[The guy]

So for Eircom to prosecute using Rapidshare wouldn't they half to break the law?

If it came up that someone was using Rapidshare for downloading music wouldn't Eircom have to admit that they allowed packet sniffing by another company, wouldn't that be illegal?

[PaddyTheNth]

Originally Posted by The guy

So for Eircom to prosecute using Rapidshare wouldn't they half to break the law?

Eircom wouldn't be prosecuting anyone.

If you get broadband from eircom you agree not to share copyrighted material...so if they cut you off for doing so they are just enforcing their terms and conditions.

Originally Posted by The guy

If it came up that someone was using Rapidshare for downloading music wouldn't Eircom have to admit that they allowed packet sniffing by another company, wouldn't that be illegal?

tbh I don't know how to even start answering this...my answer is no.

[Orion]

Originally Posted by PaddyTheNth

Apart from the fact that they're not doing any 'peeking' in this situation, considering that you agreed not to share copyrighted material when you signed up for Eircom broadband they are pretty much within their rights. Are their T&Cs appropriate for an ISP? Probably not, but that's not the issue here.

Agreeing to not share copyrighted material does not give explicit or implicit permission for them to monitor what you use their service for. An analogy is your phone contract - you should not use it to plot/plan/commit illegal acts but nobody can listen into your phone calls without a court order. Or buying a computer from Dell - no terrorist acts allowed with it - but that doesn't give Dell the right to enter your home to see what you're using it for.

[Orion]

Originally Posted by PaddyTheNth

If you get broadband from eircom you agree not to share copyrighted material...so if they cut you off for doing so they are just enforcing their terms and conditions..

How exactly? Where's the burden of proof? Some faceless corporation is the sole judge now? If Eircom cut anyone off they will need to be able to defend themselves against a breach of contract suit. And an email from Joe Bloggs Music Studio won't cut it. This is where the whole deal falls asunder. Eircom will not cut anybody off on the say-so of any music studio. They will just tell people to stop sharing much as BT do already. There is no way that Sony etc can know who is using any IP at any particular time so they will have no choice but to accept that it was different people each time - even if it wasn't.

[Bohrio]

Originally Posted by Macros42

Agreeing to not share copyrighted material does not give explicit or implicit permission for them to monitor what you use their service for. An analogy is your phone contract - you should not use it to plot/plan/commit illegal acts but nobody can listen into your phone calls without a court order. Or buying a computer from Dell - no terrorist acts allowed with it - but that doesn't give Dell the right to enter your home to see what you're using it for.

49 pages and people still dont understand how all this works... Eircom dont/wont monitor nothing, is the record companies who will inform Eircom of who is downloading/misusing this material and then ask Eircom to act accordingly.

[vibe666]

exactly, and the record companies can't force eircom to give them those details now because they already have an out of court agreement with them regarding this, so if the record companies want that information they'll have to take eircom to court all over again the same as comreg have to every time THEY try and force eircom to do something they don't want to.

it's a classic eircom move that they have practiced many times before.

the data protection act protects the privacy of your name/IP address from 3rd party's so eircom has basically just made it look like they are complying with what was agreed, but in reality they just totally dodged a bullet.

eircom really doesn't care what people are downloading and they aren't just going to willingly cut off customers on the say so of a record company and merrily send them over to the competion, esp. when the competition (for the most part) offers a much better service.

there IS a recession on you know.

Originally Posted by Bohrio

49 pages and people still dont understand how all this works... Eircom dont/wont monitor nothing, is the record companies who will inform Eircom of who is downloading/misusing this material and then ask Eircom to act accordingly.

not entirely. the record companies have no idea 'who' is downloading their material and they never will.

what they have is an IP address and a time which tells them nothing more than who the ISP of that person is. the only people who know, or will ever know those details are eircom and they are under no obligation to give out that information to anyone.

all they have done is agree to something that nobody other than themselves has any way of policing.

maybe they will use it as an excuse to kick off their most prolific (over)downloaders but that's about it. if you're that sort of person anyway, why would you be an eircom customer when there are much better options?

[Orion]

Originally Posted by Bohrio

49 pages and people still dont understand how all this works... Eircom dont/wont monitor nothing, is the record companies who will inform Eircom of who is downloading/misusing this material and then ask Eircom to act accordingly.

I know that - and if you read back a lot you will see I said that already. I was replying to Paddy.

[PaddyTheNth]

Originally Posted by Macros42

Agreeing to not share copyrighted material does not give explicit or implicit permission for them to monitor what you use their service for. An analogy is your phone contract - you should not use it to plot/plan/commit illegal acts but nobody can listen into your phone calls without a court order. Or buying a computer from Dell - no terrorist acts allowed with it - but that doesn't give Dell the right to enter your home to see what you're using it for.

You've already quoted my answer to this - the T&Cs aren't appropriate for an ISP. And Eircom aren't doing any monitoring - they'll be acting on information provided by a third party to enforce their contracts.

Originally Posted by Macros42

How exactly? Where's the burden of proof? Some faceless corporation is the sole judge now? If Eircom cut anyone off they will need to be able to defend themselves against a breach of contract suit. And an email from Joe Bloggs Music Studio won't cut it.

You hardly think that they'll just cut someone off the first time they get a letter quoting an IP number? The three strikes clause has been mentioned several times already, and precisely for the reason you are stating they will have to verify that the accusation is warranted before they cut someone off.

[Orion]

Originally Posted by PaddyTheNth

You hardly think that they'll just cut someone off the first time they get a letter quoting an IP number? The three strikes clause has been mentioned several times already, and precisely for the reason you are stating they will have to verify that the accusation is warranted before they cut someone off.

My point is how are they going to verify it even after three strikes? There is no burden of proof on either Eircom or the studios in this deal. Without dpi (which they cannot legally implement currently) they can't prove that anyone has downloaded anything copyrighted - all they will have is the word of a minimum wage grunt working in a music company that a particular IP was used to do so.

[PaddyTheNth]

Originally Posted by Macros42

My point is how are they going to verify it even after three strikes? There is no burden of proof on either Eircom or the studios in this deal. Without dpi (which they cannot legally implement currently) they can't prove that anyone has downloaded anything copyrighted - all they will have is the word of a minimum wage grunt working in a music company that a particular IP was used to do so.

Yeah that's a fair concern alright. As was mentioned by someone else way back in this thread, some of the anti-piracy folks due what I guess would be described as due diligence...they actually download some of the file(s), take screenshots of the download in progress from the relevant IP, and actually verify that the contents of the download is what its supposed to be. Others just list every single connecting IP and don't bother providing any real evidence.

I would say that in the case of the former, when the *AA can give the date that they were doing what they were doing and the IP they were doing it from together with the sort of evidence described, it would be easy enough for the ISP to check their logs and verify that there was torrent traffic between the relevant IPs at the time described.

[Red Sleeping Beauty]

Google news: http://news.google.co.uk/news?source...ncl=1304756051
http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/16/pir..._media_11.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/18a34a28-f...077b07658.html
http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/42817
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology.../16/pirate-bay

Originally Posted by the guardian

The Pirate Bay in the dock as filesharing trial beginsSwedish

prosecutors have begun to lay out the case against filesharing site The Pirate Bay, in one of the highest-profile copyright cases in years

Kevin Anderson www.guardian.co.uk
Monday 16 February 2009 14.42 GMT

One of most high-profile trials over copyright infringement in years began today in Sweden. Four men behind The Pirate Bay website – which enables people to find others willing to share audio, video, games and other files with them – appeared in court in Stockholm to answer the charge that they had assisted in copyright infringement.

The film, music and games industries are saying that the defendants not only encouraged copyright infringement but also profited from it, while the defendants argue that they hosted no shared files and therefore are not responsible for infringement.

The Pirate Bay is a "torrent" tracker, which uses the peer-to-peer file sharing technology called BitTorrent. Trackers don't host the music, video or software files themselves, but allow users to search for and download "torrent" files. Those in turn allow users to find other people who have the file they want, and to share the files amongst themselves. Each BitTorrent user with a copy of the file contributes a piece to others who are downloading it.

BitTorrent filesharing has been enormously popular: some internet service providers reckon that around 80% of the data traffic passing over their networks uses the service.

This morning, prosecutor Håkan Roswall outlined his case, accusing the four men of profiting from promoting copyright infringement via one of the largest filesharing services on the internet. An estimated 22 million people have used The Pirate Bay site.

Roswall said in court that the defendants were aware that Swedish law was changed in 2005, incorporating an EU directive that makes it illegal to download copyright protected files from the internet.

The defendants include three of the website's co-founders, Fredik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi. Prosecutors also charged one of the site's donors, Swedish dotcom millionaire Carl Lundström.

Lundström has donated money to the organisation, and the prosecution says that in 2004 he helped the other defendents configure larger numbers of computers to host the site.

If convicted, the men face two years in prison and a fine of 1.2m kronor (£98,000).

Lundström's lawyer said: "To supply a service that can be used illegally or legally is not illegal."

The first day of the trial was such an event that Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter's media blog reported that tickets to get into the courtroom were selling on the black market for 500 Swedish kronor (£41).

However, the intense interest and festival atmosphere outside of the court was not matched by high courtroom drama. Most of the day was taken up by the prosecutor showing various screenshots of The Pirate Bay site demonstrating how to download from the site. As Snild Dolkow who is translating Swedish coverage of the trial into English put it:

On the first day of trial, the prosecutor gave to me..

one screenshot of a torrent download,

another screenshot of a torrent download,

another screenshot of a torrent download,

another screenshot of a torrent download,

another screenshot of a torrent download,

another screenshot of a torrent download,

another screenshot of a torrent download,


.... and so on.

While BitTorrent is used to share copyrighted files, the technology is also commonly used to distribute software such as the open-source operating system Linux because it lessens the bandwidth costs for distributors of the software: everyone with a copy of the file contributes a piece to the overall download.

Plaintiffs in the case include Warner Bros, MGM, Colombia Pictures Industries, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI.

Led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the plaintiffs are calling for damages of 120 million kronor (£9.8m). The chairman of the IFPI, John Kennedy, said: "The evidence in this case will show that The Pirate Bay is a commercial business which made substantial amounts of money for its operators, despite their claim to be only interested in spreading culture for free."

The prosecution will rely on expert witnesses, emails between the defendents and invoices sent to advertisers.

Pirate Bay held a press conference on Sunday, bringing in supporters on buses painted with pirate ship. The supporters carried banners with "ctrl+c,ctrl+v", the keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting text, images or files.

At the press conference, defendant Gottfrid Svartholm Warg said the music and movie industry "are welcome to send me a bill". If he does get one, he said he will frame it and hang it on his wall.

[Cabaal]

Taken from ENN - http://enn.ie/story/show/10125031

The paper also says that internet service providers (ISPs) have been put on notice of legal action if they do not implement a system which would cut off the broadband connections of people found repeatedly downloading music illegally. Letters from Sheehy Donnelly Solicitors acting on behalf of the Irish arms of EMI Records, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music were received by a number of telecoms and internet service providers on Monday. The letters seek the implementation of a "graduated response" to copyright infringement by the ISPs' customers.

Last month, Eircom settled a High Court action taken by the four major music labels forcing it to take measures to prevent the use of its networks for the illegal free downloading of music.

[CaptSolo]

Reported by Irish Times: "Threat of Legal Action on Music Copyright"

Digg these news at: http://tr.im/govx

Not surprising that they are going for all other ISPs. It would not make sense for them to limit action only to Eircom and let people migrate to other providers. Eircom just set a precedent that ISPs might give into music industry's demands (w/o a need for them to lobby the government for legislation in this area).

Originally Posted by Cabaal

Taken from ENN - http://enn.ie/story/show/10125031

The paper also says that internet service providers (ISPs) have been put on notice of legal action if they do not implement a system which would cut off the broadband connections of people found repeatedly downloading music illegally. Letters from Sheehy Donnelly Solicitors acting on behalf of the Irish arms of EMI Records, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music were received by a number of telecoms and internet service providers on Monday. The letters seek the implementation of a "graduated response" to copyright infringement by the ISPs' customers.

Last month, Eircom settled a High Court action taken by the four major music labels forcing it to take measures to prevent the use of its networks for the illegal free downloading of music.

[CaptSolo]

Originally Posted by Bohrio

49 pages and people still dont understand how all this works... Eircom dont/wont monitor nothing, is the record companies who will inform Eircom of who is downloading/misusing this material and then ask Eircom to act accordingly.

Will internet users under this agreement have any process for defending themselves against erroneous allegations (apart from suing their ISP)?

If it is record companies who do the informing and Eircom just counts the number of notices from record companies, how can you ensure against record companies abusing this "ability"? Or that they don't make errors in their data collection?

[themacdaddy]

Anyone know when this agreement kicks in or has it already?