The drive, RE4-GP, has what WD claims is "next generation" green technology, saving up to 40 per cent more power than normal drives. The cache is claimed to be good for a 25 per cent increase in performance as well, so this appears to be a win/win before you even consider the massive size.

The drives, available now, are going to retail for $329, or just under 17 cents a GB.

Hollywood may have won a battle, but the war against piracy is far from over. Unauthorized file-sharing will continue (and likely intensify), if not through The Pirate Bay, then through dozens of other near-identical swashbuckling Web sites.

The bad news for copyright-holders is there is obviously a market demand for this type of content distribution model.

Electronic book readers are still a minority pursuit for book lovers, but the devices have the potential to become the norm one day.

Struggling newspapers could be offered a lifeline by the new format - especially as the devices' tech is developing to include colour and flexible displays.

The main drawback comes down to price, because e-books are still not cheap.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.

"There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that," he said.

"There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can't encourage people to break copyright law, I'm not following it and I don't agree with it."

After the surprising rejection of Nicholas Sarkozy's "three strikes" law in France to kick file sharers off the internet, Sarkozy and the bill's supporters have decided to bring the law back for another vote on April 29th.

What does kicking people off the internet have to do with creative diversity?

You don't force people to buy a product they don't want to pay for.

Amazon has said it will not allow online advertising system Phorm to scan its web pages to produce targeted ads.

Phorm builds a profile of users by scanning for keywords on websites visited and then assigns relevant ads.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said: We expect more sites to block Webwise in the near future and also ISPs to drop plans to snoop on web users."

He said other sites - LiveJournal, mySociety and Netmums - had contacted the Open Rights Group to say they too would be blocking Phorm's technology.

As the world's media continues to follow the scourge of piracy off the coast of Somalia, perhaps its time to take another look at the label of "pirate" for copyright thieves.

Nobody, though, is literally comparing downloading illegitimate Hanna Montana tracks with real-life violent maritime crimes.

No? That's exactly what the Business Software Alliance has apparently resorted to.

Citing free-speech concerns about an anonymity-blocking law in South Korea, Google has disabled the ability to upload YouTube videos or comment on them in the country.

A Korean law requires "real-name verification" for Internet services with more than 100,000 different daily users, Google said. Under the law, people must identify themselves with a name and identification number before they can upload video or post comments.

Three pirates were killed in the operation to free Captain Richard Phillips after being held in a lifeboat for several days.

On Sunday he jumped overboard for a second time, and the pirates were shot and killed before they could take action to get him back.

The order for US snipers to kill the pirates came when "the on-scene [US navy] commander determined that the captain was in imminent danger," Vice Admiral William Gortney, head of the US Naval Central Command, said in a Pentagon briefing from Bahrain.

Currently, there are 9.000 artists at Jamendo, offering about 200.000 tracks. Anything available is either under Creative Commons license, or it is under Free Art License. Prerequisite for any artist offering his output at Jamendo PRO is that no one involved in the production is contracted to German's collecting institution GEMA or any other similar institution.

According to Jamendo, this certificate is acknowledged by GEMA and the likes. See Jamendo FAQs. Yet, GEMA denies any knowledge of this. They claim not to know Jamendo's certificate.

In fact, this means every commercial or public use of music (you see, borderline is quite blurry) has to be documented for GEMA. The duty of proof is upon the defendant.