission had long happened episodically, but only became a major feature of colonial life after 1760. It became more commonplace to reprint British works in the colonies (mostly in the 13 American colonies). The impetus for this shift came from Irish and Scottish master printers and booksellers who had moved to the North American colonies in the mid 18th century. They were already familiar with the practice of reprinting and selling British copyright works, and continued the practice in North America, and it became a major part of the North American printing and publishing trade. Robert Bell was an example. He was originally Scottish, and had spent almost a decade in Dublin before he moved to British North America in 1768. His operations, and those of many other colonial printers and booksellers, ensured that the practice of reprinting was well-established by the time of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. Weakened American ties to Britain coincided with the increase of reprinting outside British copyright controls.
The Irish also made a flourishing business of shipping reprints to North America in the 18th century. Ireland's ability to reprint freely ended in 1801 when Ireland's Parliament merged with Great Britain, and the Irish became subject to British copyright laws.
The printing of uncopyrighted English works for the English-language market also occurred in other European countries. The British government responded to this problem in two ways: 1) it amended its own copyright statutes in 1842, explicitly forbidding import of any foreign reprint of British copyrighted work into the UK or its colonies, and 2) it began the process of reciprocal agreements with other countries. The first reciprocal agreement was with Prussia in 1846. The US remained outside this arrangement for some decades. This was objected to by such authors as Dickens and Mark Twain.
The natural rights debate
As the first copyrights under the Statute began to expire, a legal battle erupted over what rights, if any, existed after a copyright term expired. The book publishers argued that a perpetual common law copyright existed beyond the term outlined in the Statute, akin to the situation prior to passage of the Statute. The publishers argued that copyright was a natural right. The first major victory for the book publishers came in the case of Millar v. Taylor. The case involved the poet James Thomson's book, "The Seasons." A bookseller, Andrew Millar, purchased the publishing rights to "The Seasons" in 1729. After the copyright's term expired, Robert Taylor began publishing his own competing publication, which contained Thomson's poem. The judge assigned to the case sided with the publishers, finding that common law rights were not extinguished by the Statute of Anne. Under Mansfield's ruling, the publishers had a perpetual common-law right to publish a work for which they had acquired the rights.
The decision in Millar, however, was made by an English court and so did not extend to Scotland, where a reprint industry continued to thrive and a Scottish court rejected the notion of a perpetual common-law copyright in Hinton v. Donaldson. The debate culminated in the landmark case of Donaldson v. Beckett. The decision by the House of Lords in February of 1774 rejected common-law copyright. Lord Camden, attacked the publisher's foundation for a common-law right:
The arguments attempted to be maintained on the side of the respondents, were founded on patents, privileges, Star Chamber decrees, and the bye (sic) laws of the Stationers' Company; all of them the effects of the grossest tyranny and usurpation; the very last places in which I should have dreamt of finding the least trace of the common law of this kingdom; and yet, by a variety of subtle reasoning and metaphysical refinements, have they endeavored to squeeze out the spirit of the common law from premises in which it could not possibly have existence.
Although the decision in Donaldson firmly established that, in England, works to which a copyright has expired fall to the public domain, the debate itself has resurfaced in the United States and elsewhere in the years since.
Early internationalisation
The Berne Convention of 1886 first established the recognition of a common copyright amongst several sovereign nations. (International recognition of copyright was also provided by the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, but that convention is today largely of only historical interest.) Contrary to English tradition, copyright is granted automatically to creative works under the Berne Convention; an author does not have to actively register or otherwise apply for copyright to be applied to the work. As soon as the work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium (e.g. words written on page, music recorded onto tape, etc.), its author is automatically granted exclusive rights to the distribution of the work and any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires.
* Evolution to deal with successive waves of new technology.
* Origins of collecting societies.
* Conflicts (then resounding lack of conflict) over term extensions.
Diversion: copyright and communism
Historically, many societies governed by socialist governments have viewed copyright as a welfare or support mechanism for artists, instead of (or in addition to) a legal right. These ideas probably found their strongest expression in Scandinavian law.
The Eastern European communist states professed to employ socialist principles in rewarding their artists and authors, but the reality of their copyright systems was deeply entangled with censorship and state control of culture. Cultural workers in the Soviet Union did well if they could employ "blat" to their advantage and convince the right party officials to favour their work.
The Soviet Union did have a number of interactions with the international copyright system:
* Unsuccessful lawsuits brought by Western lawyers in an attempt to make the Soviet state recognise foreign copyrights or pay royalties to foreign authors (the USSR did occasionally pay foreign authors for the use of their works, but only if they were of a suitable ideological colour).
* Accession to the Universal Copyright Convention, with the intention of allowing the Soviet state to appropriate international copyright in works by dissident Soviet authors, and thereby control the distribution of those works outside the Communist bloc.
Modern US copyright legislation
* Enactment of the Copyright Act of 1976.
* Enactment of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.
* Enactment of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
* Enactment of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act.
Recent history: globalization and technological crisis
* Digital technology introduces a new level of controversy into copyright policy.
* Inclusion of software as copyright subject matter on the recommendation of CONTU and then later with the EU Computer Programs Directive.
* Enactment of TRIPS.
* Controversy over the copyrightability of databases (Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service and contradictory cases); links to the debate over sui generis Database rights.
* Enactment of the WIPO Copyright Treaty; nations begin passing anti-circumvention laws.
* Some copyrighted works are more difficult to protect. Music, for example, may be played or sung by anyone after it has been published. But if it is performed for profit, the performers must pay a fee, called a royalty, to the copyright owner. A similar principle applies to performances of plays. As a written work, a play is protected in the same way as a book; anyone who wants to perform it must pay a royalty.
Analysis: recurring themes in the history of copyright
The history of copyright has several key themes: responses to innovations in media technologies, expansions in the definition, scope and operation of copyright, and international dissemination of the evolutions occurring in particular states.
Responses to technological innovation
The genesis of copyright can be seen as a process through which capitalist societies found a way to wed the printing press and the marketplace (see also print culture).
This commercial regulatory system, designed for the printing press, was successively expanded to include photography, phonography, film, broadcasting, photocopying (reprography) and computer programs as those technologies became widespread. These expansions were at first controversial but over time became stable components of commerce in the relevant industries.
The placement of present disputes over copyright in this historical trajectory is an interesting problem. Some commentators would add the Internet and digitised works in general to the end of the above list of technological expansions. In that view, the same functions of copyright (especially creating marketplace incentives for the production of works) remain necessary or desirable for digital material and will therefore eventually become stable and consensual. In contrast, commentators such as Barlow (1994) have argued that digital copyright is fundamentally different and will remain persistently difficult to enforce; others such as Stallman (1996) have argued that the Internet deeply undermines the economic rationale for copyright in the first place. These perspectives may lead to the consideration of alternative compensation systems in place of exclusive rights.
Expansions in scope and operation
* Move from common law and ad-hoc grants of monopoly to copyright statutes.
* Expansions in subject matter (largely related to technology).
* Expansions in duration.
* Creation of new exclusive rights (such as performers' and other neighbouring rights).
* Creation of collecting societies.
* Criminalisation of copyright infringement.
* Creation of anti-circumvention laws.
* Courts' application of secondary liability doctrines to cover file sharing networks
Regulatory leadership and internationalisation
* Early role of the UK; reciprocity and the Berne convention; the United States as a "pirate nation."
* Shift to leadership by the US during the 20th century (though some expansions continued to flow from Europe); the South and the Far East as centres of copyright breaking.
[edit] Notes
1. ^ Martial, The Epigrams, Penguin, 1978, James Mitchie
2. ^ Martial, The Epigrams, Penguin, 1978, James Mitchie
3. ^ Armstrong, Elizabeth. Before Copyright: the French book-privilege system 1498-1526. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1990, p. 3
4. ^ Armstrong, Elizabeth. Before Copyright: the French book-privilege system 1498-1526. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1990, p. 6
5. ^ Gantz, John and Rochester, Jack B. (2005), Pirates of the Digital Millennium, Upper Saddle River: Financial Times Prentice Hall, p. 30-33; ISBN 0-13-146315-2
[edit] References
1. Eaton S. Drone, A Treatise on the Law of Property in Intellectual Productions, Little, Brown, & Co. (1879).
2. Dietrich A. Loeber, ‘"Socialist" Features of Soviet Copyright Law’, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, vol. 23, pp 297--313, 1984.
3. Joseph Lowenstein, The Author's Due : Printing and the Prehistory of Copyright, University of Chicago Press, 2002
4. Christopher May, "The Venetian Moment: New Technologies, Legal Innovation and the Institutional Origins of Intellectual Property", Prometheus, 20(2), 2002.
5. Millar v. Taylor, 4 Burr. 2303, 98 Eng. Rep. 201 (K.B. 1769).
6. Lyman Ray Patterson, Copyright in Historical Perspective, Vanderbilt University Press, 1968.
7. Brendan Scott, "Copyright in a Frictionless World", First Monday, volume 6, number 9 (September 2001), http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_9/scott/index.html.
8. Charles Forbes René de Montalembert, The Monks of the West from St Benedict to St Bernard, William Blackwood and Sons, London, 1867, Vol III.
9. Augustine Birrell, Seven Lectures on the Law and History of Copyright in Books, Rothman Reprints Inc., 1899 (1971 reprint).
10. Drahos, P. with Braithwaite, J., Information Feudalism, The New Press, New York, 2003. ISBN 1-56584-804-7(hc.)
11. Paul Edward Geller, International Copyright Law and Practice, Matthew Bender. (2000).
12. New International Encyclopedia
13. Computer Associates International, Inc. v. Altai, Inc., 982 F.2d 693 (2d Cir. 1992)
14. Armstrong, Elizabeth. Before Copyright: the French book-privilege system 1498-1526. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge: 1990)
15. Gantz, John and Rochester, Jack B. (2005), Pirates of the Digital Millennium, Upper Saddle River: Financial Times Prentice Hall; ISBN 0-13-146315-2
Showing posts with label wikipedia article. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wikipedia article. Show all posts
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Copyright infringement of software
Copyright infringement of software
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The copyright infringement of software (also known as software piracy) refers to several practices which involve the unauthorized copying of computer software. Copyright infringement of this kind is extremely common in the United States, Mexico, China, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, Zimbabwe and several other parts of the world. Most countries have copyright laws which apply to software, but they are better enforced in some countries than others. Since a dispute over WTO membership between Iran and USA, which led to the legalization in Iran of the distribution of software without the permission of any copyright holder (see Iran and copyright issues), there have been fears that world governments might try to use copyright laws and enforcement politically.
The rate of copyright infringement of software in the Asia-Pacific region has been estimated at 53% for 2004[1] China is the largest producer of pirated products in the world - software is no exception. The Business Software Alliance estimates that in 2006 82% of the PC software used in China was pirated. After joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) China has adjusted its Intellectual Property (IP) laws to comply with the WTO Agreement on Trade - Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The laws are in place but are ignored.[2]
Activities that may constitute infringement
Copyright infringement of software may refer to the following kinds of practices when done without the permission of the copyright holder:
* Creating a copy and/or selling it. This is the act that some people refer to as "software piracy". This is copyright infringement in most countries and is unlikely to be fair use or fair dealing if the work remains commercially available. In some countries the laws may allow the selling of a version modified for use by blind people, students (for educational product) or similar. Differences in legislation may also make the copyright void in some jurisdictions, but not the others.
* Creating a copy and giving it to someone else. This constitutes copyright infringement in most jurisdictions. It is not infringing under specific circumstances such as fair use and fair dealing.
* Creating a copy to serve as a backup. This is seen as a fundamental right of the software-buyer in some countries, e.g., Germany, Spain, Brazil and Philippines. It can be infringement, depending on the laws and the case law interpretations of those laws, currently undergoing changes in many countries. In the US, legal action was taken against companies which made backup copies while repairing computers (see MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc. (1993)) and as a result, US law was changed so that making temporary backup copies of software while repairing computers is not copyright infringement.
* Renting the original software. Software licenses often never restrict the usual right of a purchaser of a copyrighted work to let others borrow the work. In some jurisdictions the validity of such restrictions are disputed, but some require permission from the copyright holder to allow renting the software.
* Buying the original software. Licenses never say that the buyer does not buy the software but instead pays for the right to use the software. In the US, the first-sale doctrine, Softman v. Adobe [3] and Novell, Inc. v. CPU Distrib., Inc. ruled that software sales are purchases, not licenses, and resale, including unbundling, is lawful regardless of a contractual prohibition. The reasoning in Softman v. Adobe suggests that resale of student licensed versions, provided they are accurately described as such, is also not infringing.
* Bulletin Board Sharing/Internet Piracy- Albacea et al (2005) states that this infringement occurs when System Operators share (by electronic transfer) copyrighted materials on bulletin boards or the internet for users to download.
Existing and proposed laws
To many of these attempts at circumventing these end user license agreements (EULA) software vendors counter that if a user somehow obtains software without agreeing to or becoming bound by the end user license agreement, then they do not have any license to use the software at all.
In most third world countries, the term of a copyright never exceeds any useful life a program may have. The oldest legacy computer systems used today are still less than 40 years old. The copyright on them will not expire in the United States and Europe until about 2030. Changes in computer hardware, operating systems, network environments and user expectations usually make programs obsolete much faster than in 70 years (the current copyright length).
Under the proposed US Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), a controversial model law that has been adopted in Virginia and Maryland, software manufacturers are granted broad rights to shut down unauthorized software copiers without court intervention similar to some of the provisions found in Title II of the US DMCA, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, which allows copyright holders to demand that an online service provider (OSP) expeditiously block access to infringing materials. If the OSP complies, it is granted a safe harbor, providing it immunity from infringement claims. If it doesn't comply, it doesn't become liable, but may instead rely on the protection of the Communications Decency Act.
Title I of the US DMCA, the WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act has provisions that prevent persons from "circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work". Thus if a software manufacturer has some kind of software, dongle or password access device installed in the software any attempt to bypass such a copy prevention scheme may be actionable — though the US Copyright Office is currently reviewing anticircumvention rulemaking under DMCA — anticircumvention exemptions that have been in place under the DMCA include those in software designed to filter websites that are generally seen to be inefficient (child safety and public library website filtering software) and the circumvention of copy prevention mechanisms that have malfunctioned, have caused the software to become inoperable or which are no longer supported by their manufacturers.
Most commercially exploited proprietary software is developed in the United States, Japan and Europe, hence for those located in economically disadvantaged economies it can be prohibitively expensive to pay for all the end user licenses for those products rather than to purchase just one license and then copy the software without paying any additional licensing fees. Some critics in the developing countries of the world see this as an indirect technology transfer tax on their country preventing technological advancement and they use this type of argument when refusing to accept the copyright laws that are in force in most technologically advanced countries. This idea is often applied to patent laws as well.
Mere possession of unauthorized copy could be a ground for an offense depending on provisions of existing laws of a country.
The effects of copyright infringement on digital culture
Peer to peer (P2P) file sharing technologies have lowered the threshold of knowledge needed to acquire massive amounts of information. Large networks have been created which are dedicated to share knowledge, but these same networks can be used to distribute infringing material. Identifying infringing material isn't always trivial, since the users can modify the name of material being shared.
Software piracy is illegal due to the perceived economic loss it inflicts on the copyright owner. Even if it is assumed that only a portion of those infringing the author's copyright would ever have bought the software, the author will still suffer an economic loss as a result.
Software authors suggest that copyright infringement negatively affects the economy by decreasing the profits that allow for further development and growth within the software industry. The U.S. is the country most affected, as they provide about 80% of the world's software.[1] Software counterfeiting is claimed to be a large problem by some, resulting in a revenue loss of US $11-12 billion, China and Vietnam being the biggest offenders [2].
It has been suggested that counterfeit software will decline so much as to be eliminated in the future, but there are measures being taken and rules being put into place to work towards this goal. "In the United States, for example, the level of piracy has been reduced from 48% in 1989 to 25% in 2002."[4] Rise of quality in free alternative software also helps to lower the use of copied software worldwide. Illegally copying software is seen by some software producers as a "lesser evil" than actually buying or illegally copying a competitor's software. Jeff Raikes, a Microsoft executive, stated that "If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else." He also added [3] that "We understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the installed base of people who are using our products. What you hope to do over time is convert them to licensing the software."
Traian Băsescu, the president of Romania, stated that "piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania."[5]
Types of copyright infringement of software
According to the Business Software Alliance, copyright infringement of software takes several forms, which include the following.
"CD-R infringement" is the illegal copying of software using CD-R recording technology.
"Commercial Use of Non-commercial Software" is using educational or other commercial-use-restricted software in violation of the software license is a form of copyright infringement.
"Counterfeiting" is the duplication and sale of unauthorized copies of software in such a manner as to try to pass off the illegal copy as if it were a legitimate copy produced or authorized by the legal publisher. This is also often a violation of trademark laws.
"Hard-disk loading" occurs when an individual or company sells computers preloaded with illegal copies of software.
"Internet infringement" is the illegal uploading of software on to the Internet for anyone to copy.
"OEM infringement/unbundling" is known as OEM (original equipment manufacturer) software, is only legally sold with specified hardware. Whether misappropriating OEM software constitutes copyright infringement is subject to interpretation - a software publisher would have a difficult time prosecuting a person who has successfully purchased a genuine OEM copy but who, according to the license agreement, would have been supposed to purchase a retail copy. This is because a court must also consider laws relating to the commercial sales of goods such as the Uniform Commercial Code in the United States, which are more established in law and which can be interpreted to prohibit or nullify licensing terms that negate the established nature of a common sale transaction.
"Softlifting" is a neologism invented by anti-copyright infringement advocates, and is a term used to describe when a person purchases a single licensed copy of a software program and loads it on several machines, in violation of the terms of the license agreement.
"Unrestricted client access infringement" occurs when a copy of a software program is copied onto an organization's servers and the organization's network "clients" are allowed to freely access the software in violation of the terms of the license agreement.
Objections to the term "piracy"
Copyright Infringement has been called piracy since at least 1703. In the forward to Daniel Defoe's corrected edition of The True-Born Englishman, the author makes reference to "pirates and paragraph men" who distributed copies of his poem on the streets. [6] Some modern groups object to the term "software piracy", however, believing that such a term unfairly equates copyright violators with murderers and thieves. Evidence of this can be seen in the Free Software Foundation's list of confusing words [7]
Types of Software Piracy
Industrial piracy
An individual or group attempts duplication and distribution on a large scale for profit.
Corporate piracy
Unprotected contents are shared through networks such as peer-to-peer, LAN and Internet.
Reseller piracy
Involves computer hardware companies selling machines with illegal copies of software preloaded on their hard drive.
Home piracy
Includes everything from trading disks with friends to running a not-for-profit bulletin board for the purpose of illegal software distribution.
[edit] Impact on Workplaces
According to the journal published by Frederick Gallegos[citation needed], they found that 90% of business employees believed that their colleagues copied software illegally.[citation needed] They also found that over 50% of managers indicated that they had committed software piracy.[citation needed] Males copied software illegally more frequently than females and younger students were more likely to pirate software than older students.[citation needed]
References
1. International Journal of Research in Marketing, December 2003 (Volume 20, No. 4), "How many pirates should a software firm tolerate?"
2. Journal of Business, 2004, (Volume 77, No. 2),“Software Piracy: Market penetration in the Presence of Network Externalities”
3. Albacea, E., Payongayong M. T. and A. Pinpin (2005) Computer Ethics.UPOU Los Baños Philippines. p 78.
4. G.Frederick, (2007) Software Piracy: Some Facts, Figures, and Issues.
1. ^ BSA - 2007 Global Piracy Study
2. ^ http://w3.bsa.org/globalstudy//upload/2005-2006%20Global%20Piracy%20Study.pdf:U.S. - China Economic and Security Review Commission June 8, 2006. Hearings USCC.gov http://www.uscc.gov/hearings/20006hearings/written_testimonies/06_06_08wrts/06_06_7_8_chow_daniel.php
3. ^ Softman-V-Adobe Linux Journal
4. ^ Software and Information Industry Association page on Piracy
5. ^ Nathan Davis. Thanks for letting us pirate. 5 February 2007.
6. ^ Ken Hunt, Dont' Fear The Pirates,Toronto Globe & Mail, Nov. 27, 2007
7. ^ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html].
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The copyright infringement of software (also known as software piracy) refers to several practices which involve the unauthorized copying of computer software. Copyright infringement of this kind is extremely common in the United States, Mexico, China, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, Zimbabwe and several other parts of the world. Most countries have copyright laws which apply to software, but they are better enforced in some countries than others. Since a dispute over WTO membership between Iran and USA, which led to the legalization in Iran of the distribution of software without the permission of any copyright holder (see Iran and copyright issues), there have been fears that world governments might try to use copyright laws and enforcement politically.
The rate of copyright infringement of software in the Asia-Pacific region has been estimated at 53% for 2004[1] China is the largest producer of pirated products in the world - software is no exception. The Business Software Alliance estimates that in 2006 82% of the PC software used in China was pirated. After joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) China has adjusted its Intellectual Property (IP) laws to comply with the WTO Agreement on Trade - Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The laws are in place but are ignored.[2]
Activities that may constitute infringement
Copyright infringement of software may refer to the following kinds of practices when done without the permission of the copyright holder:
* Creating a copy and/or selling it. This is the act that some people refer to as "software piracy". This is copyright infringement in most countries and is unlikely to be fair use or fair dealing if the work remains commercially available. In some countries the laws may allow the selling of a version modified for use by blind people, students (for educational product) or similar. Differences in legislation may also make the copyright void in some jurisdictions, but not the others.
* Creating a copy and giving it to someone else. This constitutes copyright infringement in most jurisdictions. It is not infringing under specific circumstances such as fair use and fair dealing.
* Creating a copy to serve as a backup. This is seen as a fundamental right of the software-buyer in some countries, e.g., Germany, Spain, Brazil and Philippines. It can be infringement, depending on the laws and the case law interpretations of those laws, currently undergoing changes in many countries. In the US, legal action was taken against companies which made backup copies while repairing computers (see MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc. (1993)) and as a result, US law was changed so that making temporary backup copies of software while repairing computers is not copyright infringement.
* Renting the original software. Software licenses often never restrict the usual right of a purchaser of a copyrighted work to let others borrow the work. In some jurisdictions the validity of such restrictions are disputed, but some require permission from the copyright holder to allow renting the software.
* Buying the original software. Licenses never say that the buyer does not buy the software but instead pays for the right to use the software. In the US, the first-sale doctrine, Softman v. Adobe [3] and Novell, Inc. v. CPU Distrib., Inc. ruled that software sales are purchases, not licenses, and resale, including unbundling, is lawful regardless of a contractual prohibition. The reasoning in Softman v. Adobe suggests that resale of student licensed versions, provided they are accurately described as such, is also not infringing.
* Bulletin Board Sharing/Internet Piracy- Albacea et al (2005) states that this infringement occurs when System Operators share (by electronic transfer) copyrighted materials on bulletin boards or the internet for users to download.
Existing and proposed laws
To many of these attempts at circumventing these end user license agreements (EULA) software vendors counter that if a user somehow obtains software without agreeing to or becoming bound by the end user license agreement, then they do not have any license to use the software at all.
In most third world countries, the term of a copyright never exceeds any useful life a program may have. The oldest legacy computer systems used today are still less than 40 years old. The copyright on them will not expire in the United States and Europe until about 2030. Changes in computer hardware, operating systems, network environments and user expectations usually make programs obsolete much faster than in 70 years (the current copyright length).
Under the proposed US Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), a controversial model law that has been adopted in Virginia and Maryland, software manufacturers are granted broad rights to shut down unauthorized software copiers without court intervention similar to some of the provisions found in Title II of the US DMCA, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, which allows copyright holders to demand that an online service provider (OSP) expeditiously block access to infringing materials. If the OSP complies, it is granted a safe harbor, providing it immunity from infringement claims. If it doesn't comply, it doesn't become liable, but may instead rely on the protection of the Communications Decency Act.
Title I of the US DMCA, the WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act has provisions that prevent persons from "circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work". Thus if a software manufacturer has some kind of software, dongle or password access device installed in the software any attempt to bypass such a copy prevention scheme may be actionable — though the US Copyright Office is currently reviewing anticircumvention rulemaking under DMCA — anticircumvention exemptions that have been in place under the DMCA include those in software designed to filter websites that are generally seen to be inefficient (child safety and public library website filtering software) and the circumvention of copy prevention mechanisms that have malfunctioned, have caused the software to become inoperable or which are no longer supported by their manufacturers.
Most commercially exploited proprietary software is developed in the United States, Japan and Europe, hence for those located in economically disadvantaged economies it can be prohibitively expensive to pay for all the end user licenses for those products rather than to purchase just one license and then copy the software without paying any additional licensing fees. Some critics in the developing countries of the world see this as an indirect technology transfer tax on their country preventing technological advancement and they use this type of argument when refusing to accept the copyright laws that are in force in most technologically advanced countries. This idea is often applied to patent laws as well.
Mere possession of unauthorized copy could be a ground for an offense depending on provisions of existing laws of a country.
The effects of copyright infringement on digital culture
Peer to peer (P2P) file sharing technologies have lowered the threshold of knowledge needed to acquire massive amounts of information. Large networks have been created which are dedicated to share knowledge, but these same networks can be used to distribute infringing material. Identifying infringing material isn't always trivial, since the users can modify the name of material being shared.
Software piracy is illegal due to the perceived economic loss it inflicts on the copyright owner. Even if it is assumed that only a portion of those infringing the author's copyright would ever have bought the software, the author will still suffer an economic loss as a result.
Software authors suggest that copyright infringement negatively affects the economy by decreasing the profits that allow for further development and growth within the software industry. The U.S. is the country most affected, as they provide about 80% of the world's software.[1] Software counterfeiting is claimed to be a large problem by some, resulting in a revenue loss of US $11-12 billion, China and Vietnam being the biggest offenders [2].
It has been suggested that counterfeit software will decline so much as to be eliminated in the future, but there are measures being taken and rules being put into place to work towards this goal. "In the United States, for example, the level of piracy has been reduced from 48% in 1989 to 25% in 2002."[4] Rise of quality in free alternative software also helps to lower the use of copied software worldwide. Illegally copying software is seen by some software producers as a "lesser evil" than actually buying or illegally copying a competitor's software. Jeff Raikes, a Microsoft executive, stated that "If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else." He also added [3] that "We understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the installed base of people who are using our products. What you hope to do over time is convert them to licensing the software."
Traian Băsescu, the president of Romania, stated that "piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania."[5]
Types of copyright infringement of software
According to the Business Software Alliance, copyright infringement of software takes several forms, which include the following.
"CD-R infringement" is the illegal copying of software using CD-R recording technology.
"Commercial Use of Non-commercial Software" is using educational or other commercial-use-restricted software in violation of the software license is a form of copyright infringement.
"Counterfeiting" is the duplication and sale of unauthorized copies of software in such a manner as to try to pass off the illegal copy as if it were a legitimate copy produced or authorized by the legal publisher. This is also often a violation of trademark laws.
"Hard-disk loading" occurs when an individual or company sells computers preloaded with illegal copies of software.
"Internet infringement" is the illegal uploading of software on to the Internet for anyone to copy.
"OEM infringement/unbundling" is known as OEM (original equipment manufacturer) software, is only legally sold with specified hardware. Whether misappropriating OEM software constitutes copyright infringement is subject to interpretation - a software publisher would have a difficult time prosecuting a person who has successfully purchased a genuine OEM copy but who, according to the license agreement, would have been supposed to purchase a retail copy. This is because a court must also consider laws relating to the commercial sales of goods such as the Uniform Commercial Code in the United States, which are more established in law and which can be interpreted to prohibit or nullify licensing terms that negate the established nature of a common sale transaction.
"Softlifting" is a neologism invented by anti-copyright infringement advocates, and is a term used to describe when a person purchases a single licensed copy of a software program and loads it on several machines, in violation of the terms of the license agreement.
"Unrestricted client access infringement" occurs when a copy of a software program is copied onto an organization's servers and the organization's network "clients" are allowed to freely access the software in violation of the terms of the license agreement.
Objections to the term "piracy"
Copyright Infringement has been called piracy since at least 1703. In the forward to Daniel Defoe's corrected edition of The True-Born Englishman, the author makes reference to "pirates and paragraph men" who distributed copies of his poem on the streets. [6] Some modern groups object to the term "software piracy", however, believing that such a term unfairly equates copyright violators with murderers and thieves. Evidence of this can be seen in the Free Software Foundation's list of confusing words [7]
Types of Software Piracy
Industrial piracy
An individual or group attempts duplication and distribution on a large scale for profit.
Corporate piracy
Unprotected contents are shared through networks such as peer-to-peer, LAN and Internet.
Reseller piracy
Involves computer hardware companies selling machines with illegal copies of software preloaded on their hard drive.
Home piracy
Includes everything from trading disks with friends to running a not-for-profit bulletin board for the purpose of illegal software distribution.
[edit] Impact on Workplaces
According to the journal published by Frederick Gallegos[citation needed], they found that 90% of business employees believed that their colleagues copied software illegally.[citation needed] They also found that over 50% of managers indicated that they had committed software piracy.[citation needed] Males copied software illegally more frequently than females and younger students were more likely to pirate software than older students.[citation needed]
References
1. International Journal of Research in Marketing, December 2003 (Volume 20, No. 4), "How many pirates should a software firm tolerate?"
2. Journal of Business, 2004, (Volume 77, No. 2),“Software Piracy: Market penetration in the Presence of Network Externalities”
3. Albacea, E., Payongayong M. T. and A. Pinpin (2005) Computer Ethics.UPOU Los Baños Philippines. p 78.
4. G.Frederick, (2007) Software Piracy: Some Facts, Figures, and Issues.
1. ^ BSA - 2007 Global Piracy Study
2. ^ http://w3.bsa.org/globalstudy//upload/2005-2006%20Global%20Piracy%20Study.pdf:U.S. - China Economic and Security Review Commission June 8, 2006. Hearings USCC.gov http://www.uscc.gov/hearings/20006hearings/written_testimonies/06_06_08wrts/06_06_7_8_chow_daniel.php
3. ^ Softman-V-Adobe Linux Journal
4. ^ Software and Information Industry Association page on Piracy
5. ^ Nathan Davis. Thanks for letting us pirate. 5 February 2007.
6. ^ Ken Hunt, Dont' Fear The Pirates,Toronto Globe & Mail, Nov. 27, 2007
7. ^ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html].
Phishing
Phishing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An example of a phishing e-mail, disguised as an official e-mail from a (fictional) bank. The sender is attempting to trick the recipient into revealing secure information by "confirming" it at the phisher's website.
An example of a phishing e-mail, disguised as an official e-mail from a (fictional) bank. The sender is attempting to trick the recipient into revealing secure information by "confirming" it at the phisher's website.
In computing, phishing is the process of attempting to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. PayPal, eBay and online banks are common targets. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging,[1] and often directs users to enter details at a website. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users.[2] Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.
A phishing technique was described in detail as early as 1987, while the first recorded use of the term "phishing" was made in 1996. The term is a variant of fishing,[3] probably influenced by phreaking,[4][5] and alludes to the use of increasingly sophisticated baits used in the hope of a "catch" of financial information and passwords.
History and current status of phishing
A phishing technique was described in detail as early as 1987, in a paper and presentation delivered to the International HP Users Group, Interex.[6] The first recorded mention of the term "phishing" is on the alt.online-service.America-online Usenet newsgroup on January 2, 1996,[7] although the term may have appeared earlier in the print edition of the hacker magazine 2600.[8]
Early phishing on AOL
Phishing on AOL was closely associated with the warez community that exchanged pirated software. Those who would later phish on AOL during the 1990s originally used fake, algorithmically generated credit card numbers to create accounts on AOL, which could last weeks or possibly months. After AOL brought in measures in late 1995 to prevent this, early AOL crackers resorted to phishing for legitimate accounts.[9]
A phisher might pose as an AOL staff member and send an instant message to a potential victim, asking him to reveal his password.[10] In order to lure the victim into giving up sensitive information the message might include imperatives like "verify your account" or "confirm billing information". Once the victim had revealed the password, the attacker could access and use the victim's account for criminal purposes, such as spamming. Both phishing and warezing on AOL generally required custom-written programs, such as AOHell. Phishing became so prevalent on AOL that they added a line on all instant messages stating: "no one working at AOL will ask for your password or billing information".
After 1997, AOL's policy enforcement with respect to phishing and warez became stricter and forced pirated software off AOL servers. AOL simultaneously developed a system to promptly deactivate accounts involved in phishing, often before the victims could respond. The shutting down of the warez scene on AOL caused most phishers to leave the service, and many phishers—often young teens—grew out of the habit.[11]
Transition from AOL to financial institutions
The capture of AOL account information may have led phishers to misuse credit card information, and to the realization that attacks against online payment systems were feasible. The first known direct attempt against a payment system affected E-gold in June 2001, which was followed up by a "post-911 id check" shortly after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.[12] Both were viewed at the time as failures, but can now be seen as early experiments towards more fruitful attacks against mainstream banks. By 2004, phishing was recognized as a fully industrialized part of the economy of crime: specializations emerged on a global scale that provided components for cash, which were assembled into finished attacks.[13][14]
Recent phishing attempts
More recent phishing attempts have targeted the customers of banks and online payment services. E-mails, supposedly from the Internal Revenue Service, have also been used to glean sensitive data from U.S. taxpayers.[15] While the first such examples were sent indiscriminately in the expectation that some would be received by customers of a given bank or service, recent research has shown that phishers may in principle be able to determine which banks potential victims use, and target bogus e-mails accordingly.[16] Targeted versions of phishing have been termed spear phishing.[17] Several recent phishing attacks have been directed specifically at senior executives and other high profile targets within businesses, and the term whaling has been coined for these kinds of attacks.[18]
Social networking sites are also a target of phishing, since the personal details in such sites can be used in identity theft;[19] in late 2006 a computer worm took over pages on MySpace and altered links to direct surfers to websites designed to steal login details.[20] Experiments show a success rate of over 70% for phishing attacks on social networks.[21]
Almost half of phishing thefts in 2006 were committed by groups operating through the Russian Business Network based in St. Petersburg.[22]
Phishing techniques
Link manipulation
Most methods of phishing use some form of technical deception designed to make a link in an e-mail (and the spoofed website it leads to) appear to belong to the spoofed organization. Misspelled URLs or the use of subdomains are common tricks used by phishers, such as this example URL, http://www.yourbank.example.com/. Another common trick is to make the anchor text for a link appear to be valid, when the link actually goes to the phishers' site, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine.
An old method of spoofing used links containing the '@' symbol, originally intended as a way to include a username and password (contrary to the standard).[23] For example, the link http://www.google.com@members.tripod.com/ might deceive a casual observer into believing that it will open a page on www.google.com, whereas it actually directs the browser to a page on members.tripod.com, using a username of www.google.com: the page opens normally, regardless of the username supplied. Such URLs were disabled in Internet Explorer,[24] while Mozilla[25] and Opera present a warning message and give the option of continuing to the site or cancelling.
A further problem with URLs has been found in the handling of Internationalized domain names (IDN) in web browsers, that might allow visually identical web addresses to lead to different, possibly malicious, websites. Despite the publicity surrounding the flaw, known as IDN spoofing[26] or a homograph attack,[27] no known phishing attacks have yet taken advantage of it.[citation needed] Phishers have taken advantage of a similar risk, using open URL redirectors on the websites of trusted organizations to disguise malicious URLs with a trusted domain.[28][29][30]
Filter evasion
Phishers have used images instead of text to make it harder for anti-phishing filters to detect text commonly used in phishing e-mails.[31]
Website forgery
Once the victim visits the website the deception is not over.[32] Some phishing scams use JavaScript commands in order to alter the address bar. This is done either by placing a picture of a legitimate URL over the address bar, or by closing the original address bar and opening a new one with the legitimate URL.[33]
An attacker can even use flaws in a trusted website's own scripts against the victim.[34] These types of attacks (known as cross-site scripting) are particularly problematic, because they direct the user to sign in at their bank or service's own web page, where everything from the web address to the security certificates appears correct. In reality, the link to the website is crafted to carry out the attack, although it is very difficult to spot without specialist knowledge. Just such a flaw was used in 2006 against PayPal.[35]
A Universal Man-in-the-middle Phishing Kit, discovered by RSA Security, provides a simple-to-use interface that allows a phisher to convincingly reproduce websites and capture log-in details entered at the fake site.[36]
To avoid anti-phishing techniques that scan websites for phishing-related text, phishers have begun to use Flash-based websites. These look much like the real website, but hide the text in a multimedia object.[37]
Phone phishing
Not all phishing attacks require a fake website. Messages that claimed to be from a bank told users to dial a phone number regarding problems with their bank accounts.[38] Once the phone number (owned by the phisher, and provided by a Voice over IP service) was dialed, prompts told users to enter their account numbers and PIN. Vishing (voice phishing) sometimes uses fake caller-ID data to give the appearance that calls come from a trusted organization.[39]
Phishing examples
PayPal phishing example
In an example PayPal phish (right), spelling mistakes in the e-mail and the presence of an IP address in the link (visible in the tooltip under the yellow box) are both clues that this is a phishing attempt. Another giveaway is the lack of a personal greeting, although the presence of personal details would not be a guarantee of legitimacy. Other signs that the message is a fraud are misspellings of simple words and the threat of consequences such as account suspension if the recipient fails to comply with the message's requests.
Damage caused by phishing
The damage caused by phishing ranges from denial of access to e-mail to substantial financial loss. This style of identity theft is becoming more popular, because of the readiness with which unsuspecting people often divulge personal information to phishers, including credit card numbers, social security numbers, and mothers' maiden names. There are also fears that identity thieves can add such information to the knowledge they gain simply by accessing public records.[40] Once this information is acquired, the phishers may use a person's details to create fake accounts in a victim's name. They can then ruin the victims' credit, or even deny the victims access to their own accounts.[41]
It is estimated that between May 2004 and May 2005, approximately 1.2 million computer users in the United States suffered losses caused by phishing, totaling approximately US$929 million. United States businesses lose an estimated US$2 billion per year as their clients become victims.[42] In 2007 phishing attacks escalated. 3.6 million adults lost US $ 3.2 billion in the 12 months ending in August 2007.[43] In the United Kingdom losses from web banking fraud—mostly from phishing—almost doubled to £23.2m in 2005, from £12.2m in 2004,[44] while 1 in 20 computer users claimed to have lost out to phishing in 2005.[45]
The stance adopted by the UK banking body APACS is that "customers must also take sensible precautions ... so that they are not vulnerable to the criminal."[46] Similarly, when the first spate of phishing attacks hit the Irish Republic's banking sector in September 2006, the Bank of Ireland initially refused to cover losses suffered by its customers (and it still insists that its policy is not to do so[47]), although losses to the tune of €11300 were made good.[48]
Anti-phishing
There are several different techniques to combat phishing, including legislation and technology created specifically to protect against phishing.
Social responses
One strategy for combating phishing is to train people to recognize phishing attempts, and to deal with them. Education can be effective, especially where training provides direct feedback.[49] One newer phishing tactic, which uses phishing e-mails targeted at a specific company, known as spear phishing, has been harnessed to train individuals at various locations, including West Point Military Academy. In a June 2004 experiment with spear phishing, 80% of 500 West Point cadets who were sent a fake e-mail were tricked into revealing personal information.[50]
People can take steps to avoid phishing attempts by slightly modifying their browsing habits. When contacted about an account needing to be "verified" (or any other topic used by phishers), it is a sensible precaution to contact the company from which the e-mail apparently originates to check that the e-mail is legitimate. Alternatively, the address that the individual knows is the company's genuine website can be typed into the address bar of the browser, rather than trusting any hyperlinks in the suspected phishing message.[51]
Nearly all legitimate e-mail messages from companies to their customers contain an item of information that is not readily available to phishers. Some companies, for example PayPal, always address their customers by their username in e-mails, so if an e-mail addresses the recipient in a generic fashion ("Dear PayPal customer") it is likely to be an attempt at phishing.[52] E-mails from banks and credit card companies often include partial account numbers. However, recent research[53] has shown that the public do not typically distinguish between the first few digits and the last few digits of an account number—a significant problem since the first few digits are often the same for all clients of a financial institution. People can be trained to have their suspicion aroused if the message does not contain any specific personal information. Phishing attempts in early 2006, however, used personalized information, which makes it unsafe to assume that the presence of personal information alone guarantees that a message is legitimate.[54] Furthermore, another recent study concluded in part that the presence of personal information does not significantly affect the success rate of phishing attacks,[55] which suggests that most people do not pay attention to such details.
The Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry and law enforcement association, has suggested that conventional phishing techniques could become obsolete in the future as people are increasingly aware of the social engineering techniques used by phishers.[56] They predict that pharming and other uses of malware will become more common tools for stealing information.
Technical responses
Anti-phishing measures have been implemented as features embedded in browsers, as extensions or toolbars for browsers, and as part of website login procedures. The following are some of the main approaches to the problem.
Helping to identify legitimate sites
Since phishing is based on impersonation, preventing it depends on some reliable way to determine a website's real identity. For example, some anti-phishing toolbars display the domain name for the visited website.[57] The petname extension for Firefox lets users type in their own labels for websites, so they can later recognize when they have returned to the site. If the site is suspect, then the software may either warn the user or block the site outright.
Browsers alerting users to fraudulent websites
Another popular approach to fighting phishing is to maintain a list of known phishing sites and to check websites against the list. Microsoft's IE7 browser, Mozilla Firefox 2.0, and Opera all contain this type of anti-phishing measure.[58][59][60] Firefox 2 uses Google anti-phishing software. Opera 9.1 uses live blacklists from PhishTank and GeoTrust, as well as live whitelists from GeoTrust. Some implementations of this approach send the visited URLs to a central service to be checked, which has raised concerns about privacy.[61] According to a report by Mozilla in late 2006, Firefox 2 was found to be more effective than Internet Explorer 7 at detecting fraudulent sites in a study by an independent software testing company.[62]
An approach introduced in mid-2006 involves switching to a special DNS service that filters out known phishing domains: this will work with any browser,[63] and is similar in principle to using a hosts file to block web adverts.
To mitigate the problem of phishing sites impersonating a victim site by embedding its images (such as logos), several site owners have altered the images to send a message to the visitor that a site may be fraudulent. The image may be moved to a new filename and the original permanently replaced, or a server can detect that the image was not requested as part of normal browsing, and instead send a warning image.[64][65]
Augmenting password logins
The Bank of America's website[66][67] is one of several that ask users to select a personal image, and display this user-selected image with any forms that request a password. Users of the bank's online services are instructed to enter a password only when they see the image they selected. However, a recent study suggests few users refrain from entering their password when images are absent.[68][69] In addition, this feature (like other forms of two-factor authentication) is susceptible to other attacks, such as those suffered by Scandinavian bank Nordea in late 2005,[70] and Citibank in 2006.[71]
Security skins[72][73] are a related technique that involves overlaying a user-selected image onto the login form as a visual cue that the form is legitimate. Unlike the website-based image schemes, however, the image itself is shared only between the user and the browser, and not between the user and the website. The scheme also relies on a mutual authentication protocol, which makes it less vulnerable to attacks that affect user-only authentication schemes.
A method to prevent simple phishing of transaction numbers (TANs) is to associate each TAN with a "lock number"[citation needed]. The bank's server sends the lock number as a challenge, and the user provides the corresponding TAN as the response. The server selects the key-lock pair randomly from the list to prevent acquiring two consecutive TANs. Lock numbers are not sequential, so that phishers can only guess correct lock numbers.
Eliminating phishing mail
Specialized spam filters can reduce the number of phishing e-mails that reach their addressees' inboxes. These approaches rely on machine learning and natural language processing approaches to classify phishing e-mails.[74][75]
Monitoring and takedown
Several companies offer banks and other organizations likely to suffer from phishing scams round-the-clock services to monitor, analyze and assist in shutting down phishing websites.[76] Individuals can contribute by reporting phishing to both volunteer and industry groups,[77] such as PhishTank.[78]
Legal responses
Globe icon
On January 26, 2004, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed the first lawsuit against a suspected phisher. The defendant, a Californian teenager, allegedly created a webpage designed to look like the America Online website, and used it to steal credit card information.[79] Other countries have followed this lead by tracing and arresting phishers. A phishing kingpin, Valdir Paulo de Almeida, was arrested in Brazil for leading one of the largest phishing crime rings, which in two years stole between US$18 million and US$37 million.[80] UK authorities jailed two men in June 2005 for their role in a phishing scam,[81] in a case connected to the U.S. Secret Service Operation Firewall, which targeted notorious "carder" websites.[82] In 2006 eight people were arrested by Japanese police on suspicion of phishing fraud by creating bogus Yahoo Japan Web sites, netting themselves 100 million yen ($870,000 USD).[83] The arrests continued in 2006 with the FBI Operation Cardkeeper detaining a gang of sixteen in the U.S. and Europe.[84]
In the United States, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced the Anti-Phishing Act of 2005 on March 1, 2005. The federal anti-phishing bill proposes that criminals who create fake web sites and send bogus e-mails in order to defraud consumers could be fined up to $250,000 and be jailed for up to five years.[85] The UK strengthened its legal arsenal against phishing with the Fraud Act 2006,[86] which introduces a general offence of fraud that can carry up to a ten year prison sentence, and prohibits the development or possession of phishing kits with intent to commit fraud.[87]
Companies have also joined the effort to crack down on phishing. On March 31, 2005, Microsoft filed 117 federal lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The lawsuits accuse "John Doe" defendants of obtaining passwords and confidential information. March 2005 also saw a partnership between Microsoft and the Australian government teaching law enforcement officials how to combat various cyber crimes, including phishing.[88] Microsoft announced a planned further 100 lawsuits outside the U.S. in March 2006,[89] followed by the commencement, as of November 2006, of 129 lawsuits mixing criminal and civil actions.[90] AOL reinforced its efforts against phishing[91] in early 2006 with three lawsuits[92] seeking a total of $18 million USD under the 2005 amendments to the Virginia Computer Crimes Act,[93][94] and Earthlink has joined in by helping to identify six men subsequently charged with phishing fraud in Connecticut.[95]
In January 2007, Jeffrey Brett Goodin of California became the first defendant convicted by a jury under the provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. He was found guilty of sending thousands of e-mails to America Online users, while posing as AOL's billing department, which prompted customers to submit personal and credit card information. Facing a possible 101 years in prison for the CAN-SPAM violation and ten other counts including wire fraud, the unauthorized use of credit cards, and the misuse of AOL's trademark, he was sentenced to serve 70 months. Goodin had been in custody since failing to appear for an earlier court hearing and began serving his prison term immediately.[96][97][98][99]
References
1. ^ Tan, Koon. Phishing and Spamming via IM (SPIM). Internet Storm Center. Retrieved on December 5, 2006.
2. ^ Microsoft Corporation. What is social engineering?. Retrieved on August 22, 2007.
3. ^ Spam Slayer: Do You Speak Spam?. PCWorld.com. Retrieved on August 16, 2006.
4. ^ "phishing, n." OED Online, March 2006, Oxford University Press.. Oxford English Dictionary Online. Retrieved on August 9, 2006.
5. ^ Phishing. Language Log, September 22, 2004. Retrieved on August 9, 2006.
6. ^ Felix, Jerry and Hauck, Chris (September 1987). "System Security: A Hacker's Perspective". 1987 Interex Proceedings 1: 6.
7. ^ "phish, v." OED Online, March 2006, Oxford University Press.. Oxford English Dictionary Online. Retrieved on August 9, 2006.
8. ^ Ollmann, Gunter. The Phishing Guide: Understanding and Preventing Phishing Attacks. Technical Info. Retrieved on July 10, 2006.
9. ^ Phishing. Word Spy. Retrieved on September 28, 2006.
10. ^ Stutz, Michael. "AOL: A Cracker's Paradise?", Wired News, January 29, 1998.
11. ^ History of AOL Warez.
12. ^ GP4.3 - Growth and Fraud - Case #3 - Phishing. Financial Cryptography (December 30, 2005).
13. ^ In 2005, Organized Crime Will Back Phishers. IT Management (December 23, 2004).
14. ^ The economy of phishing: A survey of the operations of the phishing market. First Monday (September 2005).
15. ^ Suspicious e-Mails and Identity Theft. Internal Revenue Service. Retrieved on July 5, 2006.
16. ^ "Phishing for Clues", Indiana University Bloomington, September 15, 2005.
17. ^ What is spear phishing?. Microsoft Security At Home. Retrieved on July 10, 2006.
18. ^ Goodin, Dan. "Fake subpoenas harpoon 2,100 corporate fat cats", The Register, April 17, 2008.
19. ^ Kirk, Jeremy. "Phishing Scam Takes Aim at MySpace.com", IDG Network, June 2, 2006.
20. ^ Malicious Website / Malicious Code: MySpace XSS QuickTime Worm. Websense Security Labs. Retrieved on December 5, 2006.
21. ^ Tom Jagatic and Nathan Johnson and Markus Jakobsson and Filippo Menczer. Social Phishing. To appear in the CACM (October 2007). Retrieved on June 3, 2006.
22. ^ Shadowy Russian Firm Seen as Conduit for Cybercrime, by Brian Krebs, Washington post, October 13, 2007
23. ^ Berners-Lee, Tim. Uniform Resource Locators (URL). IETF Network Working Group. Retrieved on January 28, 2006.
24. ^ Microsoft. A security update is available that modifies the default behavior of Internet Explorer for handling user information in HTTP and in HTTPS URLs. Microsoft Knowledgebase. Retrieved on August 28, 2005.
25. ^ Fisher, Darin. Warn when HTTP URL auth information isn't necessary or when it's provided. Bugzilla. Retrieved on August 28, 2005.
26. ^ Johanson, Eric. The State of Homograph Attacks Rev1.1. The Shmoo Group. Retrieved on August 11, 2005.
27. ^ Evgeniy Gabrilovich and Alex Gontmakher (February 2002). "The Homograph Attack". Communications of the ACM 45(2): 128.
28. ^ Leyden, John. "Barclays scripting SNAFU exploited by phishers", The Register, August 15, 2006.
29. ^ Levine, Jason. Goin' phishing with eBay. Q Daily News. Retrieved on December 14, 2006.
30. ^ Leyden, John. "Cybercrooks lurk in shadows of big-name websites", The Register, December 12, 2007.
31. ^ Mutton, Paul. Fraudsters seek to make phishing sites undetectable by content filters. Netcraft. Retrieved on July 10, 2006.
32. ^ Mutton, Paul. Phishing Web Site Methods. FraudWatch International. Retrieved on December 14, 2006.
33. ^ "Phishing con hijacks browser bar", BBC News, April 8, 2004.
34. ^ Krebs, Brian. Flaws in Financial Sites Aid Scammers. Security Fix. Retrieved on June 28, 2006.
35. ^ Mutton, Paul. PayPal Security Flaw allows Identity Theft. Netcraft. Retrieved on June 19, 2006.
36. ^ Hoffman, Patrick. "RSA Catches Financial Phishing Kit", eWeek, January 10, 2007.
37. ^ Miller, Rich. Phishing Attacks Continue to Grow in Sophistication. Netcraft. Retrieved on December 19, 2007.
38. ^ Gonsalves, Antone. "Phishers Snare Victims With VoIP", Techweb, April 25, 2006.
39. ^ "Identity thieves take advantage of VoIP", Silicon.com, March 21, 2005.
40. ^ Virgil Griffith and Markus Jakobsson. Messin' with Texas, Deriving Mother's Maiden Names Using Public Records. ACNS '05. Retrieved on July 7, 2006.
41. ^ Krebs, Brian. "Phishing Schemes Scar Victims", washingtonpost.com, November 18, 2004.
42. ^ Kerstein, Paul. "How Can We Stop Phishing and Pharming Scams?", CSO, July 19, 2005.
43. ^ McCall, Tom. "Gartner Survey Shows Phishing Attacks Escalated in 2007; More than $3 Billion Lost to These Attacks", Gartner, December 17, 2007.
44. ^ "UK phishing fraud losses double", Finextra, March 7, 2006.
45. ^ Richardson, Tim. "Brits fall prey to phishing", The Register, May 3, 2005.
46. ^ Miller, Rich. Bank, Customers Spar Over Phishing Losses. Netcraft. Retrieved on December 14, 2006.
47. ^ Latest News
48. ^ Bank of Ireland agrees to phishing refunds – vnunet.com
49. ^ Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Yong Woo Rhee, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Cranor, Jason Hong and Elizabeth Nunge (November 2006). Protecting People from Phishing: The Design and Evaluation of an Embedded Training Email System. Technical Report CMU-CyLab-06-017, CyLab, Carnegie Mellon University.. Retrieved on November 14, 2006.
50. ^ Bank, David. "'Spear Phishing' Tests Educate People About Online Scams", The Wall Street Journal, August 17, 2005.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An example of a phishing e-mail, disguised as an official e-mail from a (fictional) bank. The sender is attempting to trick the recipient into revealing secure information by "confirming" it at the phisher's website.
An example of a phishing e-mail, disguised as an official e-mail from a (fictional) bank. The sender is attempting to trick the recipient into revealing secure information by "confirming" it at the phisher's website.
In computing, phishing is the process of attempting to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. PayPal, eBay and online banks are common targets. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging,[1] and often directs users to enter details at a website. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users.[2] Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.
A phishing technique was described in detail as early as 1987, while the first recorded use of the term "phishing" was made in 1996. The term is a variant of fishing,[3] probably influenced by phreaking,[4][5] and alludes to the use of increasingly sophisticated baits used in the hope of a "catch" of financial information and passwords.
History and current status of phishing
A phishing technique was described in detail as early as 1987, in a paper and presentation delivered to the International HP Users Group, Interex.[6] The first recorded mention of the term "phishing" is on the alt.online-service.America-online Usenet newsgroup on January 2, 1996,[7] although the term may have appeared earlier in the print edition of the hacker magazine 2600.[8]
Early phishing on AOL
Phishing on AOL was closely associated with the warez community that exchanged pirated software. Those who would later phish on AOL during the 1990s originally used fake, algorithmically generated credit card numbers to create accounts on AOL, which could last weeks or possibly months. After AOL brought in measures in late 1995 to prevent this, early AOL crackers resorted to phishing for legitimate accounts.[9]
A phisher might pose as an AOL staff member and send an instant message to a potential victim, asking him to reveal his password.[10] In order to lure the victim into giving up sensitive information the message might include imperatives like "verify your account" or "confirm billing information". Once the victim had revealed the password, the attacker could access and use the victim's account for criminal purposes, such as spamming. Both phishing and warezing on AOL generally required custom-written programs, such as AOHell. Phishing became so prevalent on AOL that they added a line on all instant messages stating: "no one working at AOL will ask for your password or billing information".
After 1997, AOL's policy enforcement with respect to phishing and warez became stricter and forced pirated software off AOL servers. AOL simultaneously developed a system to promptly deactivate accounts involved in phishing, often before the victims could respond. The shutting down of the warez scene on AOL caused most phishers to leave the service, and many phishers—often young teens—grew out of the habit.[11]
Transition from AOL to financial institutions
The capture of AOL account information may have led phishers to misuse credit card information, and to the realization that attacks against online payment systems were feasible. The first known direct attempt against a payment system affected E-gold in June 2001, which was followed up by a "post-911 id check" shortly after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.[12] Both were viewed at the time as failures, but can now be seen as early experiments towards more fruitful attacks against mainstream banks. By 2004, phishing was recognized as a fully industrialized part of the economy of crime: specializations emerged on a global scale that provided components for cash, which were assembled into finished attacks.[13][14]
Recent phishing attempts
More recent phishing attempts have targeted the customers of banks and online payment services. E-mails, supposedly from the Internal Revenue Service, have also been used to glean sensitive data from U.S. taxpayers.[15] While the first such examples were sent indiscriminately in the expectation that some would be received by customers of a given bank or service, recent research has shown that phishers may in principle be able to determine which banks potential victims use, and target bogus e-mails accordingly.[16] Targeted versions of phishing have been termed spear phishing.[17] Several recent phishing attacks have been directed specifically at senior executives and other high profile targets within businesses, and the term whaling has been coined for these kinds of attacks.[18]
Social networking sites are also a target of phishing, since the personal details in such sites can be used in identity theft;[19] in late 2006 a computer worm took over pages on MySpace and altered links to direct surfers to websites designed to steal login details.[20] Experiments show a success rate of over 70% for phishing attacks on social networks.[21]
Almost half of phishing thefts in 2006 were committed by groups operating through the Russian Business Network based in St. Petersburg.[22]
Phishing techniques
Link manipulation
Most methods of phishing use some form of technical deception designed to make a link in an e-mail (and the spoofed website it leads to) appear to belong to the spoofed organization. Misspelled URLs or the use of subdomains are common tricks used by phishers, such as this example URL, http://www.yourbank.example.com/. Another common trick is to make the anchor text for a link appear to be valid, when the link actually goes to the phishers' site, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine.
An old method of spoofing used links containing the '@' symbol, originally intended as a way to include a username and password (contrary to the standard).[23] For example, the link http://www.google.com@members.tripod.com/ might deceive a casual observer into believing that it will open a page on www.google.com, whereas it actually directs the browser to a page on members.tripod.com, using a username of www.google.com: the page opens normally, regardless of the username supplied. Such URLs were disabled in Internet Explorer,[24] while Mozilla[25] and Opera present a warning message and give the option of continuing to the site or cancelling.
A further problem with URLs has been found in the handling of Internationalized domain names (IDN) in web browsers, that might allow visually identical web addresses to lead to different, possibly malicious, websites. Despite the publicity surrounding the flaw, known as IDN spoofing[26] or a homograph attack,[27] no known phishing attacks have yet taken advantage of it.[citation needed] Phishers have taken advantage of a similar risk, using open URL redirectors on the websites of trusted organizations to disguise malicious URLs with a trusted domain.[28][29][30]
Filter evasion
Phishers have used images instead of text to make it harder for anti-phishing filters to detect text commonly used in phishing e-mails.[31]
Website forgery
Once the victim visits the website the deception is not over.[32] Some phishing scams use JavaScript commands in order to alter the address bar. This is done either by placing a picture of a legitimate URL over the address bar, or by closing the original address bar and opening a new one with the legitimate URL.[33]
An attacker can even use flaws in a trusted website's own scripts against the victim.[34] These types of attacks (known as cross-site scripting) are particularly problematic, because they direct the user to sign in at their bank or service's own web page, where everything from the web address to the security certificates appears correct. In reality, the link to the website is crafted to carry out the attack, although it is very difficult to spot without specialist knowledge. Just such a flaw was used in 2006 against PayPal.[35]
A Universal Man-in-the-middle Phishing Kit, discovered by RSA Security, provides a simple-to-use interface that allows a phisher to convincingly reproduce websites and capture log-in details entered at the fake site.[36]
To avoid anti-phishing techniques that scan websites for phishing-related text, phishers have begun to use Flash-based websites. These look much like the real website, but hide the text in a multimedia object.[37]
Phone phishing
Not all phishing attacks require a fake website. Messages that claimed to be from a bank told users to dial a phone number regarding problems with their bank accounts.[38] Once the phone number (owned by the phisher, and provided by a Voice over IP service) was dialed, prompts told users to enter their account numbers and PIN. Vishing (voice phishing) sometimes uses fake caller-ID data to give the appearance that calls come from a trusted organization.[39]
Phishing examples
PayPal phishing example
In an example PayPal phish (right), spelling mistakes in the e-mail and the presence of an IP address in the link (visible in the tooltip under the yellow box) are both clues that this is a phishing attempt. Another giveaway is the lack of a personal greeting, although the presence of personal details would not be a guarantee of legitimacy. Other signs that the message is a fraud are misspellings of simple words and the threat of consequences such as account suspension if the recipient fails to comply with the message's requests.
Damage caused by phishing
The damage caused by phishing ranges from denial of access to e-mail to substantial financial loss. This style of identity theft is becoming more popular, because of the readiness with which unsuspecting people often divulge personal information to phishers, including credit card numbers, social security numbers, and mothers' maiden names. There are also fears that identity thieves can add such information to the knowledge they gain simply by accessing public records.[40] Once this information is acquired, the phishers may use a person's details to create fake accounts in a victim's name. They can then ruin the victims' credit, or even deny the victims access to their own accounts.[41]
It is estimated that between May 2004 and May 2005, approximately 1.2 million computer users in the United States suffered losses caused by phishing, totaling approximately US$929 million. United States businesses lose an estimated US$2 billion per year as their clients become victims.[42] In 2007 phishing attacks escalated. 3.6 million adults lost US $ 3.2 billion in the 12 months ending in August 2007.[43] In the United Kingdom losses from web banking fraud—mostly from phishing—almost doubled to £23.2m in 2005, from £12.2m in 2004,[44] while 1 in 20 computer users claimed to have lost out to phishing in 2005.[45]
The stance adopted by the UK banking body APACS is that "customers must also take sensible precautions ... so that they are not vulnerable to the criminal."[46] Similarly, when the first spate of phishing attacks hit the Irish Republic's banking sector in September 2006, the Bank of Ireland initially refused to cover losses suffered by its customers (and it still insists that its policy is not to do so[47]), although losses to the tune of €11300 were made good.[48]
Anti-phishing
There are several different techniques to combat phishing, including legislation and technology created specifically to protect against phishing.
Social responses
One strategy for combating phishing is to train people to recognize phishing attempts, and to deal with them. Education can be effective, especially where training provides direct feedback.[49] One newer phishing tactic, which uses phishing e-mails targeted at a specific company, known as spear phishing, has been harnessed to train individuals at various locations, including West Point Military Academy. In a June 2004 experiment with spear phishing, 80% of 500 West Point cadets who were sent a fake e-mail were tricked into revealing personal information.[50]
People can take steps to avoid phishing attempts by slightly modifying their browsing habits. When contacted about an account needing to be "verified" (or any other topic used by phishers), it is a sensible precaution to contact the company from which the e-mail apparently originates to check that the e-mail is legitimate. Alternatively, the address that the individual knows is the company's genuine website can be typed into the address bar of the browser, rather than trusting any hyperlinks in the suspected phishing message.[51]
Nearly all legitimate e-mail messages from companies to their customers contain an item of information that is not readily available to phishers. Some companies, for example PayPal, always address their customers by their username in e-mails, so if an e-mail addresses the recipient in a generic fashion ("Dear PayPal customer") it is likely to be an attempt at phishing.[52] E-mails from banks and credit card companies often include partial account numbers. However, recent research[53] has shown that the public do not typically distinguish between the first few digits and the last few digits of an account number—a significant problem since the first few digits are often the same for all clients of a financial institution. People can be trained to have their suspicion aroused if the message does not contain any specific personal information. Phishing attempts in early 2006, however, used personalized information, which makes it unsafe to assume that the presence of personal information alone guarantees that a message is legitimate.[54] Furthermore, another recent study concluded in part that the presence of personal information does not significantly affect the success rate of phishing attacks,[55] which suggests that most people do not pay attention to such details.
The Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry and law enforcement association, has suggested that conventional phishing techniques could become obsolete in the future as people are increasingly aware of the social engineering techniques used by phishers.[56] They predict that pharming and other uses of malware will become more common tools for stealing information.
Technical responses
Anti-phishing measures have been implemented as features embedded in browsers, as extensions or toolbars for browsers, and as part of website login procedures. The following are some of the main approaches to the problem.
Helping to identify legitimate sites
Since phishing is based on impersonation, preventing it depends on some reliable way to determine a website's real identity. For example, some anti-phishing toolbars display the domain name for the visited website.[57] The petname extension for Firefox lets users type in their own labels for websites, so they can later recognize when they have returned to the site. If the site is suspect, then the software may either warn the user or block the site outright.
Browsers alerting users to fraudulent websites
Another popular approach to fighting phishing is to maintain a list of known phishing sites and to check websites against the list. Microsoft's IE7 browser, Mozilla Firefox 2.0, and Opera all contain this type of anti-phishing measure.[58][59][60] Firefox 2 uses Google anti-phishing software. Opera 9.1 uses live blacklists from PhishTank and GeoTrust, as well as live whitelists from GeoTrust. Some implementations of this approach send the visited URLs to a central service to be checked, which has raised concerns about privacy.[61] According to a report by Mozilla in late 2006, Firefox 2 was found to be more effective than Internet Explorer 7 at detecting fraudulent sites in a study by an independent software testing company.[62]
An approach introduced in mid-2006 involves switching to a special DNS service that filters out known phishing domains: this will work with any browser,[63] and is similar in principle to using a hosts file to block web adverts.
To mitigate the problem of phishing sites impersonating a victim site by embedding its images (such as logos), several site owners have altered the images to send a message to the visitor that a site may be fraudulent. The image may be moved to a new filename and the original permanently replaced, or a server can detect that the image was not requested as part of normal browsing, and instead send a warning image.[64][65]
Augmenting password logins
The Bank of America's website[66][67] is one of several that ask users to select a personal image, and display this user-selected image with any forms that request a password. Users of the bank's online services are instructed to enter a password only when they see the image they selected. However, a recent study suggests few users refrain from entering their password when images are absent.[68][69] In addition, this feature (like other forms of two-factor authentication) is susceptible to other attacks, such as those suffered by Scandinavian bank Nordea in late 2005,[70] and Citibank in 2006.[71]
Security skins[72][73] are a related technique that involves overlaying a user-selected image onto the login form as a visual cue that the form is legitimate. Unlike the website-based image schemes, however, the image itself is shared only between the user and the browser, and not between the user and the website. The scheme also relies on a mutual authentication protocol, which makes it less vulnerable to attacks that affect user-only authentication schemes.
A method to prevent simple phishing of transaction numbers (TANs) is to associate each TAN with a "lock number"[citation needed]. The bank's server sends the lock number as a challenge, and the user provides the corresponding TAN as the response. The server selects the key-lock pair randomly from the list to prevent acquiring two consecutive TANs. Lock numbers are not sequential, so that phishers can only guess correct lock numbers.
Eliminating phishing mail
Specialized spam filters can reduce the number of phishing e-mails that reach their addressees' inboxes. These approaches rely on machine learning and natural language processing approaches to classify phishing e-mails.[74][75]
Monitoring and takedown
Several companies offer banks and other organizations likely to suffer from phishing scams round-the-clock services to monitor, analyze and assist in shutting down phishing websites.[76] Individuals can contribute by reporting phishing to both volunteer and industry groups,[77] such as PhishTank.[78]
Legal responses
Globe icon
On January 26, 2004, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed the first lawsuit against a suspected phisher. The defendant, a Californian teenager, allegedly created a webpage designed to look like the America Online website, and used it to steal credit card information.[79] Other countries have followed this lead by tracing and arresting phishers. A phishing kingpin, Valdir Paulo de Almeida, was arrested in Brazil for leading one of the largest phishing crime rings, which in two years stole between US$18 million and US$37 million.[80] UK authorities jailed two men in June 2005 for their role in a phishing scam,[81] in a case connected to the U.S. Secret Service Operation Firewall, which targeted notorious "carder" websites.[82] In 2006 eight people were arrested by Japanese police on suspicion of phishing fraud by creating bogus Yahoo Japan Web sites, netting themselves 100 million yen ($870,000 USD).[83] The arrests continued in 2006 with the FBI Operation Cardkeeper detaining a gang of sixteen in the U.S. and Europe.[84]
In the United States, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced the Anti-Phishing Act of 2005 on March 1, 2005. The federal anti-phishing bill proposes that criminals who create fake web sites and send bogus e-mails in order to defraud consumers could be fined up to $250,000 and be jailed for up to five years.[85] The UK strengthened its legal arsenal against phishing with the Fraud Act 2006,[86] which introduces a general offence of fraud that can carry up to a ten year prison sentence, and prohibits the development or possession of phishing kits with intent to commit fraud.[87]
Companies have also joined the effort to crack down on phishing. On March 31, 2005, Microsoft filed 117 federal lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The lawsuits accuse "John Doe" defendants of obtaining passwords and confidential information. March 2005 also saw a partnership between Microsoft and the Australian government teaching law enforcement officials how to combat various cyber crimes, including phishing.[88] Microsoft announced a planned further 100 lawsuits outside the U.S. in March 2006,[89] followed by the commencement, as of November 2006, of 129 lawsuits mixing criminal and civil actions.[90] AOL reinforced its efforts against phishing[91] in early 2006 with three lawsuits[92] seeking a total of $18 million USD under the 2005 amendments to the Virginia Computer Crimes Act,[93][94] and Earthlink has joined in by helping to identify six men subsequently charged with phishing fraud in Connecticut.[95]
In January 2007, Jeffrey Brett Goodin of California became the first defendant convicted by a jury under the provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. He was found guilty of sending thousands of e-mails to America Online users, while posing as AOL's billing department, which prompted customers to submit personal and credit card information. Facing a possible 101 years in prison for the CAN-SPAM violation and ten other counts including wire fraud, the unauthorized use of credit cards, and the misuse of AOL's trademark, he was sentenced to serve 70 months. Goodin had been in custody since failing to appear for an earlier court hearing and began serving his prison term immediately.[96][97][98][99]
References
1. ^ Tan, Koon. Phishing and Spamming via IM (SPIM). Internet Storm Center. Retrieved on December 5, 2006.
2. ^ Microsoft Corporation. What is social engineering?. Retrieved on August 22, 2007.
3. ^ Spam Slayer: Do You Speak Spam?. PCWorld.com. Retrieved on August 16, 2006.
4. ^ "phishing, n." OED Online, March 2006, Oxford University Press.. Oxford English Dictionary Online. Retrieved on August 9, 2006.
5. ^ Phishing. Language Log, September 22, 2004. Retrieved on August 9, 2006.
6. ^ Felix, Jerry and Hauck, Chris (September 1987). "System Security: A Hacker's Perspective". 1987 Interex Proceedings 1: 6.
7. ^ "phish, v." OED Online, March 2006, Oxford University Press.. Oxford English Dictionary Online. Retrieved on August 9, 2006.
8. ^ Ollmann, Gunter. The Phishing Guide: Understanding and Preventing Phishing Attacks. Technical Info. Retrieved on July 10, 2006.
9. ^ Phishing. Word Spy. Retrieved on September 28, 2006.
10. ^ Stutz, Michael. "AOL: A Cracker's Paradise?", Wired News, January 29, 1998.
11. ^ History of AOL Warez.
12. ^ GP4.3 - Growth and Fraud - Case #3 - Phishing. Financial Cryptography (December 30, 2005).
13. ^ In 2005, Organized Crime Will Back Phishers. IT Management (December 23, 2004).
14. ^ The economy of phishing: A survey of the operations of the phishing market. First Monday (September 2005).
15. ^ Suspicious e-Mails and Identity Theft. Internal Revenue Service. Retrieved on July 5, 2006.
16. ^ "Phishing for Clues", Indiana University Bloomington, September 15, 2005.
17. ^ What is spear phishing?. Microsoft Security At Home. Retrieved on July 10, 2006.
18. ^ Goodin, Dan. "Fake subpoenas harpoon 2,100 corporate fat cats", The Register, April 17, 2008.
19. ^ Kirk, Jeremy. "Phishing Scam Takes Aim at MySpace.com", IDG Network, June 2, 2006.
20. ^ Malicious Website / Malicious Code: MySpace XSS QuickTime Worm. Websense Security Labs. Retrieved on December 5, 2006.
21. ^ Tom Jagatic and Nathan Johnson and Markus Jakobsson and Filippo Menczer. Social Phishing. To appear in the CACM (October 2007). Retrieved on June 3, 2006.
22. ^ Shadowy Russian Firm Seen as Conduit for Cybercrime, by Brian Krebs, Washington post, October 13, 2007
23. ^ Berners-Lee, Tim. Uniform Resource Locators (URL). IETF Network Working Group. Retrieved on January 28, 2006.
24. ^ Microsoft. A security update is available that modifies the default behavior of Internet Explorer for handling user information in HTTP and in HTTPS URLs. Microsoft Knowledgebase. Retrieved on August 28, 2005.
25. ^ Fisher, Darin. Warn when HTTP URL auth information isn't necessary or when it's provided. Bugzilla. Retrieved on August 28, 2005.
26. ^ Johanson, Eric. The State of Homograph Attacks Rev1.1. The Shmoo Group. Retrieved on August 11, 2005.
27. ^ Evgeniy Gabrilovich and Alex Gontmakher (February 2002). "The Homograph Attack". Communications of the ACM 45(2): 128.
28. ^ Leyden, John. "Barclays scripting SNAFU exploited by phishers", The Register, August 15, 2006.
29. ^ Levine, Jason. Goin' phishing with eBay. Q Daily News. Retrieved on December 14, 2006.
30. ^ Leyden, John. "Cybercrooks lurk in shadows of big-name websites", The Register, December 12, 2007.
31. ^ Mutton, Paul. Fraudsters seek to make phishing sites undetectable by content filters. Netcraft. Retrieved on July 10, 2006.
32. ^ Mutton, Paul. Phishing Web Site Methods. FraudWatch International. Retrieved on December 14, 2006.
33. ^ "Phishing con hijacks browser bar", BBC News, April 8, 2004.
34. ^ Krebs, Brian. Flaws in Financial Sites Aid Scammers. Security Fix. Retrieved on June 28, 2006.
35. ^ Mutton, Paul. PayPal Security Flaw allows Identity Theft. Netcraft. Retrieved on June 19, 2006.
36. ^ Hoffman, Patrick. "RSA Catches Financial Phishing Kit", eWeek, January 10, 2007.
37. ^ Miller, Rich. Phishing Attacks Continue to Grow in Sophistication. Netcraft. Retrieved on December 19, 2007.
38. ^ Gonsalves, Antone. "Phishers Snare Victims With VoIP", Techweb, April 25, 2006.
39. ^ "Identity thieves take advantage of VoIP", Silicon.com, March 21, 2005.
40. ^ Virgil Griffith and Markus Jakobsson. Messin' with Texas, Deriving Mother's Maiden Names Using Public Records. ACNS '05. Retrieved on July 7, 2006.
41. ^ Krebs, Brian. "Phishing Schemes Scar Victims", washingtonpost.com, November 18, 2004.
42. ^ Kerstein, Paul. "How Can We Stop Phishing and Pharming Scams?", CSO, July 19, 2005.
43. ^ McCall, Tom. "Gartner Survey Shows Phishing Attacks Escalated in 2007; More than $3 Billion Lost to These Attacks", Gartner, December 17, 2007.
44. ^ "UK phishing fraud losses double", Finextra, March 7, 2006.
45. ^ Richardson, Tim. "Brits fall prey to phishing", The Register, May 3, 2005.
46. ^ Miller, Rich. Bank, Customers Spar Over Phishing Losses. Netcraft. Retrieved on December 14, 2006.
47. ^ Latest News
48. ^ Bank of Ireland agrees to phishing refunds – vnunet.com
49. ^ Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Yong Woo Rhee, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Cranor, Jason Hong and Elizabeth Nunge (November 2006). Protecting People from Phishing: The Design and Evaluation of an Embedded Training Email System. Technical Report CMU-CyLab-06-017, CyLab, Carnegie Mellon University.. Retrieved on November 14, 2006.
50. ^ Bank, David. "'Spear Phishing' Tests Educate People About Online Scams", The Wall Street Journal, August 17, 2005.
Monday, June 16, 2008
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain,[3] is a sovereign island country[4][5] and a member state of the European Union located off the northwestern coast of mainland Europe. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the northeast part of the island of Ireland and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with the Republic of Ireland.[6] Apart from this land border, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. The largest island, Great Britain, is linked to France by the Channel Tunnel.
The United Kingdom is a union[7][8] of four constituent countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdom is governed by a Parliamentary System with its seat of government in London, the capital, and a constitutional monarchy with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state. The Crown Dependencies of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, formally possessions of the Crown, are not part of the UK but form a federacy with it.[9] The UK has fourteen overseas territories,[10] all remnants of the British Empire, which at its height encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface, making it the largest empire in history. As a direct result of the empire, British influence can be observed in the language and culture of states such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the United States of America, and other less globally influential independent states. HM Queen Elizabeth II remains the head of the Commonwealth of Nations and head of state of each of the Commonwealth realms.
The UK is a developed country, with the fifth (nominal GDP) or sixth (PPP) largest economy in the world. It was the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th century,[11] but the economic cost of two world wars and the decline of its empire in the latter half of the 20th century diminished its leading role in global affairs. The UK nevertheless retains strong economic, cultural, military and political influence and is a nuclear power, with the second or third (depending on method of calculation) highest defence spending in the world. It holds a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and is a member of the G8, NATO, WTO and the Commonwealth of Nations.
History
The Treaty of Union, agreed on July 22nd, 1706,[12] and put into effect by the Acts of Union passed by the Parliaments of England and Scotland in 1707, created a political union in the form of a united Kingdom of Great Britain.[13] Almost a century later, the Act of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Ireland with the Kingdom of Great Britain.[14] Prior to 1707, England and Scotland had existed as separate sovereign and independent states with their own monarchs and political structures from the 9th century. Though the Scottish King, James VI, became King of England as well in 1603, creating a personal union between the kingdoms, the countries had remained separate. On the other hand, the once independent Principality of Wales had fallen under the control of English monarchs from the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 and thereafter annexed to England under the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542. Ireland had also been brought under English control between 1541 and 1691, but only joined to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.
In its first century, the United Kingdom played an important role in developing Western ideas of the Parliamentary System as well as making significant contributions to literature, the arts and science.[15] The UK-led Industrial Revolution transformed the country and fuelled the British Empire. During this time, like other Great Powers, the UK was involved in colonial exploitation, including the slave trade, though the passing of the 1807 Slave Trade Act made the UK the first country to prohibit trade in slaves.
After the defeat of Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars, the UK became the principal naval power of the 19th century. Though it lost its industrial leadership towards the end of the Victorian era, the United Kingdom remained an eminent power and its empire expanded to its maximum size by 1921, gaining the League of Nations mandate over former German and Ottoman colonies after World War I.
Long simmering tensions in Ireland led to the partition of the island in 1920, followed by independence for the Irish Free State in 1922. Six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster remained within the UK, which then changed to the current name in 1927 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.[16]
After World War I, the world's first large-scale international broadcasting network, the BBC, was created. Britain fought Nazi Germany in World War II, with its Commonwealth allies including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, later to be joined by further allies such as the United States. Wartime leader Winston Churchill and his peacetime successor Clement Atlee helped plan the post-war world as part of the "Big Three". World War II left the United Kingdom financially damaged. Loans taken out during and after World War II from both Canada and the United States were economically costly but, along with post-war Marshall aid, the UK began the road to recovery.
The immediate post-war years saw the establishment of the British Welfare State, including one of the world's first and most comprehensive public health services, while the demands of a recovering economy brought people from all over the Commonwealth to create a multiethnic Britain. Although the new post-war limits of Britain's political role were confirmed by the Suez Crisis of 1956, the international spread of the language meant the continuing impact of its literature and culture, while at the same time from the 1960s its popular culture found influence abroad. Following a period of global economic slowdown and industrial strife in the 1970s, the 1980s saw the inflow of substantial oil revenues and economic growth. The premiership of Margaret Thatcher marked a significant change of direction from the post-war political and economic consensus; a path that was not reversed by the New Labour government of Tony Blair in 1997.
The United Kingdom was one of the 12 founding members of the European Union at its launch in 1992 with the signing of the Treaty on European Union. Prior to that, it had been a member of the EU's forerunner, the European Economic Community (EEC), from 1973. The attitude of the present Labour government towards further integration with this organisation is mixed,[17] with the Conservative Party favouring a return of some powers and competencies to the state,[18] and the Liberal Democrats supportive of current engagement.
The end of the 20th century saw a major change to the government of the United Kingdom with the creation of a devolved Scottish parliament and Welsh Assembly. This produced the prospect of a legislative path to independence for Scotland when in 2007 the Scottish National Party formed a minority government in Scotland, with a mandate to hold a referendum on independence by 2011.
Government and politics
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as head of state; the monarch of the UK serves as head of state of fifteen other Commonwealth countries, putting the UK in a personal union with those other states. The Crown has sovereignty over the Isle of Man and the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey. Collectively, these three territories are known as the Crown dependencies, lands owned by the British monarch but not part of the United Kingdom. They are not part of the European Union. However, the Parliament of the United Kingdom has the authority to legislate for the dependencies, and the British government manages their foreign affairs and defence.
The UK has fourteen overseas territories around the world, the last remaining territories of the British Empire. The overseas territories are not considered part of the UK, but in most cases, the local populations have British citizenship and the right of abode in the UK. This has been the case since 2002.
The UK has a parliamentary government based on strong traditions: the Westminster system has been emulated around the world — a legacy of the British Empire.
The UK's constitution governs the legal framework of the country and consists mostly of written sources, including statutes, judge made case law, and international treaties. As there is no technical difference between ordinary statutes and law considered to be "constitutional law," the British Parliament can perform "constitutional reform" simply by passing Acts of Parliament and thus has the power to change or abolish almost any written or unwritten element of the constitution. However, no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change.[19] The United Kingdom is one of the three countries in the world today that does not have a codified constitution (the other two being New Zealand and Israel).[20]
The position of Prime Minister, the UK's head of government, belongs to the current leader of the political party that can obtain the confidence of a plurality in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are formally appointed by the Monarch to form Her Majesty's Government. However, the Prime Minister chooses the Cabinet, and by convention, HM The Queen respects the Prime Minister's choices. The Cabinet is traditionally drawn from members of the Prime Minister's party in both legislative houses, and mostly from the House of Commons, to which they are responsible. Executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister and Cabinet, all of whom are sworn into Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and become Ministers of the Crown. The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, leader of the Labour Party, has been Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service since 27 June 2007.
The Parliament of the United Kingdom that meets in the Palace of Westminster, is the ultimate legislative authority in the United Kingdom. A devolved parliament in Scotland and devolved assemblies in Northern Ireland, and Wales were established following public approval as expressed in referenda, but these are not sovereign bodies and could be abolished by the UK parliament. The UK parliament is made up of two houses: an elected House of Commons and an appointed House of Lords, and any Bill passed requires the assent of HM The Queen to become law. For elections to the House of Commons, the UK is currently divided into 646 constituencies, with 529 in England, 18 in Northern Ireland, 59 in Scotland and 40 in Wales, though this number will rise to 650 at the next General Election. Each constituency elects one Member of Parliament by simple plurality. General Elections are called by the Monarch when the Prime Minister so advises. Though there is no minimum term for a Parliament, a new election must be called within five years of the previous general election.
Questions over sovereignty have been brought forward due to the UK's membership of the European Union.[21]
The UK's three major political parties are the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, and the Liberal Democrats, winning between them 616 out of the 646 seats available in the House of Commons at the 2005 General Election. Most of the remaining seats were won by parties that only contest elections in one part of the UK such as the Scottish National Party (Scotland only), Plaid Cymru (Wales only), and the Democratic Unionist Party, Social Democratic and Labour Party, Ulster Unionist Party, and Sinn Féin (Northern Ireland only, though Sinn Féin also contests elections in Ireland). In accordance with party policy, no elected Sinn Féin Member of Parliament has ever attended the House of Commons to speak in the House on behalf of their constituents as Members of Parliament are required to take an oath of allegiance to the Monarch. However, the current five Sinn Féin MPs have since 2002 made use of the offices and other facilities available at Westminster.[22]
Devolved national administrations
Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each has a devolved, unicameral legislature and its own government or Executive, led by a First Minister. England, despite being the largest country of the United Kingdom, has no devolved executive or legislature and is ruled and legislated for directly by the UK government and parliament. This situation has given rise to the so-called West Lothian question which concerns the fact that MPs from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales help decide the laws that apply to England alone.
The Scottish Parliament has wide ranging legislative powers over any matter that has not been specifically 'reserved' to the UK parliament, including education, healthcare, Scots law and local government. Following their victory at the 2007 elections, the pro-independence SNP formed a minority government with its leader, Alex Salmond, becoming First Minister of Scotland. The pro-union parties responded to the electoral success of the SNP by creating a Commission to examine the case for devolving additional powers while excluding Scottish independence as an option,[23] though the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Wendy Alexander, has now indicated that Labour will support calls for independence to be placed before the people in a referendum in the hope that a vote to reject independence would settle the constitutional debate for a generation.[24]Most opinion polls do show minority support for independence though support varies depending on the nature of the question. However, a poll in April 2008 that used the proposed referendum wording found support for independence had reached 41% with just 40% supporting retention of the Union.[25]
The National Assembly for Wales has more limited devolved powers than those devolved to Scotland[26] though it can increase its powers on a case by case basis through Legislative Competency Orders.[27] The Northern Ireland Assembly has powers closer to those already devolved to Scotland.
Local government
Each country of the United Kingdom has its own system of local government, with power over local government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland being devolved. City status is governed by Royal Charter and is conferred separate from local government arrangements.
The upper-tier subdivisions of England are the nine Regions also known as European Union government office regions. London voted in favour of having a directly elected assembly in 1998 and it was intended that other regions would also be given their own elected regional assemblies, but a rejection by a referendum in 2004 of a proposed assembly in the North East region stopped this idea in its tracks.[28] Below the region level, London consists of 32 London boroughs and the rest of England has either county councils and district councils or unitary authorities.
Northern Ireland is presently divided into 26 districts for local government purposes though these councils do not carry out the same range of functions as would be the case in the rest of the United Kingdom. However, on 13 March 2008, the Executive agreed on proposals to create 11 new councils to replace the present system.[29]
Scotland is divided into 32 council areas with wide variation in both size and population. The cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee are separate council areas as also is Highland Council which includes a third of Scotland's area but just over 200,000 people. The power invested in local authorities is administered by elected councillors, of which there are currently 1,222 who are each paid a part-time salary. Elections are conducted by Single Transferable Vote in multi-member wards that elect either three or four councillors. Each council elects a Provost or Convenor to chair meetings of the council and to act as a figurehead for the area.
Local government in Wales consists of 22 unitary authorities, including the cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport which are separate unitary authorities in their own right.
For more ceremonial purposes, HM The Queen appoints a Lord-Lieutenant as her personal representative in lieutenancy areas across the UK.
Foreign relations and armed forces
The United Kingdom is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a member of the G8 and NATO, and a member state of the European Union. The UK has a "Special Relationship" with the United States. Apart from the US and Europe, Britain's close allies include Commonwealth nations, Ireland and other English speaking countries. Britain's global presence and influence is further amplified through its trading relations and its armed forces, which maintain approximately eighty military installations and other deployments around the globe.[30]
The Army, Navy and Air Force are collectively known as the British Armed Forces (or Her Majesty's Armed Forces) and officially the Armed Forces of the Crown. The commander-in-chief is the monarch, HM Queen Elizabeth II and they are managed by the Ministry of Defence. The armed forces are controlled by the Defence Council, chaired by the Chief of the Defence Staff.
The United Kingdom fields one of the most technologically advanced and best trained armed forces in the world. According to various sources, including the Ministry of Defence, the UK has the second highest military expenditure in the world,[31][32] despite only having the 27th largest military in terms of manpower. Total defence spending currently accounts for 2.2% of total national GDP, compared to 4.4% at the end of the Cold War.[33] It is the second largest spender on military science, engineering and technology.[34] The Royal Navy is considered to be the only other blue-water navy along with those of France and the United States.[35] The British Armed Forces are equipped with advanced weapons systems, including the Challenger 2 tank and the Eurofighter Typhoon jet fighter. The Ministry of Defence confirmed the acquisition of two new super carrier sized aircraft carriers on 25 July 2007.
The United Kingdom is one of the five recognised countries possessing nuclear weapons, utilising the Vanguard class submarine-based Trident II ballistic missile system.
The British Armed Forces are charged with protecting the United Kingdom and its overseas territories, promoting the United Kingdom's global security interests, and supporting international peacekeeping efforts. They are active and regular participants in NATO, including the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, as well as the Five Power Defence Arrangements and other worldwide coalition operations. Overseas garrisons and facilities are maintained at Ascension Island, Belize, Brunei, Canada, Diego Garcia, the Falkland Islands, Germany, Gibraltar, Kenya, and Cyprus.[36][37]
The British Army had a reported strength of 102,440 in 2005,[38] the Royal Air Force a strength of 49,210 and the 36,320-strong Royal Navy, which includes the Royal Marines, who provide commando units specialising in amphibious warfare.
The United Kingdom Special Forces, provide troops trained for quick, mobile, military responses in counter-terrorism, land, maritime and amphibious operations, often where secrecy or covert tactics are required.
There are reserve forces supporting the regular military. These include the Territorial Army, the Royal Naval Reserve, Royal Marines Reserve and the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. This puts total active and reserve duty military personnel at approximately 429,500, deployed in over eighty countries.
Despite the United Kingdom's military capabilities, recent pragmatic defence policy has a stated assumption that "the most demanding operations" would be undertaken as part of a coalition.[39] Setting aside the intervention in Sierra Leone, operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq may all be taken as precedent. Indeed the last war in which the British military fought alone was the Falklands War of 1982, in which they were victorious.
Law
The United Kingdom does not have a single legal system due to it being created by the political union of previously independent countries and the terms of the Treaty of Union guaranteeing the continued existence of Scotland's separate legal system. Today the UK has three distinct systems of law: English law and Northern Ireland law are based on common-law principles whereas Scots law is a hybrid system based on both common-law and civil-law principles. The Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (usually just referred to as "The House of Lords") is presently the highest court for both criminal and civil cases in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and for civil cases under Scots law. Recent constitutional changes will see the powers of the House of Lords transfer to a new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.[40] The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, (comprising the same members as the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords), is the highest court of appeal for several independent Commonwealth countries, the UK overseas territories, and the British crown dependencies.
English law applies in England and Wales. The essence of English common law is that it is made by judges sitting in courts, applying their common sense and knowledge of legal precedent (stare decisis) to the facts before them. The court system is headed by the Supreme Court of Judicature of England and Wales, consisting of the Court of Appeal, the High Court of Justice (for civil cases) and the Crown Court (for criminal cases). The Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (usually just referred to, as "The House of Lords") is presently the highest court in the land for both criminal and civil cases in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. A decision of the highest appeal court in England and Wales, the House of Lords, is binding on every other court in the hierarchy, and they will follow its directions.
Crime in England and Wales increased in the period between 1981 and 1995 though, since that peak, there has been an overall fall of 42% in crime from 1995 to 2006/7.[41]Despite the fall in crime rates, the prison population of England and Wales has almost doubled over the same period, to over 80,000, giving England and Wales the highest rate of incarceration in Western Europe at 147 per 100,000.[42]Her Majesty's Prison Service, which reports to the Ministry of Justice, manages most of the prisons within England and Wales.
Scots law applies in Scotland. The chief courts are the Court of Session, for civil cases, and the High Court of Justiciary, for criminal cases, while the sheriff court undertakes almost all the functions of the English County Court but also conducts criminal trials with a jury (Sheriff solemn Court) or with a Sheriff and no jury (Sheriff summary Court). The Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (usually just referred to as "The House of Lords") presently serves as the highest court of appeal for civil cases under Scots law. The Scots legal system is unique in having three possible verdicts for a criminal trial: "guilty", "not guilty" and "not proven". Both "not guilty" and "not proven" result in an acquittal with no possibility of retrial. The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) manages Scotland's prisons with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice responsible for the Scottish Prison Service within the Scottish Government.
Geography
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland comprises the island of Great Britain (most of England, Scotland and Wales) and the northeastern one-sixth of the island of Ireland (Northern Ireland), together with smaller islands. The mainland lies between latitudes 49° and 59° N (the Shetland Islands reach to nearly 61° N), and longitudes 8° W to 2° E. The Royal Greenwich Observatory, near London, is the defining point of the Prime Meridian. The UK lies between the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, and comes within 35 kilometres (22 mi) of the northwest coast of France, from which it is separated by the English Channel. Northern Ireland shares a 360-kilometre (224 mi) land boundary with Ireland. The Channel Tunnel ("Chunnel") now links the UK with France beneath the English Channel. The greatest distance between two points on the UK mainland of Great Britain is 1,350 kilometres (840 mi) between Land's End in Cornwall (near Penzance) and John O'Groats in Caithness (near Thurso), a two day journey by car. When measured directly north-south it is a little over 1,100 kilometres (700 mi) in length and is a fraction under 500 kilometres (300 mi) at its widest. The total area of the United Kingdom is approximately 245,000 square kilometres (94,600 sq mi).
The United Kingdom has a temperate climate, with plentiful rainfall all year round. The temperature varies with the seasons but seldom drops below −10 °C (14.0 °F) or rises above 35 °C (95 °F). The prevailing wind is from the southwest, bearing frequent spells of mild and wet weather from the Atlantic Ocean. Eastern parts are most sheltered from this wind and are therefore the driest. Atlantic currents, warmed by the Gulf Stream, bring mild winters, especially in the west, where winters are wet, especially over high ground. Summers are warmest in the south east of England, being closest to the European mainland, and coolest in the north. Snowfall can occur in winter and early spring, though it rarely settles to great depth away from high ground.
England accounts for just over half of the total area of the UK, covering 130,410 square kilometres (50,350 sq mi). Most of the country consists of lowland terrain, and mountainous terrain north-west of the Tees-Exe line. Mountain chains are found in the north-west (Cumbrian Mountains of the Lake District), north (the upland moors of the Pennines and limestone hills of the Peak District) and south-west (Exmoor and Dartmoor). Lower ranges include the limestone hills of the Isle of Purbeck, Cotswolds and Lincolnshire Wolds, and the chalk downs of the Southern England Chalk Formation. The main rivers and estuaries are the Thames, Severn and the Humber Estuary. England's highest mountain is Scafell Pike, which is in the Lake District 978 metres (3,209 ft). England has a number of large towns and cities and, in terms of Larger Urban Zones, has six of the top 50 Zones in the European Union.
Scotland accounts for about a third of the total area of the UK, covering 78,789 square kilometres (30,420 sq mi). The topography of Scotland is distinguished by the Highland Boundary Fault – a geological rock fracture – which traverses the Scottish mainland from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. The faultline separates two distinctively different regions; namely the Highlands to the north and west and the lowlands to the south and east. The more rugged Highland region contains the majority of Scotland's mountainous terrain, including the highest peak, Ben Nevis, at 1,344 metres (4,409 ft). Lowland areas, in the southern part of Scotland, are flatter and home to most of the population, especially the narrow waist of land between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth known as the Central Belt. Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, although Edinburgh is the capital and political centre of the country. Scotland also has nearly eight hundred islands, mainly west and north of the mainland, notably the Hebrides, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands.
Wales accounts for less than a tenth of the total area of the UK, covering just 20,758 square kilometres (8,010 sq mi). Wales is mostly mountainous though South Wales is less mountainous than North and Mid Wales. The main population and industrial areas are in South Wales, consisting of the cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport and surrounding South Wales Valleys. The highest mountains in Wales are in Snowdonia, and include Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa in Welsh), which, at 1,085 m (3,560 ft) is the highest peak in Wales. The 14 (or possibly 15) Welsh mountains over 3,000 feet (914 m) high are known collectively as the Welsh 3000s. Wales borders England to the east and the sea in the other three directions: the Bristol Channel to the south, St George's Channel to the west, and the Irish Sea to the north. Wales has over 1,200 km (750 miles) of coastline. There are several islands off the Welsh mainland, the largest being Anglesey (Ynys Môn) in the northwest.
Northern Ireland accounts for just 14,160 square kilometres (5,470 sq mi) and is mostly hilly. It includes Lough Neagh, at 388 square kilometres (150 sq mi), the largest body of water in the UK and Ireland.[43] The highest peak is Slieve Donard at 849 metres (2,785 ft) in the province's Mourne Mountains.
Cities and conurbations
The capitals of the individual countries of the UK are: Belfast (Northern Ireland), Cardiff (Wales), Edinburgh (Scotland) and London (England), which is also the capital of the UK as a whole.
The largest conurbations are as follows:
* Greater London Urban Area - 8.28 million
* West Midlands conurbation - 2.28 million
* Greater Manchester Urban Area - 2.24 million
* West Yorkshire Urban Area - 1.50 million
* Greater Glasgow - 1.17 million
Demography
Population, migration and ethnicity
At the April 2001 UK Census, the total population of the United Kingdom was 58,789,194, the third largest in the European Union (behind Germany and France), the fifth largest in the Commonwealth and the twenty-first largest in the world. By mid-2006, this had been estimated to have increased to 60,587,300.[44] Much of this increase was due to net immigration but was also due to a rising birth rate and increasing life expectancy.[45]
England's population by mid-2006 was estimated to be 50,762,900 making it one of the most densely populated countries in the world with 383 people resident per square kilometre.[46] About a quarter of the UK population lives in England's prosperous south-east and is predominantly urban and suburban,[47] with an estimated 7,517,700 in the capital of London.[48]
The mid-2006 estimates put Scotland's population at 5,116,900, Wales at 2,965,900 and Northern Ireland at 1,741,600[49] with much lower population densities than England. Compared to England's 383 people resident per square kilometre, the corresponding figures were 142 for Wales, 125 for Northern Ireland and just 65 for Scotland.
In 2006, the average total fertility rate (TFR) across the UK was 1.84 children per woman,[50] below the replacement rate of 2.1 but higher than the 2001 record low of 1.63. Within the UK, England and Wales, at 1.86, were both close to the UK average, but Scotland was lower at only 1.67. The UK's TFR was considerably higher during the 1960s 'baby boom', peaking at 2.95 children per woman in 1964.[51]
The present day population of the UK is descended from varied ethnic stocks though mainly: pre-Celtic, Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and the Normans. Since 1945, international ties forged by the British Empire have contributed to substantial immigration, especially from Africa, Caribbean and South Asia. Since EU citizens are free to live and work in other EU member states, the accession of new to the EU of new member states from Central and Eastern Europe in 2004 has resulted in rising immigration from these countries. As of 2001, 92.1% of the population identified themselves as White, leaving 7.9%[52] of the UK population identifying themselves as mixed race or ethnic minority.
Ethnic diversity varies significantly across the UK. 30.4 per cent of London's population[53] and 37.4 per cent of Leicester's[54] was estimated to be non-white as of June 2005, whereas less than 5 per cent of the populations of North East England, Wales and the South West were from ethnic minorities according to the 2001 census.[55]As of 2007, 22% of primary school children and 17.7% of children at secondary school in England were from ethnic minority families.[56]
In contrast with some other European countries, high foreign-born immigration is contributing to a rising population,[57] accounting for about half of the population increase between 1991 and 2001. The latest official figures (2006) show net immigration to the UK of 191,000 (591,000 immigrants and 400,000 emigrants) up from 185,000 in 2005 (overall, there was a loss of 126,000 Britons and a gain of 316,000 foreign citizens).[58][59][60] One in six were from Eastern European countries, with larger numbers coming from New Commonwealth countries.[61] Immigration from the Indian subcontinent, mainly fuelled by family reunion, accounted for two-thirds of net immigration.[62] By contrast, at least 5.5 million British-born people are living abroad.[63][64][65] The most popular emigrant destinations were Australia, Spain, France, New Zealand and the U.S.[66][67][68]
A study by a city forecaster, however, contends that the above immigration figures are unreliable and that net immigration for 2005 was circa 400,000.[69] Nonetheless, the proportion of foreign-born people in the UK population remains slightly below that of some other European countries.[70]
In 2004, the number of people who became British citizens rose to a record 140,795 - a rise of 12% on the previous year. This number had risen dramatically since 2000. The overwhelming majority of new citizens come from Africa (32%) and Asia (40%), the largest three groups being people from Pakistan, India and Somalia.[71] In 2006, there were 149,035 applications for British citizenship, 32% fewer than in 2005. The number of people granted citizenship during 2006 was 154,095, 5% fewer than in 2005. The largest groups of people granted British citizenship were from India, Pakistan, Somalia and the Philippines.[72] 21.9% of babies born in England and Wales in 2006 were born to mothers who were born outside the UK, (146,956 out of 669,601), according to official statistics released in 2007 that also show the highest birth rates for 26 years.[73] As in the rest of the European Union, however, the birth rate remains below the replacement rate.[74][75]
When the EU enlarged further east in 2004 and again in 2007, this gave the right for nationals from countries like Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania, and more recently Romania and Bulgaria to live in the UK. Figures published in August 2007 indicated that 682,940 people applied to the Worker Registration Scheme (for nationals of the central and eastern European states that joined the EU in May 2004) between 1 May 2004 and 30 June 2007, of whom 656,395 were accepted.[76] Self-employed workers and people who are not working (including students) are not required to register under the scheme so this figure represents a lower limit on immigration inflow. These figures do not indicate the number of immigrants who have since returned home, but 56% of applicants in the 12 months ending 30 June 2007 reported planning to stay for a maximum of three months, with net migration in 2005 from the new EU states standing at 64,000.[59] Research suggests that a total of around 1 million people had moved from the new EU member states to the UK by April 2008, but that half this number have since returned home or moved on to a third country.[77][78]
National Insurance Number data suggests that 2.5 million foreign workers moved to the UK to work (including those moving for short periods), the majority from EU countries, between 2002 and 2007.[79]
The UK government is currently introducing a new points-based immigration system to replace the existing schemes for immigration from outside of the European Economic Area.
Languages
Though the UK does not de jure have an official language, the predominant spoken language is English, a West Germanic language descended from Old English featuring a large number of borrowings from Old Norse, Norman French and Latin. The English language has spread across the world (largely due to the British Empire) and has thus become the business language of the world. Worldwide, it is taught as a second language more than any other.[80]
The other indigenous languages of the UK are Scots (which is closely related to English) and four Celtic languages. The latter fall into two groups: two P-Celtic languages (Welsh and Cornish); and two Q-Celtic languages (Irish and Scottish Gaelic). Celtic dialectal influences from Cumbric persisted in Northern England for centuries, most famously in a unique set of numbers used for counting sheep (see Yan Tan Tethera). According to the 2001 census, just above 20% of the population of Wales claim to be able to speak Welsh which represents a slight increase on 1991. In addition, it is estimated that about 200,000 Welsh speakers live in England.[81] Welsh and Scottish Gaelic are also spoken by small groups around the globe with some Gaelic still spoken in Nova Scotia, Canada, and Welsh in Patagonia, Argentina.
Immigrant languages constitute for up to 10% of the UK's population, French is spoken by 2.3% of the country's population, 1.0% of Britons speak Polish reflecting the recent mass migration to the UK. 0.9% of the UK's population speak German and 0.8% Spanish. The majority of other foreign languages spoken in the UK originate from Europe, Asia and Africa. A large percentage of the immigrants to the UK come from Anglophone countries (such as Nigeria, Jamaica, Hong Kong and the Philippines), which is why there is not a great deal of diversity between some of the country's ethnic minority communities.
Religion
While the United Kingdom has a long tradition of Christianity and a link between church and state still remains in England, in practice the UK is a predominantly secular society with only 38%[82] proclaiming a belief in a God. People identify themselves with religion in the UK for both cultural and religious reasons and this is reflected by the disparity between the figures for those proclaiming a belief in a God and those identifying themselves with a particular religion. Christianity has the largest number of adherents followed by Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Judaism.
Christianity
Christianity is the major religion with many Christian churches, denominations, and groups. The Tearfund Survey[83] in 2007 revealed 53% identified themselves as Christian. The report compared this to the 2004 British Social Attitudes Survey in which the results were very similar,[84] and to the 2001 UK Census in which 71.6% said that Christianity was their religion,[85] although noting that the latter used "a softer question".
The Church of England, which split from Rome in 1534 (see English Reformation) is, today, the 'established' Church in England and the senior branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The British monarch is required to be a member of the Church of England under the Act of Settlement 1701 and is its Supreme Governor. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop of the Church. The direct influence of the Church of England has been on the decline for years, but the church retains a representation in the UK Parliament and the right to draft legislative measures (usually related to religious administration), through the General Synod, that can be passed into law, but not amended by Parliament.
The Church of Scotland (known informally as the Kirk), which broke with Rome in 1560 (see Calvinism and Scottish Reformation) is a Presbyterian church, recognised as the national church of Scotland, and not subject to state control. The British monarch is an ordinary member, and is required to swear an oath to "defend the security" of the Church at the coronation. The Scottish Episcopal Church, which is now part of the Anglican Communion, dates from the final establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland in 1690, when it split from the Church of Scotland, and is not a 'daughter church' of the Church of England. Further splits in the Church of Scotland, especially in the nineteenth century, led to the creation of various other Presbyterian churches in Scotland, including the Free Church of Scotland.
In the 1920s, the Church in Wales was separated from the Church of England and became 'disestablished'. The Church in Wales remains in the Anglican Communion. Methodism and other independent churches are traditionally strong in Wales.
The Anglican Church of Ireland was disestablished in the nineteenth century. It covers the entire island of Ireland (both Northern Ireland and Ireland). In Northern Ireland the Catholic Church in Ireland is the largest single denomination, although Protestants are in the majority overall. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland is the largest Protestant denomination and is in terms of theology and history closely linked to the Church of Scotland
The Roman Catholic Church is the second largest denomination of Christianity in the UK. After the Protestant Reformation, strict laws were passed against Catholics; these were removed by the Catholic Emancipation laws in 1829. There are separate Catholic hierarchies for England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
Other large Christian groups include the Methodists (founded by John Wesley in London) and the Baptists. There are also growing Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, many of which have flourished with immigration from around the Commonwealth and beyond. Pentecostal churches are now third after the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church in terms of church attendance.[86]
Other religions
Muslims in the United Kingdom are believed to number 1.8 million.[87] Mosques are present in most regions: The biggest groups are of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian origin. More recently, refugees from Somalia, Northern Cyprus, the Balkans and Arab countries have increased Britain's Muslim population. The 2006 controversy over the burqa, brought up in comments by politician Jack Straw, reflects a split between some Britons questioning Muslim integration with British society, and others who believe that wearing the veil is compatible with it, in Britain.[88]
Religions of Indian origin, such as Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism are followed in Britain. As of the 2001 census, there are about 560,000 Hindus and 340,000 Sikhs. Buddhism is practised by about 150,000 people.[89] It is likely that these figures have increased since 2001. One non-governmental organisation estimates that there are 800,000 Hindus in the UK.[90] Leicester houses one of the world's few Jain temples that are outside of India.
There are approximately 270,000 Jews in Britain, according to the 2001 census.[91]
The United Kingdom has a large and growing atheist and agnostic population with 13,626,000 (23.2% of the UK population) either claiming no religion or not answering the question on religion at the 2001 census.[92]
Economy
The UK economy is made up (in descending order of size) of the economies of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The British started the Industrial Revolution, and, like most industrialising countries at the time, initially concentrated on heavy industries such as shipbuilding, coal mining, steel production, and textiles. The empire created an overseas market for British products, allowing the United Kingdom to dominate international trade in the 19th century. However, as other nations industrialised, coupled with economic decline after two world wars, the United Kingdom began to lose its competitive advantage and heavy industry declined, by degrees, throughout the 20th century. The British service sector, however, has grown substantially, and now makes up about 73% of GDP.[94]
The service sector of the United Kingdom is dominated by financial services, especially in banking and insurance. London is the world's largest financial centre with the London Stock Exchange, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange, and the Lloyd's of London insurance market all based in the City of London. It has the largest concentration of foreign bank branches in the world. In the past decade, a rival financial centre in London has grown in the Docklands area, with HSBC and Barclays Bank relocating their head offices there. Many multinational companies that are not primarily UK-based have chosen to site their European or rest-of-world headquarters in London: an example is the US financial services firm Citigroup. The Scottish capital, Edinburgh, has one of the large financial centres of Europe.[95]
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is the leader of the three "command centres" for the global economy (along with New York City and Tokyo).[96] In recent years, the UK economy has been managed in accordance with principles of market liberalisation and low taxation and regulation. Based on market exchange rates, the United Kingdom is the fifth largest economy in the world,[97] and the second largest in Europe after Germany.
Tourism is very important to the British economy. With over 27 million tourists a year, the United Kingdom is ranked as the sixth major tourist destination in the world.[98]
The British manufacturing sector, however, has greatly diminished, relative to the economy as a whole, since World War II. It is still a significant part of the economy, but only accounted for one-sixth of national output in 2003.[99] The British motor industry is a significant part of this sector, although it has diminished with the collapse of MG Rover and most of the industry is foreign owned. Civil and defence aircraft production is led by the United Kingdom's largest aerospace firm, BAE Systems, and the continental European firm EADS, the owner of Airbus. Rolls-Royce holds a major share of the global aerospace engines market. The chemical and pharmaceutical industry is strong in the UK, with the world's second and sixth largest pharmaceutical firms (GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, respectively)[100] being based in the UK.
The creative industries accounted for 7.3% GVA in 2004 and grew at an average of 5% per annum between 1997 and 2004.[101]
The United Kingdom's agriculture sector accounts for only 0.9% of the country's GDP.[102]
The UK has a small coal reserve along with significant natural gas, and oil reserves.
Government involvement throughout the economy is exercised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (currently Alistair Darling) who heads HM Treasury, but the Prime Minister (currently The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP), is First Lord of the Treasury; the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Second Lord of the Treasury. However since 1997, the Bank of England, headed by the Governor of the Bank of England, has control of interest rates and other monetary policy.
As of 2007, United Kingdom's government debt rose to 43.3% of GDP.[103]
The currency of the UK is the pound sterling, represented by the symbol £. The Bank of England is the central bank, responsible for issuing currency. Banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland retain the right to issue their own notes, subject to retaining enough Bank of England notes in reserve to cover the issue. The UK chose not to join the euro at the currency's launch, and the British Prime Minister, The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, has ruled out membership for the foreseeable future, saying that the decision not to join had been right for Britain and for Europe.[104] The government of former Prime Minister Tony Blair had pledged to hold a public referendum for deciding membership should "five economic tests" be met. In 2005, more than half (55%) of the UK were against adopting the currency, while 30% were in favour.[105]
Education
Each country of the United Kingdom has a separate education system, with power over education matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland being devolved. The UK was ranked 14th in the world in 2006 for science by the Programme for International Student Assessment which was higher than the OECD average. [8]
Scotland first legislated for universal provision of education in 1696. The proportion of children in Scotland attending private schools is just over 4% though it has been rising slowly in recent years.[106] In Scotland, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning is responsible to the Scottish Parliament for education, with day to day administration and funding of state schools being the responsibility of Local Authorities. Qualifications at the secondary school and post-secondary (further education) level are provided by the Scottish Qualifications Authority and delivered through various schools, colleges and other centres. Scottish students who attend Scottish universities pay neither tuition fees nor graduate endowment charges as the fees were abolished in 2001 and the graduate endowment scheme was abolished in 2008.[107]
Education in England is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, though the day to day administration and funding of state schools is the responsibility of Local Education Authorities. Universal state education in England and Wales was introduced for primary level in 1870 and secondary level in 1900.[108] Education is mandatory from ages five to sixteen (15 if born in late July or August). The majority of children are educated in state-sector schools, only a small proportion of which select on the grounds of academic ability. Despite a fall in actual numbers, the proportion of children in England attending private schools has risen to over 7%.[109] Just over half of students at the leading universities of Cambridge and Oxford had attended state schools.[110] State schools which are allowed to select pupils according to intelligence and academic ability can achieve comparable results to the most selective private schools: out of the top ten performing schools in terms of GCSE results in 2006 two were state-run grammar schools. England has some of the top universities in the world with Cambridge, Oxford, and London ranked amongst the top 20 in the 2007 THES - QS World University Rankings.[111]There are fears, however, that a decline in England in the number studying a foreign language will have a negative effect on business, and has led to calls for languages to be given greater priority.[112][113]
The Northern Ireland Assembly is responsible for education in Northern Ireland though responsibility at a local level is administered by 5 Education and Library Boards covering different geographical areas.
The National Assembly for Wales has responsibility for education in Wales. A significant number of students in Wales are educated either wholly or largely through the medium of Welsh and lessons in the language are compulsory for all until the age of 16. There are plans to increase the provision of Welsh Medium schools as part of the policy of having a fully bi-lingual Wales.
Healthcare
Each country of the United Kingdom has a separate public healthcare system, with power over the provision of health services in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland being devolved. A much smaller private medical system also exists. Each public system provides healthcare that is free at the point of need (being funded from general taxation). Despite this similarity, considerable differences are now developing between the different systems.[114]The UK and devolved governments take on both the role of suppliers of public healthcare and assessors of the quality of its delivery through groups organised directly by government departments, such as NICE and CHI. Various regulatory bodies are organised on a UK-wide basis such as the General Medical Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council and non-governmental-based (e.g. Royal Colleges). Across the UK, there is a large number of medical schools and dental schools, and a considerable establishment for training nurses and professions allied to medicine.
Though the public health systems are commonly referred to as the NHS across the UK, in fact the National Health Service just covers England. The NHS was set up by the National Health Service Act 1946 and came into effect on July 5th 1948. The Secretary of State for Health is answerable to the UK Parliament for the running of the Department of Health and for the work of the NHS (in England). The NHS is one of the largest cohesive organisations of any type in the world employing over 1.3 million people.[115] Public sector healthcare delivery consists of primary (General Practice), secondary (district general hospital) and tertiary (teaching hospital) levels of service. There is considerable interaction and cross-flow between the various levels.
NHS Scotland provides public healthcare in Scotland with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing responsible to the Scottish Parliament for the its work. The service was founded by the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1947 (later repealed by the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978) that took effect on July 5th, 1948 to coincide with the launch of the NHS in England and Wales. In 2006, the NHS in Scotland had around 158,000 staff including more than 47,500 nurses, midwives and health visitors and over 3,800 consultants. In addition, there were also more than 12,000 doctors, family practitioners and allied health professionals, including dentists, opticians and community pharmacists, who operate as independent contractors providing a range of services within the NHS in return for fees and allowances.[116]
NHS Wales was originally formed as part of the same NHS structure created by the National Health Service Act 1946 but powers over the NHS in Wales came under the Secretary of State for Wales in 1969.[117] In turn, responsibility for NHS Wales was passed to the Welsh Assembly and Executive under devolution in 1999. NHS Wales provides public healthcare in Wales and employs some 90,000 staff, making it Wales’ biggest employer.[118] The Minister for Health and Social Services is the person within the Welsh Assembly Government who holds cabinet responsibilities for both health and social care in Wales.
Transport
The transport systems in the United Kingdom are the responsibility of each individual country. The English transport network is the responsibility of the UK Department for Transport (which also has responsibility for transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are not devolved.) In Scotland, the Scottish Government's Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department is responsible for the Scottish transport network with Transport Scotland being the Executive Agency that is accountable to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth.[119]
A radial road network of 46,904 kilometres (29,145 mi) of main roads is centred on London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, whilst, in Great Britain, a motorway network of 3,497 kilometres (2,173 mi) is centred on Birmingham, Manchester and London. There are a further 213,750 kilometres (132,818 mi) of paved roads.
The National Rail network of 16,116 km (10,072 miles) in Great Britain and 303 route km (189 route mi) in Northern Ireland carries over 18,000 passenger trains and 1,000 freight trains daily. Urban rail networks are well developed in London and other cities. There was once over 48,000 route km (30,000 route mi) of rail network in the UK, however most of this was reduced over a time period from 1955 to 1975, much of it after a report by a government advisor Richard Beeching in the mid 1960s (known as the Beeching Axe).
Heathrow Airport is the world's busiest international airport and, being an island country, the UK has a considerable number of sea ports.
The Department for Transport states that traffic congestion is one of the most serious transport problems and that it could cost England an extra £22 billion in wasted time by 2025 if left unchecked.[120] According to the government-sponsored Eddington report of 2006, congestion is in danger of harming the economy, unless tackled by road pricing and expansion of the transport network.[121][122]
Sport
Major sports originated in the United Kingdom, including football, rugby, cricket, tennis and golf.
Football
Like many team sports, football is organised on a separate basis for each of the countries of the United Kingdom and each has its own Football Association, national team and league system, though a few clubs play outside their country's respective systems for a variety of historical and logistical reasons. Football was developed in the UK and is comfortably the most popular sport.
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compete as separate countries in international competition and, as a consequence, the UK does not compete as a single team in football events at the Olympic Games. Although there are proposals to have a UK team take part in the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, which are to be held in London, the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football associations have declined to participate, fearing that it would undermine their independent status - a fear confirmed by FIFA president Sepp Blatter.[123] England has been the most successful of the home nations, winning the World Cup in 1966.
The English football league system includes hundreds of inter-linked leagues, consisting of thousands of divisions. The FA Premier League is at the top, followed by The Football League and then the Football Conference, where the structure starts to become regional and includes the Northern Premier League, the Southern League, the Isthmian League and more besides. The Premiership is the most-watched football league in the world and is particularly popular in Asia; in the People's Republic of China, matches attract television audiences between 100 million and 360 million, more than any other foreign sport.[124] England is home to world-renowned football clubs such as Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, and Arsenal. English teams have been successful in European Competitions including some who have become European Cup/UEFA Champions League winners: Liverpool (five times), Manchester United (three times), Nottingham Forest (twice) and Aston Villa. More clubs from England have won the European Cup than any other country (four compared to three from Italy, Germany and the Netherlands). Moreover, England ranks second in the all time list of European club trophies won with 35, one behind Italy's 36. The European Cup competition itself was brought about due to the success of another English club, Wolverhampton Wanderers, against top European sides[125] in the 1950s. The 90,000 capacity Wembley Stadium is the principal sporting stadium of England.
The Scottish football league system is much smaller, with just two national leagues: the Scottish Premier League (SPL) and the Scottish Football League which has three divisions. There are, however, other regional leagues that are not connected to the national system, most notably the Highland Football League. One English club, Berwick Rangers, plays in the Scottish system. Scotland is home to world-renowned football clubs such as Rangers and Celtic. Scottish teams that have been successful in European Competitions include Celtic (European Cup in 1967), Rangers (European Cup Winners Cup 1972) and Aberdeen (European Cup Winners Cup and European Super Cup in 1983).
The Welsh football league system includes the Welsh Premier League and regional leagues. Welsh Premiership club The New Saints play their home matches on the English side of the border in Oswestry. The Welsh clubs of Cardiff City, Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport County, Swansea City and Wrexham play in the English system. Cardiff's 73,000 seater Millennium Stadium is the principal sporting stadium of Wales.
The Northern Irish football league system includes the Irish Football League. One Northern Irish club, Derry City, plays their football outside of the UK in the Republic of Ireland football league system.
Other sports
Both forms of rugby are national sports. Rugby League originates from and is generally played in the Northern England, whilst Rugby Union is played predominantly in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Southern England. Though supposedly originating from the actions of William Webb Ellis at the School at Rugby, it is now considered the national sport of Wales. In rugby league the UK has been represented by a single 'Great Britain' team but this will change for the 2008 Rugby League World Cup in which Scotland, England and Ireland will compete as separate nations.[126] This bring it into line with Rugby Union in which England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (which consists of players from Ireland and Northern Ireland) already compete in international competition. However, every four years a British and Irish Lions team tours Australia, New Zealand or South Africa, composed of players selected from all the Home nations.
There is no UK-wide team in Cricket. The game was invented in England and the England Cricket Team, technically the England and Wales team, is the only national team in the UK with Test status. Irish and Scottish players have played for England because neither Scotland nor Ireland have Test status and only play in One Day Internationals. As of 2006, teams representing Scotland, England (and Wales), and Ireland (including Northern Ireland) compete at the One-Day International level. England and Wales has a professional league championship in which County teams compete.
Snooker is also one of Great Britain's sporting exports. A high-skill game similar to billiards, the world championships are held annually in Sheffield. The sport continues to expand worldwide, with huge growth in China.
The game of tennis first originated from the City of Birmingham between 1859 and 1865. The Wimbledon Championships are international tennis events held in Wimbledon in south London every summer and are regarded as the most prestigious event of the global tennis calendar.
Thoroughbred racing is popular throughout the UK. It originated under Charles II of England as the "Sport of Kings" and is a royal pastime to this day. World-famous horse races include the Grand National, the Epsom Derby and Royal Ascot. The town of Newmarket is considered the centre of English racing, largely due to the famous Newmarket Racecourse.
The UK has proved successful in the international sporting arena in rowing. It is widely considered that the sport's most successful rower is Steven Redgrave who won five gold medals and one bronze medal at five consecutive Olympic Games as well as numerous wins at the World Rowing Championships and Henley Royal Regatta.
Golf is one of the most popular participation sports played in the UK, with St Andrews in Scotland being the sport's home course.
Shinty (or camanachd) (A sport derived from the same root as the Irish hurling and similar to bandy) is popular in the Scottish Highlands, sometimes attracting crowds numbering thousands in the most sparsely populated region of the UK.
The country is closely associated with motorsport. Many teams and drivers in Formula One (F1) are based in the UK and drivers from Britain have won more world titles than any other country. The country hosts legs of the F1 and World Rally Championship and has its own Touring Car Racing championship, the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC). The British Grand Prix takes place at Silverstone each July.
Dancesport or competitive Ballroom dancing has its origins in the UK when popular dancing at the time was codified by British dance schools from the 1920s onwards. For example, the Slow Waltz is still known as the English Waltz which is now as distinct from its original roots as its name, the Viennese Waltz. The UK remains a major centre for the sport and Ballroom dancing in general with the Empress Ballroom at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool being a popular venue for major competitions.
Culture
The origins of the UK as a political union of formerly independent countries has resulted in the preservation of distinctive cultures in each of the home nations.
Cinema
The United Kingdom has been influential in the development of cinema, with the Ealing Studios claiming to be the oldest studios in the world. Despite a history of important and successful productions, the industry is characterised by an ongoing debate about its identity, and the influences of American and European cinema. The BFI Top 100 British films is a poll conducted by the British Film Institute which ranks what they consider to be the 100 greatest British films of all time.
Literature
The English playwright and poet William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time.[127][128][129] Among the earliest English writers are Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th century), Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century), and Thomas Malory (15th century). In the 18th century, Samuel Richardson is often credited with inventing the modern novel. In the 19th century, there followed further innovation by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, the social campaigner Charles Dickens, the naturalist Thomas Hardy, the visionary poet William Blake and romantic poet William Wordsworth. Twentieth century writers include the science fiction novelist H. G. Wells, the controversial D. H. Lawrence, the modernist Virginia Woolf, the prophetic novelist George Orwell and the poet John Betjeman. Most recently, the children's fantasy Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling has recalled the popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Scotland's contribution includes the detective writer Arthur Conan Doyle, romantic literature by Sir Walter Scott, the epic adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson and the celebrated poet Robert Burns. More recently, the modernist and nationalist Hugh MacDiarmid and Neil M. Gunn contributed to the Scottish Renaissance. A more grim outlook is found in Ian Rankin's stories and the psychological horror-comedy of Iain Banks. Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, is UNESCO's first worldwide city of literature.
In the early medieval period, Welsh writers composed the Mabinogion. In modern times, the poets R.S. Thomas and Dylan Thomas have brought Welsh culture to an international audience.
Authors from other nationalities, particularly from Ireland, or from Commonwealth countries, have lived and worked in the UK. Significant examples through the centuries include Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and more recently British authors born abroad such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Sir Salman Rushdie.
In theatre, Shakespeare's contemporaries Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson added depth. More recently Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter, Michael Frayn, Tom Stoppard and David Edgar have combined elements of surrealism, realism and radicalism.
Media
The prominence of the English language gives the UK media a widespread international dimension.
Broadcasting
There are five major nationwide television channels in the UK: BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five - currently transmitted by analogue terrestrial, free-to-air signals with the latter three channels funded by commercial advertising. In Wales, S4/C the Welsh Fourth Channel replaces Channel 4, carrying Welsh language programmes at peak times. It also transmits Channel 4 programmes at other times.
The BBC is the UK's publicly funded radio, television and internet broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest and largest broadcaster in the world. It operates several television channels and radio stations in both the UK and abroad. The BBC's international television news service, BBC World, is broadcast throughout the world and the BBC World Service radio network is broadcast in thirty-three languages globally, as well as services in the national language of Wales on BBC Radio Cymru and programmes in Scottish Gaelic in Scotland and Irish in Northern Ireland.
The domestic services of the BBC are funded by the television licence, a legal requirement for any British household with a television receiver that is in use to receive broadcasts, regardless of whether or not the householders watch BBC channels. Households which are the principal residence of any person over 75 are exempt[130] and the requirement does not extend to radio listeners. The BBC World Service Radio is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the television stations are operated by BBC Worldwide on a commercial subscription basis over cable and satellite services. It is this commercial arm of the BBC that forms half of UKTV along with Virgin Media.
The UK now has a large number of digital terrestrial channels including a further six from the BBC, five from ITV and three from Channel 4, and one from S4/C which is solely in Welsh, among a variety of others.
The vast majority of digital cable services are provided by Virgin Media with satellite being provided by BSkyB and free-to-air digital terrestrial television by Freeview. The entire country will switch to digital by 2012.
Radio in the UK is dominated by BBC Radio, which operates ten national networks and over forty local radio stations. The most popular radio station, by number of listeners, is BBC Radio 2, closely followed by BBC Radio 1. There are hundreds of mainly local commercial radio stations across the country offering a variety of music or talk formats.
Print
Traditionally, British newspapers could be split into quality, serious-minded newspaper (usually referred to as "broadsheets" due to their large size) and the more populist, tabloid varieties. For convenience of reading, many traditional broadsheets have switched to a more compact-sized format, traditionally used by tabloids. The Sun has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK, with approximately a quarter of the market; its sister paper, The News of The World similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market,[131] and traditionally focuses on celebrity-led stories. The Daily Telegraph, a right wing broadsheet paper, has overtaken The Times (tabloid size format) as the highest-selling of the "quality" newspapers.[132] The Guardian is a more liberal "quality" broadsheet. The Financial Times is the main business paper, printed on distinctive salmon-pink broadsheet paper.
First printed in 1737, the Belfast News Letter is the oldest known English-speaking daily newspaper still in publication today. One of its fellow Northern Irish competitors, The Irish News, has been twice ranked as the best regional newspaper in the United Kingdom, in 2006 and 2007.[133] Aside from newspapers, British magazines and journals have achieved worldwide circulation including The Economist and Nature.
Scotland has a distinct tradition of newspaper readership (see List of newspapers in Scotland). The tabloid Daily Record has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper outselling the Scottish Sun by 4-1 while its sister paper, the Sunday Mail similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market. The leading "quality" daily newspaper in Scotland is The Herald, though it is the Scotsman's sister paper, the Scotland on Sunday that leads in the Sunday newspaper market.[134]
Music
Classical music: Notable composers from the United Kingdom have included William Byrd, Henry Purcell, Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Arthur Sullivan (most famous for working with librettist Sir W. S. Gilbert), Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten, pioneer of modern British opera. London remains one of the major classical music capitals of the world.
Popular music: Prominent among the UK contributors to the development of rock music in the 1960s and 1970s were The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Queen, and Black Sabbath. Heavy metal, hard rock, punk rock and New Wave were among the variations that followed. In the early 1980s, UK bands from the New Romantic scene such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell and Ultravox were prominent. In the 1990s, Britpop bands and electronica music attained international success. More recent pop acts, including The Smiths, Oasis, Amy Winehouse, Coldplay, and the Spice Girls, have ensured the continuation of the UK's massive contribution to popular music.
Philosophy
The United Kingdom is famous for the tradition of "British Empiricism", a branch of the philosophy of knowledge that states that only knowledge verified by experience is valid. The most famous philosophers of this tradition are John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Britain is notable for a theory of moral philosophy, Utilitarianism, first used by Jeremy Bentham and later by John Stuart Mill, in his short work Utilitarianism. Other eminent philosophers from the UK include William of Ockham, Thomas Hobbes, Bertrand Russell, Adam Smith and Alfred Ayer. Foreign born philosophers who settled in the UK include Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, Karl Popper, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Science, engineering and innovation
The modern scientific method was promoted by the English philosopher Francis Bacon in the early seventeenth century, and subsequent advances credited to British scientists and engineers include:
* The laws of motion and illumination of gravity, by Sir Isaac Newton in the late 17th century
* The unification of electromagnetism, by James Clerk Maxwell
* The discovery of hydrogen, by Henry Cavendish
* The steam locomotive, by Richard Trevithick and Andrew Vivian
* The telephone, by Alexander Graham Bell
* Evolution by natural selection, by Charles Darwin
* The Turing machine, by Alan Turing, the basis of modern computers
* The structure of DNA, by Francis Crick and others
* The development of the World Wide Web, largely attributed to Tim Berners-Lee
Notable civil engineering projects, whose pioneers included Isambard Kingdom Brunel, contributed to the world's first national railway transport system. Other advances pioneered in the UK include the marine chronometer, television, the jet engine, the modern bicycle, electric lighting, the electric motor, the screw propeller, the internal combustion engine, military radar, the electronic computer, vaccination and antibiotics.
Scientific journals produced in the UK include Nature, the British Medical Journal and The Lancet. In 2006, it was reported that the UK provided 9% of the world's scientific research papers and a 12% share of citations.[135]
Visual art
The Royal Academy is located in London. Other major schools of art include the Slade School of Art; the six-school University of the Arts, London, which includes the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design; the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths, University of London. This commercial venture is one of Britain's foremost visual arts organisations. Major British artists include Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, William Morris, L.S. Lowry, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Howard Hodgkin, Antony Gormley, and Anish Kapoor. During the late 1980s and 1990s, the Saatchi Gallery in London brought to public attention a group of multigenre artists who would become known as the Young British Artists. Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Rachel Whiteread, Tracy Emin, Mark Wallinger, Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Wood, and the Chapman Brothers are among the better known members of this loosely affiliated movement.
Symbols
Further information: Symbols of the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man
* The flag of the United Kingdom is the Union Flag commonly known as the "Union Jack". It was created by the superimposition of the flags of England (St George's Cross) and Scotland (Saint Andrew's Cross), with the Saint Patrick's cross, to represent Ireland, being added to this in 1801. Wales is not represented in the Union Flag as Wales had been conquered and annexed to England prior to the formation of the United Kingdom. However, the possibility of redesigning the Union Flag to include representation of Wales has not been completely ruled out.[136]
There is no official National flag of Northern Ireland following the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973 or any unofficial flag universally supported in Northern Ireland. The use of various flags in Northern Ireland is contentious. However, the Ulster Banner is often used for sporting events. See Northern Ireland flags issue and The Union Flags and flags of the United Kingdom
* The national anthem of the United Kingdom is "God Save the King", with "King" replaced with "Queen" in the lyrics whenever the monarch is female. The anthem's name, however, remains "God Save the King". The constituent countries of the UK also have a number of anthems with varying degrees of popular acceptance, the most popular being Flower of Scotland, Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau in Wales, Londonderry Air in Northern Ireland and Jerusalem in England.[137]
* Britannia is a personification of the United Kingdom, originating from the Roman occupation of southern and central Great Britain.[138] Britannia is symbolised as a young woman with brown or golden hair, wearing a Corinthian helmet and white robes. She holds Poseidon's three-pronged trident and a shield, bearing the Union Flag. Sometimes she is depicted as riding the back of a lion. At and since the height of the British Empire, Britannia has often associated with maritime dominance, as in the patriotic song Rule Britannia.
* The lion has been used as a symbol of the United Kingdom; one is depicted behind Britannia on the 50 pence piece and one is shown crowned on the back of the 10 pence piece. It is used as a symbol on the non-ceremonial flag of the British Army. Lions have been used as heraldic devices, including in the royal arms of the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Kingdom of Gwynedd in Wales. The lion is featured on the emblem of the England national football team, giving rise to the popular football anthem Three Lions, and the England national cricket team. The "three lions" on the English coat of arms were originally two leopards. An extra leopard was added by Richard the Lionheart and with the help of his name, they became known as three lions. They are now drawn to look more like lions. Leopards are traditionally depicted lying down whereas lions were drawn standing on all fours or up on their hind legs attacking, as in the Scottish Lion Rampant.
* The bulldog is sometimes used as a symbol of Great Britain, and is often associated with Winston Churchill's defiance of Nazi Germany.
* Britain (especially England) has been personified as the character John Bull, although this character is rarely used in modern times.
* Distinctive flora such as the oak tree and the rose, have long been a widely used proxy for the visual representation of English identity. The red rose is the emblem of the Labour Party, the England national rugby union team, the Rugby Football Union and Lancashire. The thistle is widely used as a Scottish symbol and the daffodil or leekused as the Welsh.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain,[3] is a sovereign island country[4][5] and a member state of the European Union located off the northwestern coast of mainland Europe. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the northeast part of the island of Ireland and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with the Republic of Ireland.[6] Apart from this land border, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. The largest island, Great Britain, is linked to France by the Channel Tunnel.
The United Kingdom is a union[7][8] of four constituent countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdom is governed by a Parliamentary System with its seat of government in London, the capital, and a constitutional monarchy with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state. The Crown Dependencies of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, formally possessions of the Crown, are not part of the UK but form a federacy with it.[9] The UK has fourteen overseas territories,[10] all remnants of the British Empire, which at its height encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface, making it the largest empire in history. As a direct result of the empire, British influence can be observed in the language and culture of states such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the United States of America, and other less globally influential independent states. HM Queen Elizabeth II remains the head of the Commonwealth of Nations and head of state of each of the Commonwealth realms.
The UK is a developed country, with the fifth (nominal GDP) or sixth (PPP) largest economy in the world. It was the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th century,[11] but the economic cost of two world wars and the decline of its empire in the latter half of the 20th century diminished its leading role in global affairs. The UK nevertheless retains strong economic, cultural, military and political influence and is a nuclear power, with the second or third (depending on method of calculation) highest defence spending in the world. It holds a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and is a member of the G8, NATO, WTO and the Commonwealth of Nations.
History
The Treaty of Union, agreed on July 22nd, 1706,[12] and put into effect by the Acts of Union passed by the Parliaments of England and Scotland in 1707, created a political union in the form of a united Kingdom of Great Britain.[13] Almost a century later, the Act of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Ireland with the Kingdom of Great Britain.[14] Prior to 1707, England and Scotland had existed as separate sovereign and independent states with their own monarchs and political structures from the 9th century. Though the Scottish King, James VI, became King of England as well in 1603, creating a personal union between the kingdoms, the countries had remained separate. On the other hand, the once independent Principality of Wales had fallen under the control of English monarchs from the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 and thereafter annexed to England under the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542. Ireland had also been brought under English control between 1541 and 1691, but only joined to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.
In its first century, the United Kingdom played an important role in developing Western ideas of the Parliamentary System as well as making significant contributions to literature, the arts and science.[15] The UK-led Industrial Revolution transformed the country and fuelled the British Empire. During this time, like other Great Powers, the UK was involved in colonial exploitation, including the slave trade, though the passing of the 1807 Slave Trade Act made the UK the first country to prohibit trade in slaves.
After the defeat of Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars, the UK became the principal naval power of the 19th century. Though it lost its industrial leadership towards the end of the Victorian era, the United Kingdom remained an eminent power and its empire expanded to its maximum size by 1921, gaining the League of Nations mandate over former German and Ottoman colonies after World War I.
Long simmering tensions in Ireland led to the partition of the island in 1920, followed by independence for the Irish Free State in 1922. Six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster remained within the UK, which then changed to the current name in 1927 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.[16]
After World War I, the world's first large-scale international broadcasting network, the BBC, was created. Britain fought Nazi Germany in World War II, with its Commonwealth allies including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, later to be joined by further allies such as the United States. Wartime leader Winston Churchill and his peacetime successor Clement Atlee helped plan the post-war world as part of the "Big Three". World War II left the United Kingdom financially damaged. Loans taken out during and after World War II from both Canada and the United States were economically costly but, along with post-war Marshall aid, the UK began the road to recovery.
The immediate post-war years saw the establishment of the British Welfare State, including one of the world's first and most comprehensive public health services, while the demands of a recovering economy brought people from all over the Commonwealth to create a multiethnic Britain. Although the new post-war limits of Britain's political role were confirmed by the Suez Crisis of 1956, the international spread of the language meant the continuing impact of its literature and culture, while at the same time from the 1960s its popular culture found influence abroad. Following a period of global economic slowdown and industrial strife in the 1970s, the 1980s saw the inflow of substantial oil revenues and economic growth. The premiership of Margaret Thatcher marked a significant change of direction from the post-war political and economic consensus; a path that was not reversed by the New Labour government of Tony Blair in 1997.
The United Kingdom was one of the 12 founding members of the European Union at its launch in 1992 with the signing of the Treaty on European Union. Prior to that, it had been a member of the EU's forerunner, the European Economic Community (EEC), from 1973. The attitude of the present Labour government towards further integration with this organisation is mixed,[17] with the Conservative Party favouring a return of some powers and competencies to the state,[18] and the Liberal Democrats supportive of current engagement.
The end of the 20th century saw a major change to the government of the United Kingdom with the creation of a devolved Scottish parliament and Welsh Assembly. This produced the prospect of a legislative path to independence for Scotland when in 2007 the Scottish National Party formed a minority government in Scotland, with a mandate to hold a referendum on independence by 2011.
Government and politics
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as head of state; the monarch of the UK serves as head of state of fifteen other Commonwealth countries, putting the UK in a personal union with those other states. The Crown has sovereignty over the Isle of Man and the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey. Collectively, these three territories are known as the Crown dependencies, lands owned by the British monarch but not part of the United Kingdom. They are not part of the European Union. However, the Parliament of the United Kingdom has the authority to legislate for the dependencies, and the British government manages their foreign affairs and defence.
The UK has fourteen overseas territories around the world, the last remaining territories of the British Empire. The overseas territories are not considered part of the UK, but in most cases, the local populations have British citizenship and the right of abode in the UK. This has been the case since 2002.
The UK has a parliamentary government based on strong traditions: the Westminster system has been emulated around the world — a legacy of the British Empire.
The UK's constitution governs the legal framework of the country and consists mostly of written sources, including statutes, judge made case law, and international treaties. As there is no technical difference between ordinary statutes and law considered to be "constitutional law," the British Parliament can perform "constitutional reform" simply by passing Acts of Parliament and thus has the power to change or abolish almost any written or unwritten element of the constitution. However, no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change.[19] The United Kingdom is one of the three countries in the world today that does not have a codified constitution (the other two being New Zealand and Israel).[20]
The position of Prime Minister, the UK's head of government, belongs to the current leader of the political party that can obtain the confidence of a plurality in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are formally appointed by the Monarch to form Her Majesty's Government. However, the Prime Minister chooses the Cabinet, and by convention, HM The Queen respects the Prime Minister's choices. The Cabinet is traditionally drawn from members of the Prime Minister's party in both legislative houses, and mostly from the House of Commons, to which they are responsible. Executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister and Cabinet, all of whom are sworn into Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and become Ministers of the Crown. The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, leader of the Labour Party, has been Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service since 27 June 2007.
The Parliament of the United Kingdom that meets in the Palace of Westminster, is the ultimate legislative authority in the United Kingdom. A devolved parliament in Scotland and devolved assemblies in Northern Ireland, and Wales were established following public approval as expressed in referenda, but these are not sovereign bodies and could be abolished by the UK parliament. The UK parliament is made up of two houses: an elected House of Commons and an appointed House of Lords, and any Bill passed requires the assent of HM The Queen to become law. For elections to the House of Commons, the UK is currently divided into 646 constituencies, with 529 in England, 18 in Northern Ireland, 59 in Scotland and 40 in Wales, though this number will rise to 650 at the next General Election. Each constituency elects one Member of Parliament by simple plurality. General Elections are called by the Monarch when the Prime Minister so advises. Though there is no minimum term for a Parliament, a new election must be called within five years of the previous general election.
Questions over sovereignty have been brought forward due to the UK's membership of the European Union.[21]
The UK's three major political parties are the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, and the Liberal Democrats, winning between them 616 out of the 646 seats available in the House of Commons at the 2005 General Election. Most of the remaining seats were won by parties that only contest elections in one part of the UK such as the Scottish National Party (Scotland only), Plaid Cymru (Wales only), and the Democratic Unionist Party, Social Democratic and Labour Party, Ulster Unionist Party, and Sinn Féin (Northern Ireland only, though Sinn Féin also contests elections in Ireland). In accordance with party policy, no elected Sinn Féin Member of Parliament has ever attended the House of Commons to speak in the House on behalf of their constituents as Members of Parliament are required to take an oath of allegiance to the Monarch. However, the current five Sinn Féin MPs have since 2002 made use of the offices and other facilities available at Westminster.[22]
Devolved national administrations
Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each has a devolved, unicameral legislature and its own government or Executive, led by a First Minister. England, despite being the largest country of the United Kingdom, has no devolved executive or legislature and is ruled and legislated for directly by the UK government and parliament. This situation has given rise to the so-called West Lothian question which concerns the fact that MPs from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales help decide the laws that apply to England alone.
The Scottish Parliament has wide ranging legislative powers over any matter that has not been specifically 'reserved' to the UK parliament, including education, healthcare, Scots law and local government. Following their victory at the 2007 elections, the pro-independence SNP formed a minority government with its leader, Alex Salmond, becoming First Minister of Scotland. The pro-union parties responded to the electoral success of the SNP by creating a Commission to examine the case for devolving additional powers while excluding Scottish independence as an option,[23] though the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Wendy Alexander, has now indicated that Labour will support calls for independence to be placed before the people in a referendum in the hope that a vote to reject independence would settle the constitutional debate for a generation.[24]Most opinion polls do show minority support for independence though support varies depending on the nature of the question. However, a poll in April 2008 that used the proposed referendum wording found support for independence had reached 41% with just 40% supporting retention of the Union.[25]
The National Assembly for Wales has more limited devolved powers than those devolved to Scotland[26] though it can increase its powers on a case by case basis through Legislative Competency Orders.[27] The Northern Ireland Assembly has powers closer to those already devolved to Scotland.
Local government
Each country of the United Kingdom has its own system of local government, with power over local government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland being devolved. City status is governed by Royal Charter and is conferred separate from local government arrangements.
The upper-tier subdivisions of England are the nine Regions also known as European Union government office regions. London voted in favour of having a directly elected assembly in 1998 and it was intended that other regions would also be given their own elected regional assemblies, but a rejection by a referendum in 2004 of a proposed assembly in the North East region stopped this idea in its tracks.[28] Below the region level, London consists of 32 London boroughs and the rest of England has either county councils and district councils or unitary authorities.
Northern Ireland is presently divided into 26 districts for local government purposes though these councils do not carry out the same range of functions as would be the case in the rest of the United Kingdom. However, on 13 March 2008, the Executive agreed on proposals to create 11 new councils to replace the present system.[29]
Scotland is divided into 32 council areas with wide variation in both size and population. The cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee are separate council areas as also is Highland Council which includes a third of Scotland's area but just over 200,000 people. The power invested in local authorities is administered by elected councillors, of which there are currently 1,222 who are each paid a part-time salary. Elections are conducted by Single Transferable Vote in multi-member wards that elect either three or four councillors. Each council elects a Provost or Convenor to chair meetings of the council and to act as a figurehead for the area.
Local government in Wales consists of 22 unitary authorities, including the cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport which are separate unitary authorities in their own right.
For more ceremonial purposes, HM The Queen appoints a Lord-Lieutenant as her personal representative in lieutenancy areas across the UK.
Foreign relations and armed forces
The United Kingdom is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a member of the G8 and NATO, and a member state of the European Union. The UK has a "Special Relationship" with the United States. Apart from the US and Europe, Britain's close allies include Commonwealth nations, Ireland and other English speaking countries. Britain's global presence and influence is further amplified through its trading relations and its armed forces, which maintain approximately eighty military installations and other deployments around the globe.[30]
The Army, Navy and Air Force are collectively known as the British Armed Forces (or Her Majesty's Armed Forces) and officially the Armed Forces of the Crown. The commander-in-chief is the monarch, HM Queen Elizabeth II and they are managed by the Ministry of Defence. The armed forces are controlled by the Defence Council, chaired by the Chief of the Defence Staff.
The United Kingdom fields one of the most technologically advanced and best trained armed forces in the world. According to various sources, including the Ministry of Defence, the UK has the second highest military expenditure in the world,[31][32] despite only having the 27th largest military in terms of manpower. Total defence spending currently accounts for 2.2% of total national GDP, compared to 4.4% at the end of the Cold War.[33] It is the second largest spender on military science, engineering and technology.[34] The Royal Navy is considered to be the only other blue-water navy along with those of France and the United States.[35] The British Armed Forces are equipped with advanced weapons systems, including the Challenger 2 tank and the Eurofighter Typhoon jet fighter. The Ministry of Defence confirmed the acquisition of two new super carrier sized aircraft carriers on 25 July 2007.
The United Kingdom is one of the five recognised countries possessing nuclear weapons, utilising the Vanguard class submarine-based Trident II ballistic missile system.
The British Armed Forces are charged with protecting the United Kingdom and its overseas territories, promoting the United Kingdom's global security interests, and supporting international peacekeeping efforts. They are active and regular participants in NATO, including the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, as well as the Five Power Defence Arrangements and other worldwide coalition operations. Overseas garrisons and facilities are maintained at Ascension Island, Belize, Brunei, Canada, Diego Garcia, the Falkland Islands, Germany, Gibraltar, Kenya, and Cyprus.[36][37]
The British Army had a reported strength of 102,440 in 2005,[38] the Royal Air Force a strength of 49,210 and the 36,320-strong Royal Navy, which includes the Royal Marines, who provide commando units specialising in amphibious warfare.
The United Kingdom Special Forces, provide troops trained for quick, mobile, military responses in counter-terrorism, land, maritime and amphibious operations, often where secrecy or covert tactics are required.
There are reserve forces supporting the regular military. These include the Territorial Army, the Royal Naval Reserve, Royal Marines Reserve and the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. This puts total active and reserve duty military personnel at approximately 429,500, deployed in over eighty countries.
Despite the United Kingdom's military capabilities, recent pragmatic defence policy has a stated assumption that "the most demanding operations" would be undertaken as part of a coalition.[39] Setting aside the intervention in Sierra Leone, operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq may all be taken as precedent. Indeed the last war in which the British military fought alone was the Falklands War of 1982, in which they were victorious.
Law
The United Kingdom does not have a single legal system due to it being created by the political union of previously independent countries and the terms of the Treaty of Union guaranteeing the continued existence of Scotland's separate legal system. Today the UK has three distinct systems of law: English law and Northern Ireland law are based on common-law principles whereas Scots law is a hybrid system based on both common-law and civil-law principles. The Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (usually just referred to as "The House of Lords") is presently the highest court for both criminal and civil cases in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and for civil cases under Scots law. Recent constitutional changes will see the powers of the House of Lords transfer to a new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.[40] The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, (comprising the same members as the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords), is the highest court of appeal for several independent Commonwealth countries, the UK overseas territories, and the British crown dependencies.
English law applies in England and Wales. The essence of English common law is that it is made by judges sitting in courts, applying their common sense and knowledge of legal precedent (stare decisis) to the facts before them. The court system is headed by the Supreme Court of Judicature of England and Wales, consisting of the Court of Appeal, the High Court of Justice (for civil cases) and the Crown Court (for criminal cases). The Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (usually just referred to, as "The House of Lords") is presently the highest court in the land for both criminal and civil cases in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. A decision of the highest appeal court in England and Wales, the House of Lords, is binding on every other court in the hierarchy, and they will follow its directions.
Crime in England and Wales increased in the period between 1981 and 1995 though, since that peak, there has been an overall fall of 42% in crime from 1995 to 2006/7.[41]Despite the fall in crime rates, the prison population of England and Wales has almost doubled over the same period, to over 80,000, giving England and Wales the highest rate of incarceration in Western Europe at 147 per 100,000.[42]Her Majesty's Prison Service, which reports to the Ministry of Justice, manages most of the prisons within England and Wales.
Scots law applies in Scotland. The chief courts are the Court of Session, for civil cases, and the High Court of Justiciary, for criminal cases, while the sheriff court undertakes almost all the functions of the English County Court but also conducts criminal trials with a jury (Sheriff solemn Court) or with a Sheriff and no jury (Sheriff summary Court). The Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (usually just referred to as "The House of Lords") presently serves as the highest court of appeal for civil cases under Scots law. The Scots legal system is unique in having three possible verdicts for a criminal trial: "guilty", "not guilty" and "not proven". Both "not guilty" and "not proven" result in an acquittal with no possibility of retrial. The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) manages Scotland's prisons with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice responsible for the Scottish Prison Service within the Scottish Government.
Geography
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland comprises the island of Great Britain (most of England, Scotland and Wales) and the northeastern one-sixth of the island of Ireland (Northern Ireland), together with smaller islands. The mainland lies between latitudes 49° and 59° N (the Shetland Islands reach to nearly 61° N), and longitudes 8° W to 2° E. The Royal Greenwich Observatory, near London, is the defining point of the Prime Meridian. The UK lies between the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, and comes within 35 kilometres (22 mi) of the northwest coast of France, from which it is separated by the English Channel. Northern Ireland shares a 360-kilometre (224 mi) land boundary with Ireland. The Channel Tunnel ("Chunnel") now links the UK with France beneath the English Channel. The greatest distance between two points on the UK mainland of Great Britain is 1,350 kilometres (840 mi) between Land's End in Cornwall (near Penzance) and John O'Groats in Caithness (near Thurso), a two day journey by car. When measured directly north-south it is a little over 1,100 kilometres (700 mi) in length and is a fraction under 500 kilometres (300 mi) at its widest. The total area of the United Kingdom is approximately 245,000 square kilometres (94,600 sq mi).
The United Kingdom has a temperate climate, with plentiful rainfall all year round. The temperature varies with the seasons but seldom drops below −10 °C (14.0 °F) or rises above 35 °C (95 °F). The prevailing wind is from the southwest, bearing frequent spells of mild and wet weather from the Atlantic Ocean. Eastern parts are most sheltered from this wind and are therefore the driest. Atlantic currents, warmed by the Gulf Stream, bring mild winters, especially in the west, where winters are wet, especially over high ground. Summers are warmest in the south east of England, being closest to the European mainland, and coolest in the north. Snowfall can occur in winter and early spring, though it rarely settles to great depth away from high ground.
England accounts for just over half of the total area of the UK, covering 130,410 square kilometres (50,350 sq mi). Most of the country consists of lowland terrain, and mountainous terrain north-west of the Tees-Exe line. Mountain chains are found in the north-west (Cumbrian Mountains of the Lake District), north (the upland moors of the Pennines and limestone hills of the Peak District) and south-west (Exmoor and Dartmoor). Lower ranges include the limestone hills of the Isle of Purbeck, Cotswolds and Lincolnshire Wolds, and the chalk downs of the Southern England Chalk Formation. The main rivers and estuaries are the Thames, Severn and the Humber Estuary. England's highest mountain is Scafell Pike, which is in the Lake District 978 metres (3,209 ft). England has a number of large towns and cities and, in terms of Larger Urban Zones, has six of the top 50 Zones in the European Union.
Scotland accounts for about a third of the total area of the UK, covering 78,789 square kilometres (30,420 sq mi). The topography of Scotland is distinguished by the Highland Boundary Fault – a geological rock fracture – which traverses the Scottish mainland from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. The faultline separates two distinctively different regions; namely the Highlands to the north and west and the lowlands to the south and east. The more rugged Highland region contains the majority of Scotland's mountainous terrain, including the highest peak, Ben Nevis, at 1,344 metres (4,409 ft). Lowland areas, in the southern part of Scotland, are flatter and home to most of the population, especially the narrow waist of land between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth known as the Central Belt. Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, although Edinburgh is the capital and political centre of the country. Scotland also has nearly eight hundred islands, mainly west and north of the mainland, notably the Hebrides, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands.
Wales accounts for less than a tenth of the total area of the UK, covering just 20,758 square kilometres (8,010 sq mi). Wales is mostly mountainous though South Wales is less mountainous than North and Mid Wales. The main population and industrial areas are in South Wales, consisting of the cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport and surrounding South Wales Valleys. The highest mountains in Wales are in Snowdonia, and include Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa in Welsh), which, at 1,085 m (3,560 ft) is the highest peak in Wales. The 14 (or possibly 15) Welsh mountains over 3,000 feet (914 m) high are known collectively as the Welsh 3000s. Wales borders England to the east and the sea in the other three directions: the Bristol Channel to the south, St George's Channel to the west, and the Irish Sea to the north. Wales has over 1,200 km (750 miles) of coastline. There are several islands off the Welsh mainland, the largest being Anglesey (Ynys Môn) in the northwest.
Northern Ireland accounts for just 14,160 square kilometres (5,470 sq mi) and is mostly hilly. It includes Lough Neagh, at 388 square kilometres (150 sq mi), the largest body of water in the UK and Ireland.[43] The highest peak is Slieve Donard at 849 metres (2,785 ft) in the province's Mourne Mountains.
Cities and conurbations
The capitals of the individual countries of the UK are: Belfast (Northern Ireland), Cardiff (Wales), Edinburgh (Scotland) and London (England), which is also the capital of the UK as a whole.
The largest conurbations are as follows:
* Greater London Urban Area - 8.28 million
* West Midlands conurbation - 2.28 million
* Greater Manchester Urban Area - 2.24 million
* West Yorkshire Urban Area - 1.50 million
* Greater Glasgow - 1.17 million
Demography
Population, migration and ethnicity
At the April 2001 UK Census, the total population of the United Kingdom was 58,789,194, the third largest in the European Union (behind Germany and France), the fifth largest in the Commonwealth and the twenty-first largest in the world. By mid-2006, this had been estimated to have increased to 60,587,300.[44] Much of this increase was due to net immigration but was also due to a rising birth rate and increasing life expectancy.[45]
England's population by mid-2006 was estimated to be 50,762,900 making it one of the most densely populated countries in the world with 383 people resident per square kilometre.[46] About a quarter of the UK population lives in England's prosperous south-east and is predominantly urban and suburban,[47] with an estimated 7,517,700 in the capital of London.[48]
The mid-2006 estimates put Scotland's population at 5,116,900, Wales at 2,965,900 and Northern Ireland at 1,741,600[49] with much lower population densities than England. Compared to England's 383 people resident per square kilometre, the corresponding figures were 142 for Wales, 125 for Northern Ireland and just 65 for Scotland.
In 2006, the average total fertility rate (TFR) across the UK was 1.84 children per woman,[50] below the replacement rate of 2.1 but higher than the 2001 record low of 1.63. Within the UK, England and Wales, at 1.86, were both close to the UK average, but Scotland was lower at only 1.67. The UK's TFR was considerably higher during the 1960s 'baby boom', peaking at 2.95 children per woman in 1964.[51]
The present day population of the UK is descended from varied ethnic stocks though mainly: pre-Celtic, Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and the Normans. Since 1945, international ties forged by the British Empire have contributed to substantial immigration, especially from Africa, Caribbean and South Asia. Since EU citizens are free to live and work in other EU member states, the accession of new to the EU of new member states from Central and Eastern Europe in 2004 has resulted in rising immigration from these countries. As of 2001, 92.1% of the population identified themselves as White, leaving 7.9%[52] of the UK population identifying themselves as mixed race or ethnic minority.
Ethnic diversity varies significantly across the UK. 30.4 per cent of London's population[53] and 37.4 per cent of Leicester's[54] was estimated to be non-white as of June 2005, whereas less than 5 per cent of the populations of North East England, Wales and the South West were from ethnic minorities according to the 2001 census.[55]As of 2007, 22% of primary school children and 17.7% of children at secondary school in England were from ethnic minority families.[56]
In contrast with some other European countries, high foreign-born immigration is contributing to a rising population,[57] accounting for about half of the population increase between 1991 and 2001. The latest official figures (2006) show net immigration to the UK of 191,000 (591,000 immigrants and 400,000 emigrants) up from 185,000 in 2005 (overall, there was a loss of 126,000 Britons and a gain of 316,000 foreign citizens).[58][59][60] One in six were from Eastern European countries, with larger numbers coming from New Commonwealth countries.[61] Immigration from the Indian subcontinent, mainly fuelled by family reunion, accounted for two-thirds of net immigration.[62] By contrast, at least 5.5 million British-born people are living abroad.[63][64][65] The most popular emigrant destinations were Australia, Spain, France, New Zealand and the U.S.[66][67][68]
A study by a city forecaster, however, contends that the above immigration figures are unreliable and that net immigration for 2005 was circa 400,000.[69] Nonetheless, the proportion of foreign-born people in the UK population remains slightly below that of some other European countries.[70]
In 2004, the number of people who became British citizens rose to a record 140,795 - a rise of 12% on the previous year. This number had risen dramatically since 2000. The overwhelming majority of new citizens come from Africa (32%) and Asia (40%), the largest three groups being people from Pakistan, India and Somalia.[71] In 2006, there were 149,035 applications for British citizenship, 32% fewer than in 2005. The number of people granted citizenship during 2006 was 154,095, 5% fewer than in 2005. The largest groups of people granted British citizenship were from India, Pakistan, Somalia and the Philippines.[72] 21.9% of babies born in England and Wales in 2006 were born to mothers who were born outside the UK, (146,956 out of 669,601), according to official statistics released in 2007 that also show the highest birth rates for 26 years.[73] As in the rest of the European Union, however, the birth rate remains below the replacement rate.[74][75]
When the EU enlarged further east in 2004 and again in 2007, this gave the right for nationals from countries like Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania, and more recently Romania and Bulgaria to live in the UK. Figures published in August 2007 indicated that 682,940 people applied to the Worker Registration Scheme (for nationals of the central and eastern European states that joined the EU in May 2004) between 1 May 2004 and 30 June 2007, of whom 656,395 were accepted.[76] Self-employed workers and people who are not working (including students) are not required to register under the scheme so this figure represents a lower limit on immigration inflow. These figures do not indicate the number of immigrants who have since returned home, but 56% of applicants in the 12 months ending 30 June 2007 reported planning to stay for a maximum of three months, with net migration in 2005 from the new EU states standing at 64,000.[59] Research suggests that a total of around 1 million people had moved from the new EU member states to the UK by April 2008, but that half this number have since returned home or moved on to a third country.[77][78]
National Insurance Number data suggests that 2.5 million foreign workers moved to the UK to work (including those moving for short periods), the majority from EU countries, between 2002 and 2007.[79]
The UK government is currently introducing a new points-based immigration system to replace the existing schemes for immigration from outside of the European Economic Area.
Languages
Though the UK does not de jure have an official language, the predominant spoken language is English, a West Germanic language descended from Old English featuring a large number of borrowings from Old Norse, Norman French and Latin. The English language has spread across the world (largely due to the British Empire) and has thus become the business language of the world. Worldwide, it is taught as a second language more than any other.[80]
The other indigenous languages of the UK are Scots (which is closely related to English) and four Celtic languages. The latter fall into two groups: two P-Celtic languages (Welsh and Cornish); and two Q-Celtic languages (Irish and Scottish Gaelic). Celtic dialectal influences from Cumbric persisted in Northern England for centuries, most famously in a unique set of numbers used for counting sheep (see Yan Tan Tethera). According to the 2001 census, just above 20% of the population of Wales claim to be able to speak Welsh which represents a slight increase on 1991. In addition, it is estimated that about 200,000 Welsh speakers live in England.[81] Welsh and Scottish Gaelic are also spoken by small groups around the globe with some Gaelic still spoken in Nova Scotia, Canada, and Welsh in Patagonia, Argentina.
Immigrant languages constitute for up to 10% of the UK's population, French is spoken by 2.3% of the country's population, 1.0% of Britons speak Polish reflecting the recent mass migration to the UK. 0.9% of the UK's population speak German and 0.8% Spanish. The majority of other foreign languages spoken in the UK originate from Europe, Asia and Africa. A large percentage of the immigrants to the UK come from Anglophone countries (such as Nigeria, Jamaica, Hong Kong and the Philippines), which is why there is not a great deal of diversity between some of the country's ethnic minority communities.
Religion
While the United Kingdom has a long tradition of Christianity and a link between church and state still remains in England, in practice the UK is a predominantly secular society with only 38%[82] proclaiming a belief in a God. People identify themselves with religion in the UK for both cultural and religious reasons and this is reflected by the disparity between the figures for those proclaiming a belief in a God and those identifying themselves with a particular religion. Christianity has the largest number of adherents followed by Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Judaism.
Christianity
Christianity is the major religion with many Christian churches, denominations, and groups. The Tearfund Survey[83] in 2007 revealed 53% identified themselves as Christian. The report compared this to the 2004 British Social Attitudes Survey in which the results were very similar,[84] and to the 2001 UK Census in which 71.6% said that Christianity was their religion,[85] although noting that the latter used "a softer question".
The Church of England, which split from Rome in 1534 (see English Reformation) is, today, the 'established' Church in England and the senior branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The British monarch is required to be a member of the Church of England under the Act of Settlement 1701 and is its Supreme Governor. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop of the Church. The direct influence of the Church of England has been on the decline for years, but the church retains a representation in the UK Parliament and the right to draft legislative measures (usually related to religious administration), through the General Synod, that can be passed into law, but not amended by Parliament.
The Church of Scotland (known informally as the Kirk), which broke with Rome in 1560 (see Calvinism and Scottish Reformation) is a Presbyterian church, recognised as the national church of Scotland, and not subject to state control. The British monarch is an ordinary member, and is required to swear an oath to "defend the security" of the Church at the coronation. The Scottish Episcopal Church, which is now part of the Anglican Communion, dates from the final establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland in 1690, when it split from the Church of Scotland, and is not a 'daughter church' of the Church of England. Further splits in the Church of Scotland, especially in the nineteenth century, led to the creation of various other Presbyterian churches in Scotland, including the Free Church of Scotland.
In the 1920s, the Church in Wales was separated from the Church of England and became 'disestablished'. The Church in Wales remains in the Anglican Communion. Methodism and other independent churches are traditionally strong in Wales.
The Anglican Church of Ireland was disestablished in the nineteenth century. It covers the entire island of Ireland (both Northern Ireland and Ireland). In Northern Ireland the Catholic Church in Ireland is the largest single denomination, although Protestants are in the majority overall. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland is the largest Protestant denomination and is in terms of theology and history closely linked to the Church of Scotland
The Roman Catholic Church is the second largest denomination of Christianity in the UK. After the Protestant Reformation, strict laws were passed against Catholics; these were removed by the Catholic Emancipation laws in 1829. There are separate Catholic hierarchies for England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
Other large Christian groups include the Methodists (founded by John Wesley in London) and the Baptists. There are also growing Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, many of which have flourished with immigration from around the Commonwealth and beyond. Pentecostal churches are now third after the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church in terms of church attendance.[86]
Other religions
Muslims in the United Kingdom are believed to number 1.8 million.[87] Mosques are present in most regions: The biggest groups are of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian origin. More recently, refugees from Somalia, Northern Cyprus, the Balkans and Arab countries have increased Britain's Muslim population. The 2006 controversy over the burqa, brought up in comments by politician Jack Straw, reflects a split between some Britons questioning Muslim integration with British society, and others who believe that wearing the veil is compatible with it, in Britain.[88]
Religions of Indian origin, such as Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism are followed in Britain. As of the 2001 census, there are about 560,000 Hindus and 340,000 Sikhs. Buddhism is practised by about 150,000 people.[89] It is likely that these figures have increased since 2001. One non-governmental organisation estimates that there are 800,000 Hindus in the UK.[90] Leicester houses one of the world's few Jain temples that are outside of India.
There are approximately 270,000 Jews in Britain, according to the 2001 census.[91]
The United Kingdom has a large and growing atheist and agnostic population with 13,626,000 (23.2% of the UK population) either claiming no religion or not answering the question on religion at the 2001 census.[92]
Economy
The UK economy is made up (in descending order of size) of the economies of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The British started the Industrial Revolution, and, like most industrialising countries at the time, initially concentrated on heavy industries such as shipbuilding, coal mining, steel production, and textiles. The empire created an overseas market for British products, allowing the United Kingdom to dominate international trade in the 19th century. However, as other nations industrialised, coupled with economic decline after two world wars, the United Kingdom began to lose its competitive advantage and heavy industry declined, by degrees, throughout the 20th century. The British service sector, however, has grown substantially, and now makes up about 73% of GDP.[94]
The service sector of the United Kingdom is dominated by financial services, especially in banking and insurance. London is the world's largest financial centre with the London Stock Exchange, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange, and the Lloyd's of London insurance market all based in the City of London. It has the largest concentration of foreign bank branches in the world. In the past decade, a rival financial centre in London has grown in the Docklands area, with HSBC and Barclays Bank relocating their head offices there. Many multinational companies that are not primarily UK-based have chosen to site their European or rest-of-world headquarters in London: an example is the US financial services firm Citigroup. The Scottish capital, Edinburgh, has one of the large financial centres of Europe.[95]
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is the leader of the three "command centres" for the global economy (along with New York City and Tokyo).[96] In recent years, the UK economy has been managed in accordance with principles of market liberalisation and low taxation and regulation. Based on market exchange rates, the United Kingdom is the fifth largest economy in the world,[97] and the second largest in Europe after Germany.
Tourism is very important to the British economy. With over 27 million tourists a year, the United Kingdom is ranked as the sixth major tourist destination in the world.[98]
The British manufacturing sector, however, has greatly diminished, relative to the economy as a whole, since World War II. It is still a significant part of the economy, but only accounted for one-sixth of national output in 2003.[99] The British motor industry is a significant part of this sector, although it has diminished with the collapse of MG Rover and most of the industry is foreign owned. Civil and defence aircraft production is led by the United Kingdom's largest aerospace firm, BAE Systems, and the continental European firm EADS, the owner of Airbus. Rolls-Royce holds a major share of the global aerospace engines market. The chemical and pharmaceutical industry is strong in the UK, with the world's second and sixth largest pharmaceutical firms (GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, respectively)[100] being based in the UK.
The creative industries accounted for 7.3% GVA in 2004 and grew at an average of 5% per annum between 1997 and 2004.[101]
The United Kingdom's agriculture sector accounts for only 0.9% of the country's GDP.[102]
The UK has a small coal reserve along with significant natural gas, and oil reserves.
Government involvement throughout the economy is exercised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (currently Alistair Darling) who heads HM Treasury, but the Prime Minister (currently The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP), is First Lord of the Treasury; the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Second Lord of the Treasury. However since 1997, the Bank of England, headed by the Governor of the Bank of England, has control of interest rates and other monetary policy.
As of 2007, United Kingdom's government debt rose to 43.3% of GDP.[103]
The currency of the UK is the pound sterling, represented by the symbol £. The Bank of England is the central bank, responsible for issuing currency. Banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland retain the right to issue their own notes, subject to retaining enough Bank of England notes in reserve to cover the issue. The UK chose not to join the euro at the currency's launch, and the British Prime Minister, The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, has ruled out membership for the foreseeable future, saying that the decision not to join had been right for Britain and for Europe.[104] The government of former Prime Minister Tony Blair had pledged to hold a public referendum for deciding membership should "five economic tests" be met. In 2005, more than half (55%) of the UK were against adopting the currency, while 30% were in favour.[105]
Education
Each country of the United Kingdom has a separate education system, with power over education matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland being devolved. The UK was ranked 14th in the world in 2006 for science by the Programme for International Student Assessment which was higher than the OECD average. [8]
Scotland first legislated for universal provision of education in 1696. The proportion of children in Scotland attending private schools is just over 4% though it has been rising slowly in recent years.[106] In Scotland, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning is responsible to the Scottish Parliament for education, with day to day administration and funding of state schools being the responsibility of Local Authorities. Qualifications at the secondary school and post-secondary (further education) level are provided by the Scottish Qualifications Authority and delivered through various schools, colleges and other centres. Scottish students who attend Scottish universities pay neither tuition fees nor graduate endowment charges as the fees were abolished in 2001 and the graduate endowment scheme was abolished in 2008.[107]
Education in England is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, though the day to day administration and funding of state schools is the responsibility of Local Education Authorities. Universal state education in England and Wales was introduced for primary level in 1870 and secondary level in 1900.[108] Education is mandatory from ages five to sixteen (15 if born in late July or August). The majority of children are educated in state-sector schools, only a small proportion of which select on the grounds of academic ability. Despite a fall in actual numbers, the proportion of children in England attending private schools has risen to over 7%.[109] Just over half of students at the leading universities of Cambridge and Oxford had attended state schools.[110] State schools which are allowed to select pupils according to intelligence and academic ability can achieve comparable results to the most selective private schools: out of the top ten performing schools in terms of GCSE results in 2006 two were state-run grammar schools. England has some of the top universities in the world with Cambridge, Oxford, and London ranked amongst the top 20 in the 2007 THES - QS World University Rankings.[111]There are fears, however, that a decline in England in the number studying a foreign language will have a negative effect on business, and has led to calls for languages to be given greater priority.[112][113]
The Northern Ireland Assembly is responsible for education in Northern Ireland though responsibility at a local level is administered by 5 Education and Library Boards covering different geographical areas.
The National Assembly for Wales has responsibility for education in Wales. A significant number of students in Wales are educated either wholly or largely through the medium of Welsh and lessons in the language are compulsory for all until the age of 16. There are plans to increase the provision of Welsh Medium schools as part of the policy of having a fully bi-lingual Wales.
Healthcare
Each country of the United Kingdom has a separate public healthcare system, with power over the provision of health services in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland being devolved. A much smaller private medical system also exists. Each public system provides healthcare that is free at the point of need (being funded from general taxation). Despite this similarity, considerable differences are now developing between the different systems.[114]The UK and devolved governments take on both the role of suppliers of public healthcare and assessors of the quality of its delivery through groups organised directly by government departments, such as NICE and CHI. Various regulatory bodies are organised on a UK-wide basis such as the General Medical Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council and non-governmental-based (e.g. Royal Colleges). Across the UK, there is a large number of medical schools and dental schools, and a considerable establishment for training nurses and professions allied to medicine.
Though the public health systems are commonly referred to as the NHS across the UK, in fact the National Health Service just covers England. The NHS was set up by the National Health Service Act 1946 and came into effect on July 5th 1948. The Secretary of State for Health is answerable to the UK Parliament for the running of the Department of Health and for the work of the NHS (in England). The NHS is one of the largest cohesive organisations of any type in the world employing over 1.3 million people.[115] Public sector healthcare delivery consists of primary (General Practice), secondary (district general hospital) and tertiary (teaching hospital) levels of service. There is considerable interaction and cross-flow between the various levels.
NHS Scotland provides public healthcare in Scotland with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing responsible to the Scottish Parliament for the its work. The service was founded by the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1947 (later repealed by the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978) that took effect on July 5th, 1948 to coincide with the launch of the NHS in England and Wales. In 2006, the NHS in Scotland had around 158,000 staff including more than 47,500 nurses, midwives and health visitors and over 3,800 consultants. In addition, there were also more than 12,000 doctors, family practitioners and allied health professionals, including dentists, opticians and community pharmacists, who operate as independent contractors providing a range of services within the NHS in return for fees and allowances.[116]
NHS Wales was originally formed as part of the same NHS structure created by the National Health Service Act 1946 but powers over the NHS in Wales came under the Secretary of State for Wales in 1969.[117] In turn, responsibility for NHS Wales was passed to the Welsh Assembly and Executive under devolution in 1999. NHS Wales provides public healthcare in Wales and employs some 90,000 staff, making it Wales’ biggest employer.[118] The Minister for Health and Social Services is the person within the Welsh Assembly Government who holds cabinet responsibilities for both health and social care in Wales.
Transport
The transport systems in the United Kingdom are the responsibility of each individual country. The English transport network is the responsibility of the UK Department for Transport (which also has responsibility for transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are not devolved.) In Scotland, the Scottish Government's Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department is responsible for the Scottish transport network with Transport Scotland being the Executive Agency that is accountable to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth.[119]
A radial road network of 46,904 kilometres (29,145 mi) of main roads is centred on London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, whilst, in Great Britain, a motorway network of 3,497 kilometres (2,173 mi) is centred on Birmingham, Manchester and London. There are a further 213,750 kilometres (132,818 mi) of paved roads.
The National Rail network of 16,116 km (10,072 miles) in Great Britain and 303 route km (189 route mi) in Northern Ireland carries over 18,000 passenger trains and 1,000 freight trains daily. Urban rail networks are well developed in London and other cities. There was once over 48,000 route km (30,000 route mi) of rail network in the UK, however most of this was reduced over a time period from 1955 to 1975, much of it after a report by a government advisor Richard Beeching in the mid 1960s (known as the Beeching Axe).
Heathrow Airport is the world's busiest international airport and, being an island country, the UK has a considerable number of sea ports.
The Department for Transport states that traffic congestion is one of the most serious transport problems and that it could cost England an extra £22 billion in wasted time by 2025 if left unchecked.[120] According to the government-sponsored Eddington report of 2006, congestion is in danger of harming the economy, unless tackled by road pricing and expansion of the transport network.[121][122]
Sport
Major sports originated in the United Kingdom, including football, rugby, cricket, tennis and golf.
Football
Like many team sports, football is organised on a separate basis for each of the countries of the United Kingdom and each has its own Football Association, national team and league system, though a few clubs play outside their country's respective systems for a variety of historical and logistical reasons. Football was developed in the UK and is comfortably the most popular sport.
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compete as separate countries in international competition and, as a consequence, the UK does not compete as a single team in football events at the Olympic Games. Although there are proposals to have a UK team take part in the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, which are to be held in London, the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football associations have declined to participate, fearing that it would undermine their independent status - a fear confirmed by FIFA president Sepp Blatter.[123] England has been the most successful of the home nations, winning the World Cup in 1966.
The English football league system includes hundreds of inter-linked leagues, consisting of thousands of divisions. The FA Premier League is at the top, followed by The Football League and then the Football Conference, where the structure starts to become regional and includes the Northern Premier League, the Southern League, the Isthmian League and more besides. The Premiership is the most-watched football league in the world and is particularly popular in Asia; in the People's Republic of China, matches attract television audiences between 100 million and 360 million, more than any other foreign sport.[124] England is home to world-renowned football clubs such as Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, and Arsenal. English teams have been successful in European Competitions including some who have become European Cup/UEFA Champions League winners: Liverpool (five times), Manchester United (three times), Nottingham Forest (twice) and Aston Villa. More clubs from England have won the European Cup than any other country (four compared to three from Italy, Germany and the Netherlands). Moreover, England ranks second in the all time list of European club trophies won with 35, one behind Italy's 36. The European Cup competition itself was brought about due to the success of another English club, Wolverhampton Wanderers, against top European sides[125] in the 1950s. The 90,000 capacity Wembley Stadium is the principal sporting stadium of England.
The Scottish football league system is much smaller, with just two national leagues: the Scottish Premier League (SPL) and the Scottish Football League which has three divisions. There are, however, other regional leagues that are not connected to the national system, most notably the Highland Football League. One English club, Berwick Rangers, plays in the Scottish system. Scotland is home to world-renowned football clubs such as Rangers and Celtic. Scottish teams that have been successful in European Competitions include Celtic (European Cup in 1967), Rangers (European Cup Winners Cup 1972) and Aberdeen (European Cup Winners Cup and European Super Cup in 1983).
The Welsh football league system includes the Welsh Premier League and regional leagues. Welsh Premiership club The New Saints play their home matches on the English side of the border in Oswestry. The Welsh clubs of Cardiff City, Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport County, Swansea City and Wrexham play in the English system. Cardiff's 73,000 seater Millennium Stadium is the principal sporting stadium of Wales.
The Northern Irish football league system includes the Irish Football League. One Northern Irish club, Derry City, plays their football outside of the UK in the Republic of Ireland football league system.
Other sports
Both forms of rugby are national sports. Rugby League originates from and is generally played in the Northern England, whilst Rugby Union is played predominantly in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Southern England. Though supposedly originating from the actions of William Webb Ellis at the School at Rugby, it is now considered the national sport of Wales. In rugby league the UK has been represented by a single 'Great Britain' team but this will change for the 2008 Rugby League World Cup in which Scotland, England and Ireland will compete as separate nations.[126] This bring it into line with Rugby Union in which England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (which consists of players from Ireland and Northern Ireland) already compete in international competition. However, every four years a British and Irish Lions team tours Australia, New Zealand or South Africa, composed of players selected from all the Home nations.
There is no UK-wide team in Cricket. The game was invented in England and the England Cricket Team, technically the England and Wales team, is the only national team in the UK with Test status. Irish and Scottish players have played for England because neither Scotland nor Ireland have Test status and only play in One Day Internationals. As of 2006, teams representing Scotland, England (and Wales), and Ireland (including Northern Ireland) compete at the One-Day International level. England and Wales has a professional league championship in which County teams compete.
Snooker is also one of Great Britain's sporting exports. A high-skill game similar to billiards, the world championships are held annually in Sheffield. The sport continues to expand worldwide, with huge growth in China.
The game of tennis first originated from the City of Birmingham between 1859 and 1865. The Wimbledon Championships are international tennis events held in Wimbledon in south London every summer and are regarded as the most prestigious event of the global tennis calendar.
Thoroughbred racing is popular throughout the UK. It originated under Charles II of England as the "Sport of Kings" and is a royal pastime to this day. World-famous horse races include the Grand National, the Epsom Derby and Royal Ascot. The town of Newmarket is considered the centre of English racing, largely due to the famous Newmarket Racecourse.
The UK has proved successful in the international sporting arena in rowing. It is widely considered that the sport's most successful rower is Steven Redgrave who won five gold medals and one bronze medal at five consecutive Olympic Games as well as numerous wins at the World Rowing Championships and Henley Royal Regatta.
Golf is one of the most popular participation sports played in the UK, with St Andrews in Scotland being the sport's home course.
Shinty (or camanachd) (A sport derived from the same root as the Irish hurling and similar to bandy) is popular in the Scottish Highlands, sometimes attracting crowds numbering thousands in the most sparsely populated region of the UK.
The country is closely associated with motorsport. Many teams and drivers in Formula One (F1) are based in the UK and drivers from Britain have won more world titles than any other country. The country hosts legs of the F1 and World Rally Championship and has its own Touring Car Racing championship, the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC). The British Grand Prix takes place at Silverstone each July.
Dancesport or competitive Ballroom dancing has its origins in the UK when popular dancing at the time was codified by British dance schools from the 1920s onwards. For example, the Slow Waltz is still known as the English Waltz which is now as distinct from its original roots as its name, the Viennese Waltz. The UK remains a major centre for the sport and Ballroom dancing in general with the Empress Ballroom at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool being a popular venue for major competitions.
Culture
The origins of the UK as a political union of formerly independent countries has resulted in the preservation of distinctive cultures in each of the home nations.
Cinema
The United Kingdom has been influential in the development of cinema, with the Ealing Studios claiming to be the oldest studios in the world. Despite a history of important and successful productions, the industry is characterised by an ongoing debate about its identity, and the influences of American and European cinema. The BFI Top 100 British films is a poll conducted by the British Film Institute which ranks what they consider to be the 100 greatest British films of all time.
Literature
The English playwright and poet William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time.[127][128][129] Among the earliest English writers are Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th century), Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century), and Thomas Malory (15th century). In the 18th century, Samuel Richardson is often credited with inventing the modern novel. In the 19th century, there followed further innovation by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, the social campaigner Charles Dickens, the naturalist Thomas Hardy, the visionary poet William Blake and romantic poet William Wordsworth. Twentieth century writers include the science fiction novelist H. G. Wells, the controversial D. H. Lawrence, the modernist Virginia Woolf, the prophetic novelist George Orwell and the poet John Betjeman. Most recently, the children's fantasy Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling has recalled the popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Scotland's contribution includes the detective writer Arthur Conan Doyle, romantic literature by Sir Walter Scott, the epic adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson and the celebrated poet Robert Burns. More recently, the modernist and nationalist Hugh MacDiarmid and Neil M. Gunn contributed to the Scottish Renaissance. A more grim outlook is found in Ian Rankin's stories and the psychological horror-comedy of Iain Banks. Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, is UNESCO's first worldwide city of literature.
In the early medieval period, Welsh writers composed the Mabinogion. In modern times, the poets R.S. Thomas and Dylan Thomas have brought Welsh culture to an international audience.
Authors from other nationalities, particularly from Ireland, or from Commonwealth countries, have lived and worked in the UK. Significant examples through the centuries include Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and more recently British authors born abroad such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Sir Salman Rushdie.
In theatre, Shakespeare's contemporaries Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson added depth. More recently Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter, Michael Frayn, Tom Stoppard and David Edgar have combined elements of surrealism, realism and radicalism.
Media
The prominence of the English language gives the UK media a widespread international dimension.
Broadcasting
There are five major nationwide television channels in the UK: BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five - currently transmitted by analogue terrestrial, free-to-air signals with the latter three channels funded by commercial advertising. In Wales, S4/C the Welsh Fourth Channel replaces Channel 4, carrying Welsh language programmes at peak times. It also transmits Channel 4 programmes at other times.
The BBC is the UK's publicly funded radio, television and internet broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest and largest broadcaster in the world. It operates several television channels and radio stations in both the UK and abroad. The BBC's international television news service, BBC World, is broadcast throughout the world and the BBC World Service radio network is broadcast in thirty-three languages globally, as well as services in the national language of Wales on BBC Radio Cymru and programmes in Scottish Gaelic in Scotland and Irish in Northern Ireland.
The domestic services of the BBC are funded by the television licence, a legal requirement for any British household with a television receiver that is in use to receive broadcasts, regardless of whether or not the householders watch BBC channels. Households which are the principal residence of any person over 75 are exempt[130] and the requirement does not extend to radio listeners. The BBC World Service Radio is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the television stations are operated by BBC Worldwide on a commercial subscription basis over cable and satellite services. It is this commercial arm of the BBC that forms half of UKTV along with Virgin Media.
The UK now has a large number of digital terrestrial channels including a further six from the BBC, five from ITV and three from Channel 4, and one from S4/C which is solely in Welsh, among a variety of others.
The vast majority of digital cable services are provided by Virgin Media with satellite being provided by BSkyB and free-to-air digital terrestrial television by Freeview. The entire country will switch to digital by 2012.
Radio in the UK is dominated by BBC Radio, which operates ten national networks and over forty local radio stations. The most popular radio station, by number of listeners, is BBC Radio 2, closely followed by BBC Radio 1. There are hundreds of mainly local commercial radio stations across the country offering a variety of music or talk formats.
Traditionally, British newspapers could be split into quality, serious-minded newspaper (usually referred to as "broadsheets" due to their large size) and the more populist, tabloid varieties. For convenience of reading, many traditional broadsheets have switched to a more compact-sized format, traditionally used by tabloids. The Sun has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK, with approximately a quarter of the market; its sister paper, The News of The World similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market,[131] and traditionally focuses on celebrity-led stories. The Daily Telegraph, a right wing broadsheet paper, has overtaken The Times (tabloid size format) as the highest-selling of the "quality" newspapers.[132] The Guardian is a more liberal "quality" broadsheet. The Financial Times is the main business paper, printed on distinctive salmon-pink broadsheet paper.
First printed in 1737, the Belfast News Letter is the oldest known English-speaking daily newspaper still in publication today. One of its fellow Northern Irish competitors, The Irish News, has been twice ranked as the best regional newspaper in the United Kingdom, in 2006 and 2007.[133] Aside from newspapers, British magazines and journals have achieved worldwide circulation including The Economist and Nature.
Scotland has a distinct tradition of newspaper readership (see List of newspapers in Scotland). The tabloid Daily Record has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper outselling the Scottish Sun by 4-1 while its sister paper, the Sunday Mail similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market. The leading "quality" daily newspaper in Scotland is The Herald, though it is the Scotsman's sister paper, the Scotland on Sunday that leads in the Sunday newspaper market.[134]
Music
Classical music: Notable composers from the United Kingdom have included William Byrd, Henry Purcell, Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Arthur Sullivan (most famous for working with librettist Sir W. S. Gilbert), Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten, pioneer of modern British opera. London remains one of the major classical music capitals of the world.
Popular music: Prominent among the UK contributors to the development of rock music in the 1960s and 1970s were The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Queen, and Black Sabbath. Heavy metal, hard rock, punk rock and New Wave were among the variations that followed. In the early 1980s, UK bands from the New Romantic scene such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell and Ultravox were prominent. In the 1990s, Britpop bands and electronica music attained international success. More recent pop acts, including The Smiths, Oasis, Amy Winehouse, Coldplay, and the Spice Girls, have ensured the continuation of the UK's massive contribution to popular music.
Philosophy
The United Kingdom is famous for the tradition of "British Empiricism", a branch of the philosophy of knowledge that states that only knowledge verified by experience is valid. The most famous philosophers of this tradition are John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Britain is notable for a theory of moral philosophy, Utilitarianism, first used by Jeremy Bentham and later by John Stuart Mill, in his short work Utilitarianism. Other eminent philosophers from the UK include William of Ockham, Thomas Hobbes, Bertrand Russell, Adam Smith and Alfred Ayer. Foreign born philosophers who settled in the UK include Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, Karl Popper, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Science, engineering and innovation
The modern scientific method was promoted by the English philosopher Francis Bacon in the early seventeenth century, and subsequent advances credited to British scientists and engineers include:
* The laws of motion and illumination of gravity, by Sir Isaac Newton in the late 17th century
* The unification of electromagnetism, by James Clerk Maxwell
* The discovery of hydrogen, by Henry Cavendish
* The steam locomotive, by Richard Trevithick and Andrew Vivian
* The telephone, by Alexander Graham Bell
* Evolution by natural selection, by Charles Darwin
* The Turing machine, by Alan Turing, the basis of modern computers
* The structure of DNA, by Francis Crick and others
* The development of the World Wide Web, largely attributed to Tim Berners-Lee
Notable civil engineering projects, whose pioneers included Isambard Kingdom Brunel, contributed to the world's first national railway transport system. Other advances pioneered in the UK include the marine chronometer, television, the jet engine, the modern bicycle, electric lighting, the electric motor, the screw propeller, the internal combustion engine, military radar, the electronic computer, vaccination and antibiotics.
Scientific journals produced in the UK include Nature, the British Medical Journal and The Lancet. In 2006, it was reported that the UK provided 9% of the world's scientific research papers and a 12% share of citations.[135]
Visual art
The Royal Academy is located in London. Other major schools of art include the Slade School of Art; the six-school University of the Arts, London, which includes the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design; the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths, University of London. This commercial venture is one of Britain's foremost visual arts organisations. Major British artists include Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, William Morris, L.S. Lowry, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Howard Hodgkin, Antony Gormley, and Anish Kapoor. During the late 1980s and 1990s, the Saatchi Gallery in London brought to public attention a group of multigenre artists who would become known as the Young British Artists. Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Rachel Whiteread, Tracy Emin, Mark Wallinger, Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Wood, and the Chapman Brothers are among the better known members of this loosely affiliated movement.
Symbols
Further information: Symbols of the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man
* The flag of the United Kingdom is the Union Flag commonly known as the "Union Jack". It was created by the superimposition of the flags of England (St George's Cross) and Scotland (Saint Andrew's Cross), with the Saint Patrick's cross, to represent Ireland, being added to this in 1801. Wales is not represented in the Union Flag as Wales had been conquered and annexed to England prior to the formation of the United Kingdom. However, the possibility of redesigning the Union Flag to include representation of Wales has not been completely ruled out.[136]
There is no official National flag of Northern Ireland following the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973 or any unofficial flag universally supported in Northern Ireland. The use of various flags in Northern Ireland is contentious. However, the Ulster Banner is often used for sporting events. See Northern Ireland flags issue and The Union Flags and flags of the United Kingdom
* The national anthem of the United Kingdom is "God Save the King", with "King" replaced with "Queen" in the lyrics whenever the monarch is female. The anthem's name, however, remains "God Save the King". The constituent countries of the UK also have a number of anthems with varying degrees of popular acceptance, the most popular being Flower of Scotland, Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau in Wales, Londonderry Air in Northern Ireland and Jerusalem in England.[137]
* Britannia is a personification of the United Kingdom, originating from the Roman occupation of southern and central Great Britain.[138] Britannia is symbolised as a young woman with brown or golden hair, wearing a Corinthian helmet and white robes. She holds Poseidon's three-pronged trident and a shield, bearing the Union Flag. Sometimes she is depicted as riding the back of a lion. At and since the height of the British Empire, Britannia has often associated with maritime dominance, as in the patriotic song Rule Britannia.
* The lion has been used as a symbol of the United Kingdom; one is depicted behind Britannia on the 50 pence piece and one is shown crowned on the back of the 10 pence piece. It is used as a symbol on the non-ceremonial flag of the British Army. Lions have been used as heraldic devices, including in the royal arms of the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Kingdom of Gwynedd in Wales. The lion is featured on the emblem of the England national football team, giving rise to the popular football anthem Three Lions, and the England national cricket team. The "three lions" on the English coat of arms were originally two leopards. An extra leopard was added by Richard the Lionheart and with the help of his name, they became known as three lions. They are now drawn to look more like lions. Leopards are traditionally depicted lying down whereas lions were drawn standing on all fours or up on their hind legs attacking, as in the Scottish Lion Rampant.
* The bulldog is sometimes used as a symbol of Great Britain, and is often associated with Winston Churchill's defiance of Nazi Germany.
* Britain (especially England) has been personified as the character John Bull, although this character is rarely used in modern times.
* Distinctive flora such as the oak tree and the rose, have long been a widely used proxy for the visual representation of English identity. The red rose is the emblem of the Labour Party, the England national rugby union team, the Rugby Football Union and Lancashire. The thistle is widely used as a Scottish symbol and the daffodil or leekused as the Welsh.
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