John Gapper: Digital pirates’ stringholds are being retaken by legal streaming services

Court rules Ireland’s internet service providers have to block three popular sites

Spotify in negotiation with label owners on whom it depends for most of its 30m songs

The 3310 evokes a time when everything was changing

Despite the push of upstarts like Spotify and Apple, nothing comes close to the YouTube as a music platform

While US film group seeks to block websites streaming its work, digital music is the norm

Private consumers of films streamed by portals appear not to be breaking the law

Court hears up to 1.3m people in State are illegally accessing companies’ content

Decorator Ken Fulk creates interiors for tech royalty, including Napster’s Sean Parker and Bebo founders Michael and Xochi Birch. It’s his ideal job: since childhood he’s had ideas coursing through his head like movies waiting to be brought to life. So when a client asks for a unicorn, he’s okay with that

Niamh Scanlon (13) started writing code through CoderDojo and hasn’t looked back

Beatles back catalogue to be made available on nine popular online streaming services

With pot legal for medical purposes in some US states, start-ups are blossoming

Blendle’s model of micropayments for articles makes it “iTunes for the press”

The idea is to offer ready-made playlists

Is it time to wake up and smell the freebies? For although the world is still full of rip-offs and unfair charges, we live in an era where plenty of stuff costs next to nothing

Abundance of the web has shaken up traditional ways of selling

Online advertising is a scourge of our day. The plug-ins that block them are a scourge of advertising

Blaming technology - skype, iPods and more - for sliding down the quality slope

Celebrity sells her LA mansion to Napster co-founder Sean Parker

Purists hopping mad over Metallica should just grin and bear it

The web has revolutionised the music industry and the media. Could it do the same to healthcare?

Members of ‘w00w00’ have spawned more than a dozen companies, mainly in security

Market for music streaming is still young and has enormous potential

An inquiry will decide if US snooping laws are ‘fit for purpose’

Content producers – such as RTÉ and TG4 – may need to provide unbundled access to both live and archived content with a pragmatic micro-payment mode

It seems those dire warnings about the ‘fertility cliff’ we topple over at age 35 are based on 300-year-old data

Download, Bloodstock, Wacken, Sonisphere, NSX: Ronan McGreevy has the lowdown on the heaviest Euro thrash fests around

iTunes figures show it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that cheap swing

The Pirate Parties believes standing for election is the best way to get noticed by Europe’s political elite

South by Southwest draws the world’s brightest minds to Texas every year for a festival of ideas and culture: here’s what we’ve learned so far