Scrapping the machines brings to an end the embarrassing e-voting debacle which has cost the taxpayer more than €54m since it emerged the expensive equipment was faulty.

They could not be guaranteed to be safe from tampering. And they could not produce a printout so that votes/results could be double-checked.

The company will pay the State €70,267 for the 7,500 machines and associated equipment -- 0.13pc of the amount they have cost the State.

A New Zealand High Court judge has ruled that police search warrants used to seize property from Megaupload's founder Kim Dotcom were illegal.

Kim Dotcom was arrested in January when the FBI shut down his fire-sharing website aming claims it had cost copyright holders more than $US500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content.

She said that police without a valid warrant were trespassing and exceeded what they were lawfully authorised to do.

The direct cost of actions taken by so-called "patent trolls" totalled $29bn in the US in 2011, according to a study by Boston University.

They include businesses that buy patents with the sole aim of licensing them out, individual inventors, universities and companies that assert patent rights unrelated to the products they make.

"Even so, the direct costs are large relative to total spending on [research and development], which totalled $247bn in 2009, implying that NPE patent assertations effectively impose a significant tax on investment in innovation."

Suspected internet pirates will have 20 working days to appeal against allegations of copyright infringement and must pay £20 to do so, according to revised plans to enforce the UK's Digital Economy Act.

Campaign group Consumer Focus chief executive Mike O'Connor said: "Copyright infringement is not to be condoned, but people who are innocent should not have to pay a fee to challenge accusations."

"We urge ISPs to begin building their systems now and to work constructively with rights holders, Ofcom and government to get notice-sending up and running as soon as possible," said John Smith, general secretary of the Musicians' Union."

A man accused of typosquatting is being sued for $1 million by a law firm that alleges he set up a domain that mimics the law firm’s domain name.

The firm also asserts that clients or prospective clients “may attempt to contact our attorneys or staff using the Group’s e-mail address, and misspell the e-mail address as ‘@GiocondoloLaw.com’, which would then be intercepted by the unauthorized Registrant.”

TorGuard, a company that offers VPN and proxy services, has been banned from using the payment processor because of its affiliation with “BitTorrent.” As a result, thousands of dollars belonging to the company have been frozen.

“It wasn’t until I called PayPal and spoke with a business account rep that they explained PayPal doesn’t allow promotion of ‘torrent trackers’,” Jason told TorrentFreak.

“We still accept all forms of credit card, Google checkout and couple of other secure wallet services. It’s ironic to use PayPal when buying a VPN/proxy anyway, they have a proven track record exploiting user’s financial info.”

Dressed in full protective gear, police broke the storm door of the home at 616 East Powell Ave. — the Milans’ front door was already open on the hot summer day. They also broke a front window. They tossed a flashbang stun grenade into the living room that made a deafening blast. A short distance away, a local television crew’s cameras were rolling. The police had invited the station to videotape the forced entry of the residence.

Ira Milan said the perpetrator of the threats likely used Stephanie’s Internet service connection from an outside location, which led police to the East Powell Avenue address.

“This is a little more difficult that a traditional crime scene, because we’re dealing with the Internet. They definitely weren’t expecting (a SWAT team at the door). The reason we did that is the threats were specific enough, and the potential for danger was there.

“This is a big deal to us,” Cullum said. “This may be just somebody who was online just talking stupid. What I would suggest to anybody who visits websites like that is that their comments can be taken literally.”

Reg reader Chris discovered the feature after opening a new tab only to be "greeted by my earlier online banking and webmail sessions complete with account numbers, balances, subject lines etc.

Firefox 13 was released on 5 June, adding new features including updated new tab and home tab pages. The updated new tab page feature is broadly akin to the Speed Dial feature already present in other browsers and displays cached copies of a user's most visited websites.

Dotcom set up a new Twitter account (@kimdotcom) and started sending out thanks to his supporters. They include Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who Dotcom apparently met with while still under house arrest.

Dotcom also promoted the launch of MegaBox with a post to Twitter. He tweeted a screenshot of the MegaBox app, writing, "The major Record Labels thought MegaBox is dead. Artists rejoice. It is coming and it will unchain you."

According to a letter seen by TorrentFreak, Google are threatening action against one of the web’s largest YouTube conversion sites. The site, which according to Google’s own stats is pulling in 1.3 million visitors every day, extracts MP3 audio from YouTube videos and makes it available for users to download.

Cohen underlines the fact that to “separate, isolate, or modify the audio or video components of any YouTube audiovisual content made available through the YouTube API” is forbidden, as is externally storing copies of YouTube content.