Eircom enacts three strikes rule

sink

oceanclub wrote: »

I'd like to know exactly what counts as "suspicious", for one. (Since I'm a non-Eircom customer it doesn't affect me but just curious.)

P.

Nothing! Eircom nor anybody else will be monitoring bandwidth usage for suspicious activity, it's a load of crap. Anyone who says so doesn't know what they're talking about.

oceanclub

Inquitus wrote: »

Noone is going to have anything done against them for suspicious web traffic, that's scaremongering.

A company hired by the IRMA is going to gather IP Addresses of Irish People using P2P to share copyrighted music and pass them to Eircom who will start issuing notices.

So megaupload-type services and Usenet traffic is fine? I guess there are plenty of ways around for Eircom customers then, especially as this only concerned downloading music.

P.

jimi_t2

edit

Duggy747

"They're infringing on my basic human right.......I want to steal." :pac:

The 3 strikes rules is fairly tame and if you haven't learned your lesson after the 2nd strike then you deserve to have your connection cut.

Why is everybody so shocked about this, who honestly never saw this coming in regards to online piracy? An ISP was eventually gonna take this a step further (And Eircom see it as reason to open a service similiar to iTunes)

blubloblu

gizmo wrote: »

If you don't download illegal material then you won't get a strike, simple as that.

Not quite so simple. http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/
The likes of Dtecnet have made thousands of mistakes before. Families without computers have been accused of file-sharing. The detection methods they use are very error-prone. It seems they have a carpet-bombing approach which hopefully catches a few pirates along the way.

gizmo

blubloblu wrote: »

Not quite so simple. http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/
The likes of Dtecnet have made thousands of mistakes before. Families without computers have been accused of file-sharing. The detection methods they use are very error-prone. It seems they have a carpet-bombing approach which hopefully catches a few pirates along the way.

Perhaps, but in that case you can dispute it and it will be overturned. If not then we will have a problem and the torch wielding mob will have something legitimate to complain about.

sink

blubloblu wrote: »

Not quite so simple. http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/
The likes of Dtecnet have made thousands of mistakes before. Families without computers have been accused of file-sharing. The detection methods they use are very error-prone. It seems they have a carpet-bombing approach which hopefully catches a few pirates along the way.

TBH, I'll believe it when I see it. I can't see how collecting IP's joining a swarm on a P2P network could be at all error-prone. It's also not in the rights holders interest to get it wrong, if they do they'll just get unwanted negative press making it more difficult for them to catch the real pirates.

jimi_t2

gizmo wrote: »

Okay, I'll try to be very clear with this...

They. will. not. be. monitoring. your. connection.

I'll be even clearer

It. doesn't. bloody. matter.

When they trawl these pirate sites they will be harvesting IPs from torrents of copyrighted material.
They will then send these IPs to Eircom who will match them to their customers.

[pedantic] I mean the RIAA/MPAA and parallel bodies have such a GREAT track record in this area.

Oh, and its not like its in Eircoms interest or anything to disconnect habitual high-bandwith users.

And hey, its not like they're a corrupt, unfair and overall underhanded company! I'm sure they'll hold themselves to the highest moral standards, like you and I! [/pedantic]

Maybe I'm being overtly pessimistic, but my experience with Eircom is less than sterling in even getting them to try and provide the service I paid for.

Here's it put a little more elqoquently than I

This is not a law, it is a private arrangement, part of an out-of-court settlement between Eircom and the Irish Recorded Music Ass. Those who face disconnection will not have the opportunity to confront their accusers before a judge unless they take civil action themselves. It is, in essence, an end-run around the legal system that requires minimum effort on the part of the recording industry with maximum impact on Irish internet users.

IRMA have a contract with a company called DtecNet to monitor file sharing networks for Irish users and provide IP addresses for further action. This means they are not going to be accepting legal notices from anyone else and are not going to be tricked into disconnecting the Taoiseach any time soon

Or incurring the wrath of any business which might take umbrage and sue them for loss of profits. They're going after the soft targets; as someone else put it, it's also ''A cheap and easy way to harass ''unwanted'' users with plausible deniability.''

Where do people get this stuff from? Do you just make it up? I work for a small company who has several premises and we use IP security cameras streaming though a VPN over the internet. The amount of bandwidth we use is several gigabytes a day.

Asides from that, your company will definitely have some variation of a business or enterprise account to account for your usage. RESIDENTIAL ACCOUNTS are subject to a ridiculous ''fair usage'' clause regardless of this recent nonsense with the IRMA.

By your logic we're now going to get throttled by eircom because we're using excessive bandwidth, which is nothing but scaremongering bull****.

Think for a second what kind of users Eircom WANT on their network, and what kind of users they DON'T want.

Now wonder why they rolled over so quickly.

As far as I can surmise, repeated references to 'illegal downloads' are made despite the fact that there is no indication that anywhere in the process will there be an attempt made to determine whether or not the download was in fact illegal. The ISP is merely taking a third party accusation as fact.

Call it scaremongering if you want, but don't start going to personal insults. I'm going to be the last person to want to go ''I told ya so'' if my spidey-sense is correct.

The ONLY thing working in our favour is that they're only processing 50 users a week. Thats still about 2.5k a year however, a sizeable chunk when you realise how few people in this country actually have Eircom broaband.

jimi_t2

gizmo wrote: »

Perhaps, but in that case you can dispute it and it will be overturned. If not then we will have a problem and the torch wielding mob will have something legitimate to complain about.

This is not a law, it is a private arrangement, part of an out-of-court settlement between Eircom and the Irish Recorded Music Association.

How many people are going to be willing to take a civil case to court rather than just change ISPs?

BaconZombie

SSL =! Secure

It is VERY easy to MiTM a SSL connection and ALOT of ISP do it.

Inquitus wrote: »

1) P2P sharing, whether from private trackers or not, leaves you vulnerable to being collared by the people employed by the IRMA. They can and do join popular private tracker sites, and all Public trackers are obviously public. Even if you dont seed, and you only upload whilst downloading, they can harvest your IP and reasonably accuse you of uploading and pass on the info to eircom for your 1st strike.

2) Direct download sharing, this is not in scope at the moment, as it is download only, and has not been brought up by the IRMA, but Rapidshare and Megaupload don't provide SSL and via packet inspection your ISP can deduce what you are downloading. This would require a shift in the law, as they are trying to move towards in the UK, where ISPs are responsible for their traffic. Non SSL usenet can also be inspected in this way. A move towards packet inspection would herald a dark path to a more orwellian 1984 vision of the internet.

3) Usenet with SSL and any other direct download by SSL. This creates an encrypted tunnel between your PC directly and the source server, and does not allow your ISP to know anything more than the source IP, your IP and the volume downloaded. Given Usenet provides Linux distros as well as copyright content, this will never be a basis for prosecutions. Most Usenet providers like their direct download colleagues in RS and Mega operate out of safe havens and do not keep information of what has been downloaded, insulating their users from any future legal actions against them.

Eircom have only commited to processing 50 requests a week, from checking torrents alone they (IRMA) could probably gather a years worth of ips in an hour. Whilst this is the first step down the rocky road of internet censorship for Ireland, it's a long way from being the end of the world.

The UK Digital Economy Act, recently rushed through in the last days before the UK election represents the most savage attack on internet rights in law yet seen in Europe.
‎

Peanut

chopperbyrne wrote: »

The amount of outrage is ridiculous.
...
This does not mean that they are monitoring every website you visit or what your browsing habits are.

That's not the point.

What has effectively been decided, is that your Internet access can be removed from you solely by relying on non-personal information.

"The decision to cut people's internet was taken after High Court judge Mr Justice Peter Charleton ruled identifying users' IP address did not constitute personal information."

http://www.insideireland.ie/index.cfm/section/news/ext/Eircom0089/category/936

So what we have here is a ruling that says an IP address is not actually personal information, yet we can use it to completely curtail access for someone?

--

Consider the amount of small businesses such as cafes and guesthouses that want to offer wireless Internet to their customers. This action effectively prevents them from doing that. They can firewall off all access except HTTP, but this prevents usage of other net services, and trying to separate p2p from other traffic is a far from trivial task.

Also consider that there is rarely a 1-to-1 mapping of IP to user in other domestic and business situations. Insecure wireless routers, teenagers downloading etc. can lead to sanctions against innocent parties.

If you get thrown off Eircom, perhaps you can join another ISP, for now at least. But what happens when you need email to conduct business, you need to submit applications online, generally, all the day to day facilities that we take for granted?

Tough luck, according to IRMA. And don't believe for a second that these people will not push for enforcing this across all ISPs after their experiment with Eircom, if they can get away with it.

Dick & co. have decided for us that we don't really need the EU to say whether that's important or not. Trust us, they say, we know better, and after all, won't someone please think of the recording artists?

sink

jimi_t2 wrote: »

I'll be even clearer

It. doesn't. bloody. matter.



[pedantic] I mean the RIAA/MPAA and parallel bodies have such a GREAT track record in this area.

Oh, and its not like its in Eircoms interest or anything to disconnect habitual high-bandwith users.

And hey, its not like they're a corrupt, unfair and overall underhanded company! I'm sure they'll hold themselves to the highest moral standards, like you and I! [/pedantic]

Maybe I'm being overtly pessimistic, but my experience with Eircom is less than sterling in even getting them to try and provide the service I paid for.

Here's it put a little more elqoquently than I



Or incurring the wrath of any business which might take umbrage and sue them for loss of profits. They're going after the soft targets; as someone else put it, it's also ''A cheap and easy way to harass ''unwanted'' users with plausible deniability.''



Asides from that, your company will definitely have some variation of a business or enterprise account to account for your usage. RESIDENTIAL ACCOUNTS are subject to a ridiculous ''fair usage'' clause regardless of this recent nonsense with the IRMA.



Think for a second what kind of users Eircom WANT on their network, and what kind of users they DON'T want.

Now wonder why they rolled over so quickly.

As far as I can surmise, repeated references to 'illegal downloads' are made despite the fact that there is no indication that anywhere in the process will there be an attempt made to determine whether or not the download was in fact illegal. The ISP is merely taking a third party accusation as fact.

Call it scaremongering if you want, but don't start going to personal insults. I'm going to be the last person to want to go ''I told ya so'' if my spidey-sense is correct.

The ONLY thing working in our favour is that they're only processing 50 users a week. Thats still about 2.5k a year however, a sizeable chunk when you realise how few people in this country actually have Eircom broaband.

Again you're taking the facts of the case and coming up with completely unfounded conjecture. We know fairly precisely how they will be going about this, the methods they'll be using are fairly fool proof.

It's in no ones interest to harass an innocent party least of all the ISP. Anyone with any sense who is getting harassed by their ISP will immediately switch. Any company that decides to drive away it's own customers isn't going to last very long!

Kiith

I love the picture BBC are using for this news piece :P

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10152623.stm

Inquitus

BaconZombie wrote: »

SSL =! Secure

It is VERY easy to MiTM a SSL connection and ALOT of ISP do it.

It's not that easy to MiTM an SSL connection, especially on a large scale, its of questionable morality and perhaps questionable legality too, and its certainly not cost effective.

ISPs are fighting tooth and nail not to become the internet police, due to the hefty costs that will be involved in packet sniffing, MiTM on SSL etc.

If it got out that an ISP was MiTM your SSL connections to the web which would include your online purchases, online banking etc. there would be a ****ing riot imo.

sink

Inquitus wrote: »

It's not that easy to MiTM an SSL connection, especially on a large scale, its of questionable morality and perhaps questionable legality too, and its certainly not cost effective.

ISPs are fighting tooth and nail not to become the internet police, due to the hefty costs that will be involved in packet sniffing, MiTM on SSL etc.

If it got out that an ISP was MiTM your SSL connections to the web which would include your online purchases, online banking etc. there would be a ****ing riot imo.

It should be illegal if it's not already to MiTM an SSL connection the same way it's illegal to open someone's post marked private.

jimi_t2

sink wrote: »

Again you're taking the facts of the case and coming up with completely unfounded conjecture. We know fairly precisely how they will be going about this, the methods they'll be using are fairly fool proof.

Now *that* is unfounded conjecture

It's in no ones interest to harass an innocent party least of all the ISP. Anyone with any sense who is getting harassed by their ISP will immediately switch. Any company that decides to drive away it's own customers isn't going to last very long!

It doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

Eircom are the biggest wired broadband provider
Eircom own the phonelines.

When everyone starts jumping ship, they still make nearly as much money through reselling (when you take into consideration the admin costs etc...) and their own service will jump in performance.

All they then have to do is refuse to resell any further broadband capacity to other companies and, Bobs your uncle, they start looking like the lesser of two evils.

The *dream* of every broadband provider is to be able to cut off the top 10% of their bandwith hogs on residential accounts and then to be able to make the case of plausible deniability should they be brought to court for denial of service (i.e. the onus is no longer on them to prove copyright infringement).

It could be something as simple as one digit being off in a series of 16 digit IP addresses. How hard is it going to be to get a judge to rule in your favour when you've 50 or so coming in a week and they're afforded zero legal protection due to the latest ruling. Especially when most Irish judges barely know how to operate a microwave.

I DON'T BELIEVE IT IS ANY COINCIDENCE THAT THE LAUNCH OF ''NGB'' AND THEIR PRIVATE ARRANGEMENT WITH IRMA COINCIDE.

If you disagree, thats fine. Dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist or whatever you want. Just don't insinuate that I ''don't get it''. I've a lot of anecdotal and personal information at my disposal in relation to Eircom, and I've drawn conclusions based on that.

Inquitus

jimi_t2 wrote: »

I DON'T BELIEVE IT IS ANY COINCIDENCE THAT THE LAUNCH OF ''NGB'' AND THEIR PRIVATE ARRANGEMENT WITH IRMA COINCIDE.

If you disagree, thats fine. Dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist or whatever you want. Just don't insinuate that I ''don't get it''. I've a lot of anecdotal and personal information at my disposal in relation to Eircom, and I've drawn conclusions based on that.

I've a lot of anecdotal and personal information at my disposal in relation to the Moon Landings and I can tell you cthey never happened.

sink

jimi_t2 wrote: »

Now *that* is unfounded conjecture

No it's not, they've stated they'll be going after uploaders, which means people who share on P2P networks and the most logical, simplest and cheapest way to do that is to join the networks themselves and gathering the IP's of those uploading. That's called deductive reasoning. Anything over an above that is unfounded conjecture.

jimi_t2 wrote: »

It doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

Eircom are the biggest wired broadband provider
Eircom own the phonelines.

When everyone starts jumping ship, they still make nearly as much money through reselling (when you take into consideration the admin costs etc...) and their own service will jump in performance.

All they then have to do is refuse to resell any further broadband capacity to other companies and, Bobs your uncle, they start looking like the lesser of two evils.

The *dream* of every broadband provider is to be able to cut off the top 10% of their bandwith hogs on residential accounts and then to be able to make the case of plausible deniability should they be brought to court for denial of service (i.e. the onus is no longer on them to prove copyright infringement).

It could be something as simple as one digit being off in a series of 16 digit IP addresses. How hard is it going to be to get a judge to rule in your favour when you've 50 or so coming in a week and they're afforded zero legal protection due to the latest ruling. Especially when most Irish judges barely know how to operate a microwave.

I DON'T BELIEVE IT IS ANY COINCIDENCE THAT THE LAUNCH OF ''NGB'' AND THEIR PRIVATE ARRANGEMENT WITH IRMA COINCIDE.

If you disagree, thats fine. Dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist or whatever you want. Just don't insinuate that I ''don't get it''. I've a lot of anecdotal and personal information at my disposal in relation to Eircom, and I've drawn conclusions based on that.

Eircom currently have the right to stop providing service to anyone at the end of their contract. They also have the right to throttle bandwidth in accordance with their fair use policy. They don't need the excuse of IRMA to do any of that.

tiocimarla

eicom dont own the cable i and many others receive UPC internet from so they will still make a loss.

jimi_t2

sink wrote: »

No it's not, they've stated they'll be going after uploaders, which means people who share on P2P networks and the most logical, simplest and cheapest way to do that is to join the networks themselves and gathering the IP's of those uploading.

They also stated that they'd provide a fast and reliable service.

(I was about to start a whole list of sentences starting with ''they also stated'' and detailing their ridiculous business practices over the last couple of years, but I realised I'd be here all day. You get my point I feel, even if you dsiagree with it)

That's called deductive reasoning. Anything over an above that is unfounded conjecture.

The press release from a lobbyist group of record labels is conjecture.

Looking at how the parallel groups in other countries have operated in an incredibly immoral and ludicrous fashion and then pointing out that this might happen again? That, I feel, is deductive reasoning

They don't need the excuse of IRMA to do any of that.

No, but they have plausible deniability if they stepped out of line legally at any point or if something went wrong. They can put as many tricky clauses in their contract as they like, it only takes a single judge to rule in favour of denial of service for them to take a horrific blow.

jimi_t2

tiocimarla wrote: »

eicom dont own the cable i and many others receive UPC internet from so they will still make a loss.

And what happens when they take UPC to court (they already are) and end up with another extrajudicial ''arrangement'' ?

The precedent is already set that IP addresses don't constitute privileged information; the grunt work is already done.

Are people not reaching the same conclusions that I'm reaching, or is there some glaring flaw in my hypothesis that I'm missing?

Chuchoter

Net neutrality, it was nice knowing you.

sink

jimi_t2 wrote: »

They also stated that they'd provide a fast and reliable service.

(I was about to start a whole list of sentences starting with ''they also stated'' and detailing their ridiculous business practices over the last couple of years, but I realised I'd be here all day. You get my point I feel, even if you dsiagree with it)



The press release from a lobbyist group of record labels is conjecture.

Looking at how the parallel groups in other countries have operated in an incredibly immoral and ludicrous fashion and then pointing out that this might happen again? That, I feel, is deductive reasoning

BTW looking back I should have said inductive reasoning, not deductive, but that's just me being pedantic.

I don't trust sources who seem to have an agenda and that's were the majority of scare stories come from. I haven't really looked into the situation in other countries at an great depth so I can't really judge.

jimi_t2 wrote: »

No, but they have plausible deniability if they stepped out of line legally at any point or if something went wrong. They can put as many tricky clauses in their contract as they like, it only takes a single judge to rule in favour of denial of service for them to take a horrific blow.

I'm not aware of any such law requiring any private company to give compulsory service outside of a contract. Although i'm not a lawyer so I could be mistaken. Do you have a source?

pH

I think this is *good* news, services like tor, freenet and I2P have shown that it's possible to have anonymous uploading and downloading, the downside is that it halves your network bandwidth. Unless you have global reach (and even then it would be hard) into pretty much all ISPs, it's impossible to tell who's sharing and who's downloading what - for those interested all requests go through an intermediary who doesn't really want to file they just forward a request. So the uploader never sees the downloader and vice-versa. Anyone joining the swarm can't see real uploaders or downloaders of any file.

It would be possible to build a p2p network today, what's missing is the incentive - people like Irma and Eircom are now providing it - once an anonymous service is established it's pretty much game over for copyright holders the world over.

tiocimarla

jimi_t2 wrote: »

And what happens when they take UPC to court (they already are) and end up with another extrajudicial ''arrangement'' ?

The precedent is already set that IP addresses don't constitute privileged information; the grunt work is already done.

Are people not reaching the same conclusions that I'm reaching, or is there some glaring flaw in my hypothesis that I'm missing?

Ye i know but UPC are going to fight it all the way. They are Europes largest cable operator and they have already stated they wont bend over. They have more money than eircom, better legal team and a constantly increasing clientel. Eircom has a large share in Irelands internet, but they dont own it all. What happens when sky broadband comes here like in the uk. I doubt they will take this lying down either

jimi_t2

sink wrote: »

I don't trust sources who seem to have an agenda and that's were the majority of scare stories come from. I haven't really looked into the situation in other countries at an great depth so I can't really judge.

So why then do you feel you have the authority to completely dismiss my widely backed and researched hypotheses?

There is a HUGE volume of neutral knowledge out there outlining *exactly* how dangerous the RIAA and similar bodies are when they get a foothold. I believe several links with credible and indisputable information are already on-thread.

This included suing dead people, suing people who don't have computers etc... based on IP addresses. This is the infallible evidence you refer to, and the exact same companies operating under a different banner in a different country.

You then put your complete trust in a MUSIC INDUSTRY LOBBYIST GROUP (As that is IRMA is) which WHOLLY CONSISTS of the Irish heads of International record labels whose trackrecord is nothing short of criminal both to their own artists and to the consumers.

Your *only* source quoted is from this bunch of scumbags. Forgive me if I don't find them wholly credibile.

I'm not aware of any such law requiring any private company to give compulsory service outside of a contract. Although i'm not a lawyer so I could be mistaken. Do you have a source?

Whereas contract law is the tenant of all law as far as I'm concerned, it only takes a judges ruling that some element of malfeasance, professional misconduct or some such other discretionary offence has been performed.

I'll remind you, they don't need to have done something wrong, a Judge just needs to believe so and rule as such.

Antar Bolaeisk

jimi_t2 wrote: »

It doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

Eircom are the biggest wired broadband provider
Eircom own the phonelines.

That's something I was wondering about, even though I'm with Vodafone we still use Eircom's infrastructure so at some point along the line we're basically still using Eircom's service so does that not mean every reseller of Eircom's broadband will have to abide by the 3-strikes system or will it only be those dealing directly with Eircom?

jimi_t2

tiocimarla wrote: »

Ye i know but UPC are going to fight it all the way. They are Europes largest cable operator and they have already stated they wont bend over. They have more money than eircom, better legal team and a constantly increasing clientel. Eircom has a large share in Irelands internet, but they dont own it all. What happens when sky broadband comes here like in the uk. I doubt they will take this lying down either

If this is the case then I'll happily hop over, even just to screw those f*ckers over on the line rental. Won't be long before the country is using Skype anyway.

Tbh I get most of the music I'm interested in on promo or whitelabel at this stage. This whole situation doesn't affect me, but as proponent of free speech and digital rights, I'm incredibly concerned about the repercussions.

jimi_t2

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

That's something I was wondering about, even though I'm with Vodafone we still use Eircom's infrastructure so at some point along the line we're basically still using Eircom's service so does that not mean every reseller of Eircom's broadband will have to abide by the 3-strikes system or will it only be those dealing directly with Eircom?

Only those directly dealing with Eircom AFAIK.

Again, an academic issue in any case. They'll be hitting those lads next. The biggest has fallen, the pawns will follow suit.

tiocimarla

Yep Doesnt effect me either being UPC and all, yet that is we will see how it plays out. Im just concerned for the freedom of the internet to be more restricted. I understand why certain restrictions are on certain illegal sites(sex industry etc) Where people are exploited and so on. But restrictions on basic web browsing and site searches is a bit much. And what for? So Celebs can put it up their noses and tell us they have it hard. Ye right. Priorities are messed up.