[Steve]

Originally Posted by hightower1

That wont circumvent the rule at all. If a site is in breach of legislation and refuse to remove content the copyright holder now has authority to approach the courts and if the court finds they are correct they can order all Irish ISPs to block any requests from Irl based IP addresses to that site url and IP so no matter where the site is hosted geographically it doesnt matter as the site itself may not be able to be forced to remove the content but all IRL users may be blocked from seeing it.

Correct, and seems a perfectly reasonable approach to sites hosting copyrighted material without permission.

This was exactly the case with pirate bay, they refused many times to remove content from their site so IRMA took legal action and had the courts contact Eircom to stop directing their IP addresses to PB url / IP address. Eircom didnt fight it and agreed hence Eircom customers couldnt access PB while others could. IRMA attempted the same action with UPC but they fought and won as the judge had no legislation in place at the time to force them to block or redirect traffic.... now there is.

*takes mod hat off*
I disagree, Eircom pussied out there and bent over in front of the media bigwigs.
I speculate that they were only willing to comply in return for a sweetener - who can tell.
Maybe it's just a strange coincidence that they are now able to offer their overpaying and bandwidth limited customers access to 'unlimited free' copyright material in their 'eircommusichub' offering.

As far as PB is concerned, this is where it gets really fuzzy - PB does not, and never has, hosted any copyright material on their servers. They only host virtual signposts as to where you can possibly get it. It's up to the user after that to decide if they want to risk breaking the law by using what they host.
To hypothetically put this in Airsoft terms, you can go into an Airsoft retailer and purchase a realistic imitation Glock 9mm pistol or AK47 or whatever. If you then choose to go and rob a bank with your RIF, the new law is saying that the retailer should be punished (by blocking any future visitors to his shop) rather than the robber who they don't seem to be too concerned about.

To expand further, if PB gets blocked because they 'facilitate' downloading copyright material without permission by providing links to it then it sets a pretty nasty precedent. Where does that leave Google / Yahoo / other search engines who happen to return a hit to a dodgy site?? Under our common law system, the same precedent would need to be applied to them and therefore the same order issued to the ISP's to block them.

You mentioned 'a fair usage clause' in a previous post - that sort of rational thinking seems to be beyond the comprehension of our muppet lawmakers in this case.

*Sorry for ranting lads, I'm as peed off as you all are at this.

[sliabh]

Originally Posted by Steve

You mentioned 'a fair usage clause' in a previous post - that sort of rational thinking seems to be beyond the comprehension of our muppet lawmakers in this case.

This is a key thing. The copyright holders (music/film industry) have been setting the agenda here. They have been going to the politicians and demanding legislation to protect their interests. They would be fools not to. We the consumers of that content have not done enough to go out and demand our rights are looked after as well. Instead we react late, and ineffectively when new restrictive legislation is proposed. At that point in time the politicians see 2 sides, craft a compromise, and that then means we have lost a lit bit more of what we had before.

Now Shelorck for all his sins has said he is opening a consultation process on new legislation (possibly because he knows the current situation of blocking websites is legally shaky, it has been struck down once already, and may be again).

So rather than ranting here or any other internet forum, get of your arses and start contacting the minister looking for things like:
* formal recognition of fair use rights - including the right to circumvent DRM to make backups, provide references, take the piss.
* an end to region coding of media which is a restriction on the free trade of goods and services, and exists only to protect pricing.
* establishing the right of first sale - if you purchase content you should be able to sell/transfer the rights of use to another person (eBooks are almost impossible to transfer legally, the second hand games business is under attack)
* establish a pan European rights licensing framework - If content media is licensed on one EU country it should be available in all (no more hearing about services like Spotify being launched in Sweden, but not available in Ireland).

It's not much to ask -allow us to legally access and use digital content in the same way we can analog stuff.

Nice and politely, write to your TDs or MEPs (they may have a lot of clout on this one) or call to their constituencey clinics asking for them to do something for the public instead of the rights holders for a change.

Stop whining here, and go out and do something that stands a chance of getting a result.

[hightower1]

Originally Posted by Jsmurff

What about the likes of the mobile dongles?

From my limited understanding of them they're feckn great because A. It's pay as you go which means no billing address meaning no need for registration and as far as Iam aware your IP address can only be tracked back as far as the nearest server in your connection which oddly enough for me has always been in Dublin

I can't help but feel that this is censorship plain and simple piracy or no a government cannot dictate to private company's what the public is or isn't allowed to view on the web, I mean where are we ??? China!?!?!?!?

Any ISP be it mid band dongles , dls, sat or cable all have to have a full accountable list of IP addresses allocated to their subscribers. If the high courts say to block or redirect access to a given site to them they all would legally have to do so... no matter how you get online in IRL you would be redirected / blocked from the source of your connection(yuor ISP)

[hightower1]

Originally Posted by gerrowadat

The thing is though, that in all these cases, all this does is make the technological solutions to this more ubiquitous.

Case in point, the time when all eircom wifi SSIDs got broken. It was a fairly technical exploit, but there was an iphone app within days.

If this law sees widespread use, I can see a UK-based anonymising proxy and/or VPN service taking off. Worked for China :-)

There are already any amount of proxy sites (some better than others) that work for getting one through to geo locked content by spoofing IP addresses the problem being with a lot of them is bandwidth. Your VPN'ing essentially from your connection to a proxy based god knows where and then from there on in its their connection / bandwidth your using which can in some cases be drasticaly slow.

There are always ways around these things but the law makers and lobbiers know this, they simply want to take copyright enfringment out of the hands of the average man. Going after 100% of web users is futile but you can easily hit the 90% who wont be the wiser.

[hightower1]

Originally Posted by Steve

Correct, and seems a perfectly reasonable approach to sites hosting copyrighted material without permission.


*takes mod hat off*
I disagree, Eircom pussied out there and bent over in front of the media bigwigs.
I speculate that they were only willing to comply in return for a sweetener - who can tell.
Maybe it's just a strange coincidence that they are now able to offer their overpaying and bandwidth limited customers access to 'unlimited free' copyright material in their 'eircommusichub' offering.

As far as PB is concerned, this is where it gets really fuzzy - PB does not, and never has, hosted any copyright material on their servers. They only host virtual signposts as to where you can possibly get it. It's up to the user after that to decide if they want to risk breaking the law by using what they host.
To hypothetically put this in Airsoft terms, you can go into an Airsoft retailer and purchase a realistic imitation Glock 9mm pistol or AK47 or whatever. If you then choose to go and rob a bank with your RIF, the new law is saying that the retailer should be punished (by blocking any future visitors to his shop) rather than the robber who they don't seem to be too concerned about.

To expand further, if PB gets blocked because they 'facilitate' downloading copyright material without permission by providing links to it then it sets a pretty nasty precedent. Where does that leave Google / Yahoo / other search engines who happen to return a hit to a dodgy site?? Under our common law system, the same precedent would need to be applied to them and therefore the same order issued to the ISP's to block them.

You mentioned 'a fair usage clause' in a previous post - that sort of rational thinking seems to be beyond the comprehension of our muppet lawmakers in this case.

*Sorry for ranting lads, I'm as peed off as you all are at this.

You could very well be right about eircom / irma dealing in the back room but we'll never know I suspect. Also right about teh grey zones of "does your site show where to get content or show the content direct" , It leaves search engines in the firing line.

I suppose it depends on how hardcore the lawmakers want their view to be, do you want to target direct hosters of content or direct hosters and facilitators?

[whydave]

Yes or no !
Can I start posting pictures again ?

David

[TheDoc]

Originally Posted by whydave

Yes or no !
Can I start posting pictures again ?

David

Technically no, it was written into law some time ago, as well as the European ACTA signed.

So there is the possibility that the owner of the content you post, could go through a legal proceeding against Boards.ie to have it removed.

Which is no different to what anyone would do previously, before the law was written in.

Boards has always had a pre emptive undertone, so the probable answer is no, you can't.

Until about 6 months time, when people realise where this law actually affects and is effective, and everything goes back to normal....

[gerrowadat]

Yeah, boards ain't done flapping their gums.

Most of the 'content' in the military photo thread was just copy pasted from blogs and web searches anyway.

[whydave]

Originally Posted by whydave

Yes or no !
Can I start posting pictures again ?

Originally Posted by TheDoc

Technically no

Tanks for your insight !

Originally Posted by gerrowadat

Most of the 'content' in the military photo thread was just copy pasted from blogs and web searches anyway.

your welcome !

[Steve]

Re-posting stuff that's freely available on the web would constitute 'fair use' in common sense terms. Sadly, there is no allowance for that in the legislation.

In short, I haven't a clue where we stand Dave but as soon as I hear something from on high, I'll post it.

[whydave]

Major film and television studios have lost a landmark case over illegal video downloads in Australia.
The High Court upheld a previous ruling that internet service provider (ISP) iiNet did not authorise copyright infringement among its customers.
more here

[Steve]

From this thread: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showt...p?t=2056642582

Originally Posted by Dav

Well, it's a press release, so the implication is that you share the information with as many people as possible. I can't imagine a world where someone's getting sued over the copyright of a press release unless of course it was intended to have a limited audience and not for public consumption. However, technically speaking, they are indeed someone's intellectual property and so could be subjected to copyright law, but if they tried suing of it's use, it'd be the last time *anyone* would take a press release from that company every again

tl;dr - press releases intended for everyone are ok to post in full.

A glimmer of hope wrt the news thread?

[Steve]

The threads concerned are re-opened so I'm un-sticky-ing this for now.

Hopefully we are safe enough with the links only approach.