It may sound like something out of Matt Groening brain-child Futurama but open source video client Miro’s come up with what could be a unique idea: letting you adopt a line of code. For four American dollars a month – that’s around £2.70 at today’s exchange rate – you’ll get to experience something like adopting [...]

Sky’s prediction it could persuade its television customer base to take up its triple play of satellite television, phone and broadband appear to be vindicated with strong growth figures released today for the nine months up to the end of March.
While the leading star of its financials was undoubtedly Sky+ HD boxes surpassing the 1m [...]

Paul Brown, Managing Director of the UK arm of Spotify, has given an interview to Media Guardian. As well as claiming that “a decent proportion” of subscribers have plumped for paying for their music streams, the company is looking at both mobile apps and rare content to boost their revenue. However, he remained coy when [...]

It’s almost two weeks since the four members of The Pirate Bay (TPB) crew were found guilty by the Swedish courts. Since then their lawyers have applied for a retrial – but until today it wasn’t even clear to us English speakers who paid for their defence in the first place. Now, thanks to the [...]

The Home Office has been accused of “colluding” with behaviour advertising firm Phorm after correspondence between the two was published. The Government department has previously denied giving the company “any advice directly relating to possible criminal liability for the operation of their advertising platform in the UK.” Now it might have to change its [...]

ISPs have reacted with guarded optimism to Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, pulling back on controversial plans to store all details of a subscriber’s web and email traffic on a single, unified database.
The ISPs are still legally obliged to record details of a person’s web viewing habits – including what IPTV they have consumed, which sites [...]

In last week’s budget the Government committed to looking at the possibility of taxing intellectual property, which it sees as a means to the end of pulling the UK out of its economic hole. In the meantime it’s trying to work with film, music, publishing and Internet companies to try and keep the rights holders [...]

BT has launched bundles of services following relaxation of constraints by OFCOM. Business and Residential bundles are offered, typically with 12, 18 or 24 month contracts and featuring various combinations of broadband, voice calls, line rental, TV and mobile services.
As an example an entry level home broadband service is discounted to £0 per month for [...]

Project Canvas – the on-demand broadband TV collaboration between the BBC, BT and ITV – could run into exactly the same problems that saw Project Kangaroo mothballed, according to the UK’s communications regulator. In a letter to the BBC Trust, Ofcom have warned the project could be subject to an Office of Fair Trading (OFT) [...]

For US President Obama, cybersecurity is a national-security issue – up there with the threat of nuclear and biological weapons. After he made getting a grip on American net security one of his campaign pledges, now we’re starting to see how his administration intends to turn the United States into a cyber-superpower.
First off – according [...]

Cyber criminals have taken over almost two million PCs in a worldwide botnet  – the name for a network of remotely controlled computers – including machines owned by the UK and US governments. The hackers, who’ve been traced back to the Ukraine, have been selling control of machines for between $50 and $100 in a Russian online [...]

Hidden away in the depths of budget detail is a “Digital Britain” snippet:
“The Budget today announces that the Government will pursue Universal Service in broadband at 2 Megabits per second alongside further support to promote broadband take-up and basic digital skills.
The Budget also announces a review of the powers and duties of Ofcom to ensure [...]

While the talk of flat markets was hardly surprising, the biggest news to come out of Carphone Warehouse’s Q4 trading update, released this morning, was confirmation the group will split its retail and telecoms operations.
Analysts and investors have long called on the group to realise there was never much logic behind having a retailer and [...]

No sooner have the Pirate Bay bad boys been found guilty of breaking copyright law than a report comes out claiming that eyepatch-wearing internet bandits may not be the freeloading bastards that some people claim they are. After studying the habits of 1,900 internet users, a Norwegian business school claims that 15- to 20-year-olds au [...]

Throttling – or “traffic-shaping” as Internet Service Providers like to call it – is the usual route ISPs take to reduce BitTorrent traffic on their networks. But one Israeli ISP, Bezeq International, is taking the opposite approach: speeding up torrent transfers for its customers. It’s hoping that’ll have the same effect.
BitTorrent files are now thought [...]

TalkTalk has today announced a £50 incentive scheme to attract Tiscali customers concerned over the ISP’s future.
It would appear to be the final stage of a long battle for ownership of Tiscali’s customers which, earlier this month, saw TalkTalk linked once again with the ailing Italian ISP shortly after its shares had been delisted [...]

ITV’s Chief Executive Michael Grade’s warning that the British regulatory system could give American rivals an unfair advantage may be starting to be realised as both Hulu and TV.com admit to holding talks with UK broadcasters and content owners to launch their services here.
With the scrapping of Kangaroo, through which the BBC, Channel 4 and [...]

Virgin Media is to follow in Sky’s footsteps by using Google’s email services for its broadband customers.
Up to 10 email addresses in the @virginmedia.com format will be available to each customer. Customers using @blueyonder.co.uk, @ntlworld.com or @virgin.net addresses will also be migrating onto the new platform.

Four men representing The Pirate Bay have been sent to jail for a year and handed a bill for £2.4 million in damages after losing what could be a landmark piracy case. Peter Sunde, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Carl Lundstrom have all been found guilty of accessory and conspiracy to break copyright law [...]

We all thought we’d left pay-as-you-go Internet behind back when we said goodbye to dial-up connections. But over in the States, if Time Warner Cable (TWC) has its way, what it’s now calling “consumption-based billing” could be making a comeback. But there’s a problem: people just don’t want it.
TWC is having difficulty finding volunteers in [...]