With the plummeting cost of storing and transmitting data, sharing information has become much more practical.

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For example, if you are an e-commerce company doing online transactions and storing data such as credit card information, you are considered high risk for data breach and thus subject to higher premiums.

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Other interesting statistics from a recent Symantec study suggests that businesses are storing 2.2 Zettabytes of information and that data creation doubles every two years with one gigabyte of stored data creating a petabyte of transient data.

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With the constant emergence of new data collection technologies businesses are gathering and storing larger volumes of information at a faster pace.

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We haven't dived too deeply into the patents themselves, but it looks like Ed's going to have a bit of a fight on his hands here, as the patents seem to describe systems that have preloaded content about music that's then accessed when a data trigger is received over the air, not just storing song information for later purchase over the Internet.

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Raw data is captured and turned into information by filtering it for accuracy, structuring it consistently and storing it where it can be easily accessed.

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The orderliness of lasers is what makes them useful for things like storing and relaying information--that's why they can transmit voice and data signals around the world through fiber optic cables.

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