Eircom has 21 days to respond to halt ‘three strikes’ order by DPC

bealtine

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/25072-eircom-has-21-days-to/

The Data Protection Commission has given Eircom 21 days to respond to its decision to instruct the operator to halt its ‘three strikes’ policy against music piracy. Under the policy, users caught downloading copyrighted material would be warned three times otherwise their broadband would be cut off for 12 months.

The decision will come as a blow to the recorded music industry which, as part of a settlement in a court case against Eircom in 2009, got the incumbent operator to agree to implement a 'three strikes' policy to combat the wholesale downloading of copyrighted material.

This set in motion a court battle between the record companies and UPC, which declined to implement a similar policy. UPC won the case in October last year.

As part of the agreement between Eircom and the record labels, IRMA would provide Eircom with notifications that would contain the IP address identified with illegal downloading activity along with evidence. The IP addresses were understood to be captured and processed on behalf of IRMA by a third party.

“I can confirm we have concluded our investigation on the above matter and have communicated the outcome to Eircom. It has 21 days to respond," a spokesperson for the Data Protection Commissioner told Siliconrepublic.com.

“Our investigation was commenced on foot of a complaint from an individual who alleged they had received a warning letter about access to copyrighted material in error."

The decision by the Data Protection Commission will also touch a nerve in terms of a recent decision by Europe's highest court, the European Court of Justice, in the dispute between Scarlet Extended SA, an ISP owned by Belgacom, and Belgian management company SABAM.

The court concluded that internet access is a human right and that EU law precludes injunctions being taken against internet service providers (ISPs), requiring them to block users from illegally sharing music and video files.

John Kennedy

watty

Like I said, if a shop is selling pirated or forged goods you don't dig up the road. You raid the shop.

The Music/Film Industry should get no special treatment. It's up to them to prove who is "counterfeiting" the product or sharing unlicensed copies and go after them. The ISPs and also largely the users are irrelevant. Eircom should never have agreed to this.

If a shop is selling their own copies of DVDs, it's the shop owner and Duplication Factory that's pursued not ordinary customers.

I'm not writing this because I think everything should be free either. There is a place for Open Source Software, Free Music and Films etc but it's quite reasonable also for the publishers to want revenue on each copy a user gets. Obviously the Publishers should be passing on a suitable royalty to the creators or performers.

The actual pricing of products and availability or not of "official" Digital downloads is a completely separate issue. Just because something is overpriced or distributed badly gives no-one the right to give away copies free.

Here is a fun site
http://www.youhavedownloaded.com/

Widgets & Banners

Are you against illegal downloading? Do you constantly have ethical debates with people about it?
Maybe you’re just as sadistic as we are and want to scare the crap out of your friends. Here’s the perfect opportunity! Simply embed a banner or widget in a place where they’ll see it and when they visit your web site, it will display our search results for their IP addresses download history. Of course, it does not log any of their information so you won’t be able to obtain their IP or torrent activity but they don’t have to know that. Remember this is only intended for novelty purposes so have fun!

clohamon

It seems they might still be able to force the ISPs to block the sites, if not the users.

Minister of State for Enterprise Seán Sherlock is to publish an order early in the new year that is expected to allow music publishers, film producers and other parties to go to court to prevent internet service providers from allowing their customers access to pirate websites.
The Department of Enterprise, Innovation and Jobs has written to music publisher EMI Ireland confirming the order will be published and incorporated into existing legislation in January. Mr Sherlock also said in a written answer to a parliamentary question that the order, or statutory instrument, would be published next month.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/1219/1224309259318.html

zenno

nah that won't happen, they are wasting their time. there is no way that will be pushed through to force Irish internet service providers to comply with any of the music or movie industry's requests so forget about that coming to fruition because it is only a last desperate try from these industries and it won't work.

watty

They could be daft enough to do it. It won't work and damages security by encouraging people to use dodgy DNS services.

bealtine

Now the government is trying for DNS blocking too and will legislate this.
When will the lawmakers ever learn the basics of the internet and stop listening to clueless idiots?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/1219/1224309259318.html#.Tu6GMic36Xs.twitter

aoifecatz

I recieved one of those letters from Eircom .... it had all my information including the time and date and name of album I downloaded. I did it from a site thats states it it 100% legal to share music with one another ( although it is currently in legal procedings) I coudlnt believe it. Talk about big brother watching u..how is it Eircom are acting like there hand is being forced while UPC are doing what they want...what people want..freedom to share.

bealtine

http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/why-politicians-should-never-make-laws-about-technology-182374

In the weeks leading up to the SOPA vote (or delayed vote, as it were), I perused my representative's website, looking for a phone number or other means of contact to inform them of the bill's odiousness and potentially catastrophic fallout. I'm reasonably sure they'd heard it before, but had been blithely ignoring it. This simple act underscored a problem possibly bigger than SOPA: the fact that as with far too many of our elected officials, technology legislation isn't even on his radar.

The contact form on his website was apparently his preferred method of communication. I headed over and clicked a drop-down menu to select the subject of my missive. The usual suspects were there: defense, environment, budget, even transportation and agriculture -- but no "technology." All I could do was select "other."

[ InfoWorld's Paul Venezia thinks you should demand Net neutrality as a basic right. | The Carrier IQ scandal leads Paul to proclaim enough is enough. ]

To frame this clearly: I was using the most advanced technological form of communications ever developed to contact my elected representative about pending legislation regarding the most technological form of communications ever developed. However, the list of 17 possible topics didn't even include technology.

To politicians, this doesn't seem strange. To them, adding "technology" to this list would be like adding "plumbing" or "animal husbandry." Who could possibly care about the underpinnings of our worldwide internetwork enough to contact their representative about it?

Very few politicians get technology. Many actually seem proud that they don't use the Internet or even email, like it's some kind of badge of honor that they've kept their heads in the sand for so long. These are the same people who will vote on noxious legislation like SOPA, openly dismissing the concerns and facts presented by those who know the technology intimately. The best quote from the SOPA debates: "We're operating on the Internet without any doctors or nurses on the room." That is precisely correct.

The life of a politician doesn't match well with that of highly skilled techies. The old stereotype of the computer geek shying away from social interaction isn't terribly far off. Most computer gurus process data in binary form: There are truths and there are untruths. When Chris Dodd stated, "The entire film industry of Spain, Egypt and Sweden are gone" due to piracy, a few minutes with Google would prove him absolutely wrong. A techie would simply discard that statement -- while many politicians appear to believe opinions have the same standing as facts, even when those opinions are based on demonstrable falsehoods. Say it with enough conviction and it counts.

That doesn't fly with techies. After all, if you start inserting vague notions into code or network architecture, at best it doesn't work very well, and at worst, everything breaks. Developing legislation isn't much different -- if it's built on bullcrap, it's a bad idea and it'll cause problems.

The only problem is that you can't run a debugger against legislation, and it will always compile without errors -- before it becomes law. Only after it goes into production do the flaws appear. To a techie, that's even more motivation to make sure it's exactly right. To a politician, it doesn't matter.

But who am I kidding? It's been a while since the U.S. Congress had the actual interests of U.S. citizens in mind. There's very little motivation to do the right or even the appropriate thing these days, and that's certainly not limited to turds like SOPA. If there were a true techie caucus in the federal government today -- a group composed of actual computer and math professionals -- my guess is that it wouldn't last long. There's far too little reason and logic within that body for minds that require those very elements to operate.

The best we can do for the short term is to throw everything we can behind legislation to reinstate the OTA (Office of Technology Assessment). From 1974 through 1995, this small group with a tiny budget served as an impartial, nonpartisan advisory to the U.S. Congress on all matters technological.

For the reasons stated above, it's not surprising that Newt Gingrich and others succeeded in dismantling the office as part of the 1995 "Contract with America" nonsense. Just as the United States was entering a period of monumental and unprecedented technological development and growth, while the world was rocketing forward to the vast networked environment we inhabit today, the U.S. Congress destroyed its logic center. The OTA was the closest thing it had to a technological brain.

If that isn't a metaphor for the current state of politics in the United States, I don't know what is.