Ireland may be the 1st country in Europe to invoke chinese style internet censorship.

Run_to_da_hills

In a fascist move by Eircom, forced on by Irma, Irish internet users are to be blocked from accessing file swapping torrent websites, as internet service providers bow to pressure from the music industry.

This is obviously a far easier option for them than to be chasing up tthe IP addresses of illegal downloading offenders.

The country’s other internet providers have been told by the Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma) to follow suit or face legal action. If the music industry is successful, Ireland will become the first European country to completely block access to hundreds of file-sharing websites.

Irma, which represents major music groups EMI, Sony-BMG, Warner and Universal, is to begin compiling lists of websites that it claims are damaging its business. It will then apply for a court order, requiring Eircom and other internet providers to block access to these sites.

Many of these torrent sites also provide an excellent source of free domain shareware and it is also not just confined to music as Eircom seems to imply


http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=IRELAND-qqqm=news-qqqid=39782-qqqx=1.asp

trout

If that's true - it will be a big mistake IMHO.

It won't take long for music down-loaders to find out about open proxies or tools like TOR, which will drive the problem underground.

Technology isn't the problem or the solution here.

The music industry should think about changing their business models and encouraging people to buy at a fair price

walshm

The problem isn't just restricted to music downloaders - if Eircom start blocking sites then bits of the Internet go dark for everyone - all based on the unfounded and untested allegations of a thrid-party private company.

It's the capitalist version of Chinese free speech.

Mr Freeze

Will all other ISPs be doing this too?

Sure people who want to use torrents or if the quality of someones broadband connection drops, these people will just switch ISP.

CaptSolo

CKWPORT wrote: »

Will all other ISPs be doing this too?

Broadband forum has related and very active discussion threads on this.

In particular: Music-swapping sites to be blocked by internet providers

Zapho

I was under the impression that Italian ISPs are currently blocking access to filesharing websites...or is that just bittorrent trackers?

Anyway, I also agree that this is ridiculous. From the words of the creators of The Pirate Bay: If you take us offline for copyright infringement, you must also take Google offline.

aidan_walsh

Zapho wrote: »

I was under the impression that Italian ISPs are currently blocking access to filesharing websites...or is that just bittorrent trackers?

Anyway, I also agree that this is ridiculous. From the words of the creators of The Pirate Bay: If you take us offline for copyright infringement, you must also take Google offline.

Italian ISPs were previously ordered to block the Pirate Bay, but the judgement was overturned.

The Pirate Bay/Google comparison is not like for like however - PB host the .torrent files, Google do not. You can argue that the end result is the same but the differentiation is an important one.

CaptSolo

walshm wrote: »

The problem isn't just restricted to music downloaders - if Eircom start blocking sites then bits of the Internet go dark for everyone - all based on the unfounded and untested allegations of a thrid-party private company.

It's the capitalist version of Chinese free speech.

Internet-wide activity to protest against activities of IRMA towards disconnecting broadband users and Internet filtering is under way now:

Join #blackout Ireland

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