Government Walks Away from Another Controversial Domain Name Seizure

The Government's controversial tactic of seizing domain names took another hit today when prosecutors backed down and walked away from a widely watched case.

Nineteen months ago, the Federal Government seized the domain names of Spanish website Rojadirecta for alleged copyright infringement. Today, in a one-page filing, the government announced that it is dismissing the charges.

The good news is, Rojadirecta now gets its domain names back. The bad news is, it was deprived of their use for nineteen months and had to engage in expensive litigation.  As CDT argued in a legal brief it filed with EFF and Public Knowledge, the seizure of Rojadirecta's domain names was an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech. Giving back the domain names now can't change the fact that significant impairment to speech rights has already occurred. Even worse, the Government's decision to walk away from the case means that there won't be any appellate ruling on the important legal issues at stake. So if law enforcement engages in a similar seizure tomorrow – perhaps against an entity that lacks the resources to contest the seizure in court – there's nothing to stop this saga from repeating itself all over again. Indeed, new domain name seizures were reported just a week ago.

The dismissal of the Rojadirecta case is further evidence that, as CDT urged in our recent comments to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, the Federal Government needs to fundamentally reconsider its reliance on domain name seizures. Previous seizures of mooo.com and dajaz1.com show a similar pattern of mistakes and overreaching that restrain lawful speech. It's time for serious reevaluation, to protect basic principles of fairness, due process, and free expression.

At a minimum, the Government needs to conduct a full investigation into what went wrong in these cases. How is it that law enforcement can see fit to seize domain names, hold them for a year or more, and then suddenly say "oops, nevermind" and ask for the entire matter to be dropped and forgotten before their legal theories can be fully tested? Law enforcement missteps like this demand close scrutiny so that policies and safeguards can be put in place to prevent them from happening again and again.

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'OpenStand' Underscores Commitment to Voluntary Internet Standards

Recent proposals from several countries urging the mandatory adoption of technical standards are dangerous and misguided.

Underscoring that view is today's launch of "OpenStand," an initiative supporting a commitment to open, voluntary technical standards for the Internet.  CDT welcomes the OpenStand paradigm.  Today we also released a paper detailing how technical standardization works and why proposals for the mandatory use of Internet standards developed in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) are cause for grave concern.

Our digital world turns on technical standards. Emails composed on a Microsoft Windows computer can be easily read on an Apple laptop or iPhone. Websites created by an incredible diversity of companies and organizations – Twitter.com, Wikipedia.org, BBC.co.uk, and millions more – are easily viewed in web browsers made by Google or Mozilla. This ability to communicate between technologies developed by different companies exists because standards provide the language that allows computers and software to talk to each other.

OpenStand is the product of five of the world's leading technical Internet organizations -- IEEE, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Society, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).  These organizations have produced many of the most fundamental standards on which all Internet communications rely, including Internet Protocol (IP), HTTP, and HTML. OpenStand is a set of principles built on a model of open processes that supports transparency, consensus, and the participation of all interested parties.

While the standards organizations making today's announcement have been operating under these principles for many years, OpenStand demonstrates a continued commitment by these groups to the voluntary, bottom-up processes that have made existing standards the foundation of the Internet's success as a platform for communications and commerce.

Unfortunately, the OpenStand paradigm is under serious threat. In December, the ITU will convene the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), a meeting of the world's governments to decide whether and how the ITU should regulate the Internet. In advance of that meeting, several countries have proposed that the technical standards the ITU produces – known as "ITU-T Recommendations" – become mandatory for Internet technology companies and network operators to build into their products. Russia and a number of Middle Eastern countries are among the primary proponents.

If adopted, these proposals would jeopardize the Internet's core principles of openness and free expression, threaten the growth and stability of the network, and sap the Internet's economic vitality. Having governments – the only formal decision-making members of the ITU – decide which standards technology companies must build into their products would upend the existing process of technological development on the Internet. Those with the most intimate knowledge of technology would be cut out of the loop for technological decision making, replacing them with government officials who do not write software, run networks, or build computers.

Making ITU-T Recommendations mandatory, while all other standards remain voluntary, would skew technology development in favor of largely unused specifications of questionable technical merit. They "have long ceased to have relevance," as one industry expert has explained.

Having the ITU-T Recommendations become mandatory could also cause the ITU to become a magnet for standardization proposals that undermine freedom of expression, privacy, and other civil liberties. Knowing that ITU standards would become mandatory, some governments may step up their efforts to have standards adopted that would increase network-based surveillance capability, create backdoors in existing encryption systems, embed identity information in all communications, or introduce other functionality that would threaten the Internet's ability to support free expression and private communication.

Because the ITU standardization process is generally opaque to civil society, the ability for civil society advocates to challenge such proposals and have a real impact on their outcome would be extremely limited.

Today's announcement of support for the OpenStand paradigm provides an important counterweight to mandatory standards proposals, but there is more work to be done. The paper we released today provides details about how technical standardization works and the danger of mandatory ITU standards. Those concerned about these proposals should take action:

•    Express your support for the OpenStand paradigm. Join CDT and other concerned Internet users in publicly affirming your support for the paradigm.

•    Press national governments to oppose mandatory ITU standards.  Civil society, Internet users, and other parties concerned about the future of the Internet should explain to their national ITU delegations that mandatory standards proposals would represent a major departure from the existing paradigm of Internet standardization and that these proposals would endanger the future of the Internet as an open, innovative platform.

•    Voice your concern about mandatory application of ITU-T Recommendations on the public comment page for the WCIT.  Oppose proposals to make ITU-T Recommendations mandatory by registering your comments here.

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The Limits of Free Expression: Defamation in the Internet Age

The right to freedom of expression protects individuals as they seek and share information, engage in debate, and voice criticism—but free expression is not without limits.

As the Internet has expanded, courts have grappled with the challenge of protecting free expression while upholding other rights, such as privacy and reputation, which are also enshrined in international human rights doctrine.

Defamation law protects privacy and reputation. If a citizen journalist publishes an article that falsely accuses an individual of wrongdoing, that individual can sue under defamation law, forcing the journalist to retract the false statement. However, the picture becomes more complicated if, for example, a citizen journalist accuses a government official of corruption and the truthfulness of the allegation is unknown. This scenario requires courts to balance a citizen’s right to free expression against the right to reputation of the government official. Government officials should be subject to a higher degree of scrutiny and criticism than an ordinary citizen.

Unfortunately, defamation law has been used in some countries by the rich and powerful not merely to defend privacy and reputation, but also to quash legitimate speech, including criticism of government officials and comment on matters of public interest.

Today, CDT is releasing a paper that describes how the framework provided by international human rights principles should be applied to limit such abuses of defamation law.  It discusses, for example, the practice of charging defamation as a criminal offense, which human rights bodies have consistently condemned. While some countries have de-criminalized defamation, others have refused to do so; Russia recently re-criminalized it.  

The paper also examines the practice of "libel tourism," wherein wealthy individuals take advantage of loose jurisdictional rules to sue journalists and others in countries with rules that tend to favor defamation plaintiffs. This practice is facing possible reform in England, which had been a “defamation forum of choice” for movie stars and oligarchs alike. When American movie actress Cameron Diaz, a US resident, wanted to file suit against a US-based tabloid, The National Enquirer, she took her case to England, where it was accepted on the grounds that defamatory statements appearing on the tabloid’s website could be read online in the UK.

Aggressive application of defamation not only limits the speech of the defendants in specific cases, it also has a chilling effect on other users, who may choose not to express themselves for fear of facing expensive litigation.

Human rights instruments implicitly endorse defamation laws by recognizing rights to reputation and privacy. However, if not carefully applied, defamation laws can have a chilling effect on speech, endangering the rights of individuals engaging in expression and of those entitled to seek and receive information, opinions, and ideas. The paper we release today, “Defamation in the Internet Age: Protecting Reputation without Infringing Free Expression,” aims to explore the tensions between these rights using examples from a diverse range of jurisdictions around the world and to suggest how the balance should be struck.

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Hands-on review: iPad 4

The new iPad 4 looks nearly the same as the third-gen iPad that it's totally replacing in the lineup - it has the Lightning connector that debuted with the iPhone 5, and it's of course faster.

Apple CEO Tim Cook introduces the iPad 4

Apple is keeping the iPad 2 around as the $399 get-em-in-the-door option, and that's a smarter move than putting the iPad 3 on sale in its place. It will be a lot easier to upsell customers from the iPad 2's non-Retina display to the new iPad, whereas the iPad 4 isn't a must-have compared to the iPad 3 - unless you have a million Lightning cables around, and who does?

Are you wondering what the iPad rival to the Nexus 7 or Kindle Fire HD is like? Check our hands on: iPad mini review to find out!

In our hands-on, the 9.7-inch screen looked just as bright and bold as always, because it's ... well ... the same screen.

Apple loves to tout display tech improvements, since having top-notch screens is one of the key benefits of all of Apple's gear, from the iPod touch all the way up to the Retina MacBook Pros. So it's safe to bet the new iPad 4 screen is the same on the third-gen iPad that came out in March of this year.

It's got a 2048x1536 resolution, at 264 pixels per inch, and IPS technology makes it easy to see from wide angles. You can hold this new iPad nearly flat before the display becomes hard to see.

Apple also upgraded the new iPad with a dual-core A6X system-on-a-chip with quad core graphics - it claims the iPad 4 delivers twice the performance and twice the graphics power as the A5X in the third-gen iPad.

That A5X, upon teardown, turned out to have a 1GHz clock speed and 1GB of RAM. We weren't allowed to run proper benchmarking tools on the demo unit (like Geekbench) to try to determine clock speed and RAM for the new iPad. But apps opened quickly on the new iPad, and switching between them with four-finger multi-touch swipes seemed even more responsive and effortless than the already-speedy iPad 3.

The front and rear cameras on the new iPad are the same as before, but the A6X chip has improved the image signal processing, adding support for facial recognition and image stabilization. We couldn't test this camera side-by-side against an iPad 3's, but the facial recognition worked as it should on the iPad 4, automatically finding faces as we composed our shots and keeping them in focus.

The Lightning port, if you haven't seen it on the iPhone 5 yet, is laughingly slim compared to the honking 30-pin port it replaces. A Lightning connector is tiny but feels sturdy, and can be inserted either way. So you never find yourself trying to shove it in the wrong way, and you never feel the metal-on-metal crunch of pins when connecting.

It clicks into place smoothly and is held by tiny clips, strong enough to support the new iPad's weight.

Apple also rolled out Lightning versions of the popular iPad adapters and accessories. Lightning to VGA adapter for projectors is $49, and so is the Lightning Digital AV Adapter, which has an HDMI port.

For connecting cameras, the Lightning to USB Camera Adapter and Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader are sold separately for $29 each - you used to get both in one $29 package for 30-pin iPads, the iPad Camera Connection Kit. Finally, if you want to use your old 30-pin cables to charge and sync your iPad 4, the Lightning to 30-pin adapter is $29.

The other upgrade is the wireless connectivity, and it seems minor but should make a considerable difference. All the iPads get dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, using the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands for less interference for other devices without losing any range.

Plus, since the new iPad 4 can use both channels at once, you can get theoretical speeds of up to 150Mbps - faster than most Wi-Fi networks you'll encounter anyway.

Apple has previously rolled this out to the iPhone 5 and fifth generation iPod touch. In our hands-on with a Wi-Fi-only iPad 4, we noticed zippy page loads, and videos streamed on Vimeo.com played smoothly with no buffering. But we didn't get to test exact speeds.

Optional LTE networking was added in the last generation, and it's still available in this iPad, and supported by more carriers, especially outside the U.S.

The full list includes AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Duetsche Telekom, EE, Rogers, Fido, Bell, Telus, Telstra, Koodo Mobile, SingTel, SmarTone, KT, SK Telecom, KDDI, StarHub, SoftBank, Optus, Virgin Mobile, and Hong Kong Telecom.

Since the iPad 4 didn't change size or shape - only the Lightning connector is different - it should have the same 42.5 watt-hour battery as the previous iPad, and Apple says it'll get the same 10 hours of battery life.

The iPad 4's connector is like the iPad mini's, pictured here

The fourth-gen new iPad was probably the least-popular item in the demo room - it's hard to compete with an all-new iPad mini and super-thin iMacs and MacBook Pros. If you've used an iPad, it's already totally familiar - same shape, same size, same svelte 1.44 pound weight (652 grams, or 1.46 pounds/662 grams for the cellular version).

Like the iPad mini, the new iPad 4 can be ordered on Oct 26 for delivery on Nov 2. And, 4G-enabled models will ship a few weeks later at the end of November.

If you just upgraded your iPad in the spring, don't worry that you're missing much with this bump in the new iPad 4. We know a lot of people will feel betrayed, having thought they were getting the best Apple has to offer for at least a year - but that shouldn't cause that much consternation.

However, if you're still using an iPad 2 or an original iPad, it's a significant step up, and still brings all the same Apple bells, whistles and whizzbangwhoosh that most have come to expect from the Cupertino's most popular tablet.

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A Few Concrete Recommendations for TPP

It's hard to offer input on proposals you haven't been allowed to see, but lots of advocates tried their best at Sunday's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) stakeholders' forum. 

I was there for CDT, setting out a few concrete recommendations based on previous leaks of draft text for TPP's intellectual property chapter.  Of course, as we noted in our recent comments to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator last month, there's a real problem when the ability of stakeholders to offer meaningful comments depends almost entirely on leaks. 

Confidential negotiations may be the norm for trade policy in general, but they are ill-suited to broad policymaking in an area like intellectual property, with so many diverse stakeholders.

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Review: Sony KD-84X9005

Well here's something you don't see every day: an 84-inch TV with a native '4K' (now officially known as Ultra High Definition) resolution.

And actually, it's not surprising you don't see one very often given that a) Ultra High Definition panels are still exceptionally rare, and b) the Sony KD-84X9005 we're gawping at here costs the small matter of £25,000 in the UK (around AU$38,765) or $24,999.99 in the US, where it's known as the Sony XBR-84X900.

It also has to be said that there's currently not exactly a wealth of native Ultra HD content to feed such a high resolution screen; just your digital photos and a handful of online video files, really. But then there can, of course, be no chicken without an egg (or is it the other way round?).

So we have no problem in principle with Sony getting its Ultra HD guns out for the second time in 2012, following the launch of its stupendous VW1000ES projector. Especially because the Sony KD-84X9005 claims to carry state of the art upscaling of your normal HD and even standard definition content, courtesy of a brand new all-Sony chipset dubbed 4K X-Reality Pro.

Sony has been careful, too, to make sure that the KD-84X9005 feels entirely TV-like, rather than like some 'pro' panels. So it's got a built-in Freeview HD tuner, ships with a pair of bolt-on and startlingly powerful speakers, supports 3D playback, and even carries the new Sony Entertainment Network 'smart TV' online system.

If you'd prefer something similar but different, you could always just scrape together £17,000/AU$25,000/US$25,000 instead for Sony's VW1000ES Ultra HD projector.

Or failing that, £7,000 (around AU$10,850/US$11,208) will get you Toshiba's Ultra HD 55-inch TV, the Toshiba 55ZL2. But as well as producing pictures far smaller than those of the Sony KD-84X9005, Toshiba's TV also provides no way of getting 4K/Ultra High Definition video into it, and features a highly flawed glasses-free 3D TV system.

While only football agents and Russian oligarchs might actually be able to buy a Sony KD-84X9005, though, its Ultra HD capabilities must still be of interest to anyone with even a passing fascination with AV. Especially as they might just provide us an early glimpse of a higher-resolution future. So without further ado, let's get stuck in.

Before sinking our teeth into the 84-inch Sony KD-84X9005's main attractions, let's quickly spare a thought for its design. At first glance this looks a little industrial with its severe black bezel and the slightly clumsy way the full-height speakers bolt on to the screen's sides.

However, the ever-so-shiny finish of the twin-necked floorstand and the unusual ridging that's been applied to the bezel both give the TV an expensive-looking lustre, and the design strangely grows on you over time. Especially if you can place it in a suitably opulent setting.

The main reason for wishing you could afford to spend this huge amount of cash on a TV, though, is obviously the Sony KD-84X9005's native '4K' pixel count. Actually, Ultra HD is a slight exaggeration, since unlike the genuine 4K (4096 x 2160) resolution of the Digital Cinema-aping VW1000ES projector, the Sony KD-84X9005 provides 3840 x 2160 pixels.

This could lead to some interesting aspect ratio discussions, but the main thing is that the Sony KD-84X9005 still presents pictures with comfortably more than eight million pixels in them versus just over two million pixels in normal Full HD images.

Anyone with any interest in picture quality will immediately appreciate the potential impact so many extra pixels could have - especially on a TV screen as gloriously big as 84-inches.

Obviously an Ultra HD screen is always going to look its humdinging best with native 4K sources - as will be underlined during the performance section of this review. So it's an issue that, at the time of writing, native 4K sources are essentially restricted to digital photographs, a handful of short online videos, and the sort of manufacturer demo reels that Sony provided via PC server for this review.

However, the Sony KD-84X9005 does at least cater for native Ultra HD video if and when it does appear via two of its four HDMI inputs - which is more than can be said of the also native Ultra HD Toshiba 55ZL2.

Even more importantly, at least in the short term, the Sony KD-84X9005 features a brand new upscaling chipset designed by Sony specifically for its new 'hero' TV.

Dubbed 4K X-Reality Pro, this new video processing engine combines the frankly scary processing power required to calculate the huge amount of pixels in an Ultra HD picture with Sony's unique 'database' approach. Here the burden on the processing engine is alleviated by the chipset being able to identify a wide array of different video source 'types' to apply pre-determined processing algorithms to.

Of course, Sony also provides a 4K/Ultra High Definition upscaling chipset in its BDP-S790 Blu-ray player.

But it's quick to stress that the one inside the Sony KD-84X9005 is far more sophisticated, advanced and specialised than the one in the BDP-S790 - not least because of the extra demands associated with getting upscaled Ultra HD pictures to look brilliant on a super-large screen.

It's good, too, to discover that Sony has provided a tool set on the Sony KD-84X9005 for adjusting various parameters of its processing engine. For instance, you can tweak the extent to which it adds sharpness to images, and the extent to which the system filters out noise at source.

As we'll see in the performance section of our review, some of these fine tuning touches really are very useful.

Intriguingly considering it's Sony's flagship 2012 TV, the Sony KD-84X9005 is the first TV set from the Japanese brand that uses a passive 3D system rather than an active one. But this isn't as strange a decision as it perhaps initially appears.

Because having double the native horizontal resolution in the Sony KD-84X9005's screen means that for the first time you can enjoy passive 3D with a true Full HD resolution when watching 3D Blu-rays.

There's none of the resolution 'halving' you normally have to put up with, so hopefully you won't see such traditional passive 3D problems as jagged edges, black horizontal lines over bright image content, or a generally slightly rough finish.

If this proves to be the case, then you will hopefully also be able to enjoy all the more vividly passive 3D's notable advantages over its active 3D counterpart: no flickering, practically no crosstalk, and a generally less fatiguing experience.

We'd hoped Sony might also have embraced the cheapness of passive 3D glasses, but bizarrely, despite the Sony KD-84X9005's huge price tag, you only get two pairs included for free. Just as well you can pick up others for pennies.

Despite its huge price and Ultra HD capabilities, Sony believes it's extremely important to sell the Sony KD-84X9005 as a fully fledged TV rather than a mere display. With this in mind, the TV set ships with a built-in Freeview HD tuner, as well as all the normal AV inputs.

There are also USB ports for video, photo and music multimedia playback - something that's particularly significant where JPEG photos are concerned, since for many people their digital photos will be the only way they can immediately experience true 4K images on the Sony KD-84X9005.

Please note that there's a 4K photo option in the menus that you need to check is activated if you want to experience the full resolution monty.

The Sony KD-84X9005 also supports Wi-Fi, with which you can - just as with Sony's 'normal' TVs - stream material from a Mac or DLNA PC via Sony's free HomeStream software. Plus you can go online with the Sony Entertainment Network, which gives you access to an impressive range of services, mostly focused - entirely sensibly - on video streaming.

Highlights of this platform include BBC iPlayer, Demand 5, Netflix, Lovefilm, Sony Entertainment Television Network, Eurosport, YouTube, Sony's own 3D channel, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Sony's Music Unlimited Service, Sony's Video Unlimited film streaming service and Sky News.

Wrapping up the Sony KD-84X9005's key features are its use of Sony's most potent MotionFlow XR800 motion processing system, and speakers designed to thrash the puny audio efforts of most flat TVs into a bloody pulp.

These huge speakers run the full height of the TV, and churn out a substantial 50W of audio power from 10 separate drivers, including tweeters, dedicated mid-range units and four subwoofers.

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Review: Panasonic Lumix ZS15

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS15 replaces the Panasonic DMC-ZS8 as the affordable camera in the Panasonic's ZS lineup, with a price tag of $249.99.

Panasonic's TZ and ZS compact cameras are known for their big zooms and even bigger feature sets. And the Panasonic ZS15 doesn't disappoint. What you get here is essentially a Panasonic ZS20 (TZ30 in the UK) lite - although physically it's chunkier and heavier by a whisker than Panasonic's flagship superzoom.

Instead of the Panasonic ZS20's 20x optical zoom, the Panasonic ZS15 stretches to 16x - the same as last year's Panasonic ZS8.

The Panasonic ZS15's lens might not have the extreme reach (24-384mm equivalent, compared to the Panasonic ZS30's 24-480mm), but it does retain the same wide setting, which comes in particularly useful for indoor shots, group portraits and scenic shots.

The Panasonic ZS15 also sheds a little effective resolution in the sensor department - offering 12.1MP compared to the Panasonic ZS20's 14.1MP. This is a decrease from the Panasonic ZS8 too, which also delivered 14.1 million effective pixels.

However, instead of using a CCD sensor like its predecessor, the Panasonic ZS15 features a high-sensitivity MOS one, the same as in the Panasonic FZ150.

We'd accept a slight drop in overall resolution in return for cleaner images from a small 1/2.3-inch sensor every time.

What else do you get for your money with the Panasonic ZS15? A high-speed burst mode that captures 10 full res files (although focus is locked throughout), Full HD video recording in AVCHD or MP4 format and POWER OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation) that's said to be twice as effective as Panasonic's excellent MEGA OIS. Plus there's in-camera HDR, 3D photos and panoramas.

Step up the extra little bit of cash for the Panasonic ZS20 and you get a touchscreen, GPS, progressive 1920 x 1080 Full HD video with stereo sound recording (the Panasonic ZS15 records mono 1080i footage) and an extra ED lens in the construction of the zoom.

Otherwise, the specifications of the two cameras are near identical.

It doesn't matter how technically adept a camera is if it isn't easy to use. Thankfully, the Panasonic ZS15 gets the balance between menu-based controls and physical buttons and dials just right.

The camera is comfortable to hold, despite only having a small grip lined with a shiny inlay and a remarkably ineffective dotted thumb rest. All the controls fall easily to hand, too.

The top-plate of the Panasonic ZS15 features a responsive shutter release enclosed by a zoom collar, plus a direct record button for movies and a small but nicely weighted mode dial.

In addition to P, A, S, M modes, this dial also includes Intelligent Auto, Scene Mode (17 to choose from here), 3D Photo Mode and My Scene Mode, which enables you to apply one of Panasonic's creative digital filter effects. Finally, there's also the option for storing complete camera setups as Custom modes.

The rear of the camera features the familiar Panasonic setup. A four-way control pad gives direct access to exposure compensation, flash settings, macro focus and self-timer, while the center SET/MENU button confirms a selection and brings up the Panasonic ZS15's shooting or playback menus, depending on which mode the camera's in.

Rather than forcing you to rummage around the menus to change key shooting parameters such as ISO, white balance and AF mode, Panasonic has collected these in a Quick Menu. Tapping the Q.Menu button on the bottom of the Panasonic ZS15's backplate displays this drop-down overlay on the rear screen's live view.

This is an efficient way of getting to the functions that matter, although the lineup of options depends on which of the Panasonic ZS15's shooting modes you're in: Aperture Priority gives you seven options to choose from, while the Intelligent Auto mode gives you four.

An inset Exposure button is conveniently placed mid-body: press this while shooting in Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual modes to change aperture and/or shutter speed settings.

Most of the Panasonic ZS15's switchgear is quick and precise, and a reflection of the all-round high standards of build quality. The sliding on/off switch is fairly stiff, for instance, meaning that the camera is unlikely to spring into life while being carried in a bag or pocket.

Moving from shooting mode to playback mode is also achieved through the use of a switch on the back of the camera. It's a shame that Panasonic persists in making you have to physically flick a switch to move from playback to shooting, as it disrupts the otherwise smooth flow of operating the camera.

There were a couple of other operational weak points with our Panasonic ZS15. The zoom collar, although light and precise during shooting, became much less snappy while magnifying the image during playback.

The LCD screen also exhibited a nasty green tinge when viewed from above or below, although the various brightness options available, including High Angle for shooting with the camera held over your head, are welcome.

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