[Article] Music-swapping sites to be blocked by internet providers

Baneblade · 23-02-2009 12:33pm

everyone has agreeded to some form of T&C as below so good luck argueing around it.

Customers may not use eircom net services to create, host or transmit material, which infringes the intellectual property rights of another person or organisation including, but not limited to, copyright and related rights, database rights, trade marks, industrial designs and patents

Now what is interesting is want does "transmit material" apply to, torrent and p2p is obviously covered but a direct downloading from a server is a grey area as technically your not transmitting

Cabaal · 23-02-2009 12:33pm

towel401 wrote: »

but srsly, i think its too late for all the quiet, peaceful and legal forms of protest and something more serious is needed.

So what do you suggest?
Since your so concerned I'd hope you have some ideas, should be an interesting argument from you against blocking the pirate bay

towel401 · 23-02-2009 12:37pm

Cabaal wrote: »

There is similar organizations in Europe/Ireland...contact them.

why bother? they are basically powerless. most people here use their internet for Bebo and Facebook.

the only way around it is to use something that gets past the filter or a satellite ISP in a different country.

beside that all we can do is hope who ever takes over after the impending government collapse won't put up with this nonsense

CiaranC · 23-02-2009 12:46pm

Sparks wrote: »

It doesn't. It's your link to it on a server that's not in Sweden that violates them.

What are you talking about? Nobody is discussing Boards.ie? And linking to TPB is not illegal anyway!

I'm not saying torrents are illegal I am saying if it links to copyright material then it is...you can twist it any way you want but if you download say Taken via a torrent file then you are very clearly breaking the law and your ISP's T&C's

Im not twisting anything. .torrent files arent illegal under Irish, EU or swedish law, nor is hosting them , nor is indexing them nor is linking to them.

JohnC. · 23-02-2009 12:47pm

http://www.betanews.com/article/EU_regulations_block_Italian_ISPs_from_blocking_Pirate_Bay/1223674947
http://torrentfreak.com/danish-pirate-bay-block-breaks-eu-law-080213/

Italy and Denmark tried blocking The Pirate Bay before, but it turns out it is illegal.

[edit]
I wonder if Eircom know this and will use it to weasel out, after putting up an initial front of being cooperative?

PaddyTheNth · 23-02-2009 12:48pm

Cabaal wrote: »

A survey carried out by The Pirate Bay eh?

Hence my use of the word 'astonishingly'...'incredibly' would probably have been more appropriate.

I'm not about to go and do my own survey, as I think that TPB's core function is quite accurately represented by its title.

Whatever about targeting copyright infringers, I think that introducing censorship in any form is a pretty bad road to be going down. Boards.ie's reputation suffers very badly as a result of the self-censorship it feels it has to carry out because of the idiotic libel laws in this country.

I have no problem with Eircom disconnecting people who are sharing copyrighted material, but not allowing people to get to a site? It's impractical, unenforcable and sets a disastrous precedent.

Edit #2: I'm going to have to qualify that opinion regarding Eircom. I don't think that it is their place to be voluntarily enforcing the laws of the country. If they were operating in conjunction with a constitutionally appointed police force then it would be a different story. However in cutting off sharers of copyrighted material they are clearly enforcing their T&Cs.

ionix5891 · 23-02-2009 12:50pm

Can I sue IRMA for blocking access to my music on thepiratebay that I want the world to enjoy for free? :rolleyes:

the Eircom advert in bottom right says "Uplaod images faster!"

now lets say a paedophile priest from some county decides to upload some sick images, are Eircom responsible? IMNAL but they are after openning themselves up for some serious "raping" by getting in bed with these crooks

ionix5891 · 23-02-2009 12:52pm

Sparks wrote: »

No, Google would be; and they'd be covered because you'd have signed a contract with them saying you wouldn't do that, and that'd be in the T&C so they'd be covered. So boards.ie would be in the clear, google would be in the clear, and only your rear end would be in the fire.

What if link to a certain google search result :rolleyes:

now that be funny

linking is not illegal and there are several EU precedent cases on it, because Boards.ie rules dont apply to the whole internet or the world at large, they just apply here and thats fine, its your choice and your rules, but dont be forcing your authoritharian viewpoints on the rest of that, and its sad seeing support for Eircom from certain members, once every single one of your packets is being strip searched and filtered dont come crying

.

Cabaal · 23-02-2009 12:55pm

PaddyTheNth wrote: »

Hence my use of the word 'astonishingly'...'incredibly' would probably have been more appropriate.

I'm not about to go and do my own survey, as I think that TPB's core function is quite accurately represented by its title.

Whatever about targeting copyright infringers, I think that introducing censorship in any form is a pretty bad road to be going down. Boards.ie's reputation suffers very badly as a result of the self-censorship it feels it has to carry out because of the idiotic libel laws in this country.

I have no problem with Eircom disconnecting people who are sharing copyrighted material, but not allowing people to get to a site? It's impractical, unenforcable and sets a disastrous precedent.

Censorship is a slippery slope indeed, I;d have to agree with this post

towel401 · 23-02-2009 12:56pm

Cabaal wrote: »

So what do you suggest?
Since your so concerned I'd hope you have some ideas, should be an interesting argument from you against blocking the pirate bay

coup d`etat maybe. nobody in this country gives a **** about internet filtering / DRM / censorship as long as they can have their facebook, bebo and continue to live in their overpriced house. Ireland is very backward when it comes to that sort of thing. I don't think there is any country that blocks piratebay so why should they do it over here?
its unlikely we`ll see a coup here unless the recession really takes over but unfortunately one of the few ways out of this BS

you might think that TPB is full of 'illegal' stuff if you look at the front page. but if you have an account you get access to their huge selection of porn torrents. which is mostly made by amateurs who get a pleasure out of internet strangers watching them ****. which might explain the 80%

Cabaal · 23-02-2009 12:57pm

ionix5891 wrote: »

now lets say a paedophile priest from some county decides to upload some sick images, are Eircom responsible? IMNAL but they are after openning themselves up for some serious "raping" by getting in bed with these crooks

If eircom knew about it and did nothing I would imagine yes they could get in a spot of bother, however if eircom knew about it they would likely be obliged to report him for child porn and they would terminate his account and once requested would hand over any logs to the Gardai for use in court prosecution.

Mathiasb · 23-02-2009 12:58pm

Cabaal wrote: »

A survey carried out by The Pirate Bay eh?
I';d suggest you do your own....goto the search box enter nothing and press search...take say the first 5 pages of torrents and tell me how many are legal v illegal linked content

I certainly count a hell of lot more illegal linked torrents then legal

That's entirely irrelevant - TPB hosts .torrent files, they don't host illegal content.

Cabaal · 23-02-2009 1:00pm

towel401 wrote: »

coup d`etat maybe. nobody in this country gives a **** about internet filtering / DRM / censorship as long as they can have their facebook, bebo and continue to live in their overpriced house. Ireland is very backward when it comes to that sort of thing.

Exactly the problem with this country, you don't like hopw things are going and you don't "think" anything will change so you don't bother.

If that was the case groups like Ireland Off Line would not exist.

If you have not tried to stop eircom censoring sites then how do you know it won't work...whats the point of bitching and moaning on boards.ie about it if you are not prepared to atleast attempt to do the leg work in anyway to stop it happening?

maclek · 23-02-2009 1:01pm

Rather than rehashing the existing arguments again, can we do anything about this? The people who care about this issue are simply not a large enough group to influence eircom economically. I'd guess most of us are not even with eircom. I'd also guess they'd be glad to see the backs of us.

I suppose we just lie back and think about opendns and onions?

If I was a politician I'd be very concerned about the impact this has on the global impression of Ireland Inc as a forward thinking internet savvy country.

ionix5891 · 23-02-2009 1:02pm

Cabaal wrote: »

If eircom knew about it and did nothing I would imagine yes they could get in a spot of bother, however if eircom knew about it they would likely be obliged to report him for child porn and they would terminate his account and once requested would hand over any logs to the Gardai for use in court prosecution.

and they better do that, if they knew

now why should Eircoms resources be used to censor the internet for a media cartel/mafia instead of hunting these crazy people?

they are a carrier, but they decided to give up their "common carrier" defence so good luck to them now

ionix5891 · 23-02-2009 1:06pm

maclek wrote: »

Rather than rehashing the existing arguments again, can we do anything about this? The people who care about this issue are simply not a large enough group to influence eircom economically. I'd guess most of us are not even with eircom. I'd also guess they'd be glad to see the backs of us.

I suppose we just lie back and think about opendns and onions?

If I was a politician I'd be very concerned about the impact this has on the global impression of Ireland Inc as a forward thinking internet savvy country.

Im going to write a formal letter from my company (Internet services) to the Minister for Communications highlighting the damage Eircom are doing to this country (Yet again)

it might be a small measure but i am gonna do my damned best that this country doesnt endup like China, how many more potential investors could be scared from investing here if they think we are a backward lot (im not saying that China is backwards but I dont agree with their censorship and as I already mentioned I think it stiffles innovation there in the IT sector, and aint "innovation" what will get us of this financial mess?)

another thing we can do is start an anti Eircom campaign informing the users that they are being screwed

third thing can be done is to look into setting up a VPN company and then running a Google Adwords campaign targeting eircom users only

.

jor el · 23-02-2009 1:18pm

Mathiasb wrote: »

Who gets to decide what content is going to be censored?

Like it or not, it's ultimately the ISP's decision to censor or not, and to choose which sites. If your ISP starts censoring, then you have the choice to move ISP. If that one also censors, then move again. Eventually you may run out of ISPs, then you'll need to take real action.

From what I'm reading of this, it seems that eircom aren't going to willingly censor torrent sites, but will not fight a court case either. If the court decides in favor of the censoring, which it might not even if eircom don't contend it, then eircom will start to censor. The question will be, how many people will threaten to leave, or actually leave, eircom if this happens, and how much that would effect their bottom line?

If the courts make a decision in favor of censorship, it may effect all ISPs, even if the case is only against eircom. It'll be a worrying precedent if this does happen, and a curtailment of some peoples privileges and freedoms, for the protection of another's.

maclek wrote: »

If I was a politician I'd be very concerned about the impact this has on the global impression of Ireland Inc as a forward thinking internet savvy country.

If you were a politician, and that was your position, I'd say you'd be alone. Our politicians don't appear to know/care/understand what's going on where the Internet is concerned.

ionix5891 · 23-02-2009 1:23pm

jor el wrote: »

Like it or not, it's ultimately the ISP's decision to censor or not, and to choose which sites. If your ISP starts censoring, then you have the choice to move ISP. If that one also censors, then move again. Eventually you may run out of ISPs, then you'll need to take real action.

From what I'm reading of this, it seems that eircom aren't going to willingly censor torrent sites, but will not fight a court case either. If the court decides in favor of the censoring, which it might not even if eircom don't contend it, then eircom will start to censor. The question will be, how many people will threaten to leave, or actually leave, eircom if this happens, and how much that would effect their bottom line?

If the courts make a decision in favor of censorship, it may effect all ISPs, even if the case is only against eircom. It'll be a worrying precedent if this does happen, and a curtailment of some peoples privileges and freedoms, for the protection of another's.

If you were a politician, and that was your position, I'd say you'd be alone. Our politicians don't appear to know/care/understand what's going on where the Internet is concerned.

thats another problem here that needs to be brought to attention, Eircom's size and monopoly is going to be used against other ISPs and damage this country yet again

if there is a court ruling blocking sites (which is unlikely as it would breach EU directives and there was precedent in other countries where it was overturned) then they should block them, which would be very worrying but law is law

but so far no law has been broken, and if eircom will just block sites without court ruling then its bad, whos to say they wont do it? they already hand over names and disconnect people without a court order, the whole 3 strikes thing is not based on a law for example (and has been hinted by EU to be possibly illegal)

Dotsie~tmp · 23-02-2009 1:40pm

Get firing off you emails boys and girls. Mines done.

Mathiasb · 23-02-2009 1:47pm

Clearly, now the ISPs are responsible for any music-swapping that occurs since they've taken it upon themselves to determine what is or isn't legal.

1. Find some reasonably popular band who is sharing, or is willing to promote their music on torrent sites.
2. Throw out a little press, get a reasonably large number of people outside Ireland to download/seed.
3. Sue the IRMA for tortious interference with contract, anti-trust, whatever **** you can make stick.
4. Profit?

Chardee MacDennis · 23-02-2009 1:54pm

Dotsie~tmp wrote: »

Get firing off you emails boys and girls. Mines done.

ionix5891 wrote: »

Im going to write a formal letter from my company (Internet services) to the Minister for Communications highlighting the damage Eircom are doing to this country (Yet again)

it might be a small measure but i am gonna do my damned best that this country doesnt endup like China, how many more potential investors could be scared from investing here if they think we are a backward lot (im not saying that China is backwards but I dont agree with their censorship and as I already mentioned I think it stiffles innovation there in the IT sector, and aint "innovation" what will get us of this financial mess?)

another thing we can do is start an anti Eircom campaign informing the users that they are being screwed

third thing can be done is to look into setting up a VPN company and then running a Google Adwords campaign targeting eircom users only

.

maclek wrote: »

Rather than rehashing the existing arguments again, can we do anything about this? The people who care about this issue are simply not a large enough group to influence eircom economically. I'd guess most of us are not even with eircom. I'd also guess they'd be glad to see the backs of us.

I suppose we just lie back and think about opendns and onions?

If I was a politician I'd be very concerned about the impact this has on the global impression of Ireland Inc as a forward thinking internet savvy country.

ahem!!

BastardPrince wrote: »

hoping to get site going tonight which people can use to email a number of people to display their disgust about eircoms recent decisions. each email will be addressed to eamon ryan, rex comb, the ceo of babcock & brown, brian cowen, john gormley, enda kenny and ruairi quinn. anyone else worth sending a complaint to? comeg maybe?

also if anyone wants to help it would be great, just registered the domain there - in work at the moment but hoping to have somehting up around 9 tonight. keep an eye on boycotteircom.com

basically i am going to write a script where users can generate a letter that is automatically sent to eircom/government/ispai/etc complaining. if someone could help me with wording of the letter it would be great!

ionix5891 · 23-02-2009 2:03pm

eirscum.com is available.
eircon.com is not available.
eircomsucks.com is not available.
eirslime.com is available.
greatfirewallofeire.com is available.
greatfirewallofireland.com is available.
eircomproxy.com is available.
eirvpn.com is available.

Iago · 23-02-2009 2:10pm

ionix5891 wrote: »

thats another problem here that needs to be brought to attention, Eircom's size and monopoly is going to be used against other ISPs and damage this country yet again

Your assuming here, it's a fair assumption but is not fact.

ionix5891 wrote: »

if there is a court ruling blocking sites (which is unlikely as it would breach EU directives and there was precedent in other countries where it was overturned) then they should block them, which would be very worrying but law is law

which is exactly what they are proposing to do.

ionix5891 wrote: »

they already hand over names and disconnect people without a court order, the whole 3 strikes thing is not based on a law for example (and has been hinted by EU to be possibly illegal)

Firstly, as far as I understand it, they are not handing over any names. The industry is providing IP addresses that are known to have uploaded copyrighted material and eircom have agreed they will communicate with these customers and if repeated offences occur they will disconnect them. There is certainly nothing illegal about that, having service from eircom is based on T's & C's which include an acceptable usage policy and the right of eircom to close an account if these T's & C's aren't followed.

Cabaal · 23-02-2009 2:11pm

ionix5891 wrote: »

eirscum.com is available.
eircon.com is not available.
eircomsucks.com is not available.
eirslime.com is available.
greatfirewallofeire.com is available.
greatfirewallofireland.com is available.
eircomproxy.com is available.
eirvpn.com is available.

Why not e-mail the likes of eircomsucks.com and ask them to post something about it, I believe the site is still active?

Sparks · 23-02-2009 2:12pm

Mathiasb wrote: »

Clearly, now the ISPs are responsible for any music-swapping that occurs since they've taken it upon themselves to determine what is or isn't legal.

Am I the only one who read this part of lago's post above?

eircom have said that they won't challenge this in court, but it's still up to IRMA to prove a case for blocking sites based on copyright and Irish law for each and every website they want to have blocked. Otherwise the judge will just throw it out.

If IRMA prove it in court, Eircom don't have much of a choice anyway; it's the court case you have to worry about...

Mathiasb · 23-02-2009 2:14pm

Sparks wrote: »

Am I the only one who read this part of lago's post above?

If IRMA prove it in court, Eircom don't have much of a choice anyway; it's the court case you have to worry about...

A step in the lesser wrong direction. So now we'll see how corrupt and non-educated these judges are about modern copyright laws, the Internet and the likes.

Cabaal · 23-02-2009 2:15pm

ionix5891 wrote: »

they already hand over names and disconnect people without a court order, the whole 3 strikes thing is not based on a law for example (and has been hinted by EU to be possibly illegal)

Please don't make things up
You are very much incorrect, eircom are NOT handing over names/address are are simply warning users and terminating on the third warn if they continue to download copyright material (or atleast are reported as such),

In addition if your saying the EU are hinting this as illegal then back that claim up as we've already seen your first claim (that eircom are handing over details without court order) is very much not based on any fact and is very much incorrect
:rolleyes:

Chardee MacDennis · 23-02-2009 2:18pm

but they are disconnecting people without a court order, yes?

ionix5891 · 23-02-2009 2:21pm

Cabaal wrote: »

Please don't make things up
You are very much incorrect, eircom are NOT handing over names/address are are simply warning users and terminating on the third warn if they continue to download copyright material (or atleast are reported as such),

In addition if your saying the EU are hinting this as illegal then back that claim up as we've already seen your first claim (that eircom are handing over details without court order) is very much not based on any fact and is very much incorrect
:rolleyes:

Ok are they not disconnecting people from the internet without a court order based on evidence from an obviously biased sources? :rolleyes:

and now they want to prevent people accessing certain sites, once again from a list provided by the same media corporations

whats interesting is a lack of official statement from Eircom on something that could affect their users and the service provided

Sparks · 23-02-2009 2:24pm

BastardPrince wrote: »

but they are disconnecting people without a court order, yes?

Of course they do - you don't think they need a court order to disconnect someone who doesn't pay their bill, do you?
But handing over names without a court order, that's a breach of the Data Protection Act and they could be charged over that (IIRC it's actually a criminal offence, not a civil one?)

[Article] Music-swapping sites to be blocked by internet providers

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