Sexting threat comes from peers

16 May 2012 Last updated at 13:42 Teenage girls are coming under increasing pressure to text and email sexually explicit pictures of themselves, a report suggests.

The report, commissioned by the NSPCC, suggests the demands come from peers rather than from adults or strangers.

So-called sexting, the sending or receiving of sexual images by text or email, is thought to affect more than a third of under-18s.

More needs to be done to address the issue, the report concludes.

Sexual abuse

Entitled A Qualitative Study of Children and Young People, the study was conducted by researchers at King's College, London; the Institute of Education; and the London School of Economics.

"Up until now, e-safety campaigns have focused on preparing young people to face dangers posed by strangers online," said Professor Rosalind Gill from King's College, one of the authors.

"Our report suggests that the focus needs to shift to include the much more complicated issue of peer-to-peer communication and the difficulties and isolation young people experience in negotiating this," she added.

Jon Brown, head of the sexual abuse programme at the NSPCC, said the revelations were disturbing.

"What's most striking about this research is that many young people seem to accept all this as part of life. But it can be another layer of sexual abuse and, although most children will not be aware, it is illegal."

Cyberbullying

The in-depth interviews with 35 teenagers at two London schools found that girls as young as 11 were being asked to send "special photos" to boys who they knew.

In some cases, the girls had to write a name in black marker pen on a part of their body to show it was the "property" of a certain boy.

The teenagers also faced a "barrage" of messages from boys demanding for intercourse or oral sex.

"Even while we were interviewing them they were being bombarded with these messages," said lead researcher Jessica Ringrose, from the Institute of Education.

Such sexting is an extreme form of cyberbullying, the report concludes.

The study was launched at the House of Commons by Conservative MP Claire Perry.

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OnLive cloud gaming comes to UK

22 September 2011 Last updated at 14:27 GMT OnLive said it would be making 150 games available for its UK launch. OnLive, the cloud based video game service, has launched in the UK.

The system, which went live in the United States last year, allows users to play games without owning a traditional console.

Instead, the applications are all run on remote servers with the video streamed across the internet.

Run in conjunction with BT, OnLive requires a broadband connection faster than 1Mbps and works on PC, Macs, Tablets and net connected TV's.

Because the system uses video streaming and players effectively remote control their game, bandwidth is a crucial issue.

Speaking to BBC News, OnLive's chief executive Steve Perlman said that the project had overcome numerous hurdles during its decade-long development.

"The first thing we had to do was come up with a new form of video compression," he said.

"We had to deal with the internet not working, the time delays that occur with different communication methods [e.g. wifi, broadband]."

Mr Perlman said that they had managed to get the limits down to 1Mbps for a tablet device, but a large screen HD TV would need a minimum of 5Mbps.

OnLive games can be played on a ranges of devices, including tablets.

Because the game is a video stream, rather than a direct link to the TV or monitor from hardware in the home, there are limitations on the resolutions it can display.

However, it allows games not designed for certain platforms, such as Windows PCs or Macs, to be played on those machines.

Gamers without a computer or connected TV can use an OnLive "micro console" to access the system. The box plugs into the back of a conventional television.

Cloud gaming

The games themselves are hosted on cloud servers. In Europe, these are based in London, Luxembourg, and Brussels.

Currently OnLive offers around 150 titles, but said it planned to expand that.

Joe Martin, Games Editor at Bit Gamer, told BBC News that OnLive posed a threat to both retail and hardware manufacturers.

"At present the threat is small, but it will grow. In fact the only drawback I can see is in terms of visual compression, which has been sacrificed to remove lag," said Mr Martin.

"From what I can see, the system works and it's not just retailers and console manufacturers who are going to be threatened. It's hardware firms like nVidia and ATI and every gaming platform," he added.

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