There are around seven million people engaged in illegal file sharing in the UK and, while they may be downloading songs and movies for free, the British economy is paying the price. That’s according to a new study from the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP), which estimates the cost as being in the tens of billions of pounds.

Good afternoon campers, and welcome to this week’s round-up. Let’s start with the news that Wikipedia is banning Scientologists — or at least any contributors from all IP addresses owned by the Church of Scientology and its associates. Does that mean Tom Cruise won’t be able to update his wiki page? In other movie-related news, [...]

Microsoft’s unveiled its new baby and it’s a Bing after all. While Google’s still calling itself a “search engine” – and doing pretty well from it – and Wolfram Alpha thinks of itself as a “computational engine,” MS is marketing its latest offering as being a “decision engine.” And, finally, it’s announced the launch date for good measure.

With a launch expected very soon, it looks like Microsoft is planning to ditch the “Kumo” moniker from its new search engine and go to market with an altogether different name. The Redmond giant is reportedly putting aside a hundred million dollars to market its new Google wannabe and, if the name does end up being “Bing,” it could need every cent.

We take a look beyond the hype and emotive campaign slogans to see what speed broadband is necessary for everyday activities.

Two weeks ago we were contacted by the BBC who wanted to run a story on UK Broadband. This followed on from a meeting we’d previously had with them where we’d discussed the lack of information around ‘Not-spots’, what they are, where they are and what they mean, etc…

The UK press has been getting excited at the prospect of YouTube bringing back premium music content – and American song streaming service Pandora coming back to Blighty – with the news that British music royalty collector the PRS is cutting its rates. By all accounts, it looks like they’ve got the wrong end of the stick.

ThinkBroadband have launched a survey to collate information on locations without broadband (notspots) or with speeds below 2 Mbits/s (slowspots). A support forum is also available.

German cable operators association ANGA report a growth of 200,000 new broadband homes during the first quarter of the year, bringing the total number to over 2 million.

A worm that’s targeting Google users – the most mainstream online group of all – is becoming increasingly virulent and is now seen by some experts as the biggest Internet security threat out there. Gumblar is also known as JSRedir-R.

YouTube is having to take down thousands of sexually explicit videos after it was targeted by pranksters on what’s being dubbed “Porn Day.” While most of the clips have already been deleted, others could be up for days.

Today SamKnows is kicking off a weekly round-up of all the tech and Internet news stories that didn’t warrant their own post but we just can’t let slip under the radar. This week’s mainly about Craigslist and Google, both of which have been racking up more than their fair share of headlines.

OFCOM have today announced the conclusion of their review and consultation(s) on the price regulation framework applied to BT Openreach. This increases the price ceiling applied to the rental of copper loops by providers of local loop unbundled (LLU) services.

Most of us are used to living in three dimensions – or four, if we have the time – but researchers in Australia have created what they’re calling a “five-dimensional” storage medium. Their new optical technology could produce discs the same size as DVDs but hold three hundred times as much data.

Microsoft’s next move in its continuing war against everything will be the launch of its new search engine, which is currently called Kumo. In Japanese, “kumo” can mean either spider or cloud.

Analysis of the European mobile broadband market by Ronan de Renesse, Senior Analyst at Screen Digest, points to a marked slowdown in growth in the next two years.

A Harvard law professor is basing his defence of an accused American file-sharer on the idea that using peer-to-peer networks falls under “fair use” and is therefore legal. Charles Nesson says he can win over a jury and overcome the “four factor test” on fair use.

Following Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that his company’s looking for ways to make readers of The Sun and The Times pay to access their websites, the debate on how newspapers can save themselves in the digital age has been reignited. He says the current business model is “malfunctioning” and the end of the (literally) free Internet press is nigh – others aren’t so sure.

Dangermouse, best known as the skinny one from Gnarls Barkley — the one who disnae sing — is having a little spat with his record company. In fact, it’s such a spat that he’s gone all hot and heavy on Internet piracy, suggesting to fans that they indulge in a little P2P filesharing rather than [...]

Spotify’s announced plans for streaming over mobile phone networks, social networking integration and finally reach out to our friends across the pond. The Swedish music service, which currently has over a million UK users, is seen in some quarters as the music industry’s potential saviour.