4 record companies in bid to compel Eircom to stamp out illegal downloads

11-03-2008 03:22AM #1

Four major record companies have brought a High Court action to compel broadband service provider, Eircom, to prevent its networks being used for the illegal downloading of music.

The case is being taken against Eircom as it is the largest broadband internet service provider in the State.

It is the first case to be aimed at the service provider rather than at individual illegal downloaders.

The record companies are EMI records (Ireland) Ltd, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Ireland) Ltd, Universal Music (Ireland) Ltd and Warner Music (Ireland) Ltd.

They say latest figures indicate that 20 billion music files were illegally downloaded worldwide last year and for every single legal download there are 20 illegal ones.

In a sworn document to support the case, Willie Kavanagh, managing director of EMI Ireland and chairman of the Irish Recorded Music Association, said because of this illegal downloading and other factors, the Irish music industry was experiencing a dramatic and accelerating decline in income.

He said the Irish market for sound recordings was suffering a decline in sales from €146m in 2001 to €102m last year - a drop of 30%.

He said the record companies believed the greater availability of broadband would lead to a further escalation in the volume of unlawful distribution of recordings.

EMI and the other companies are challenging Eircom's refusal to use filtering technology or other measures to voluntarily block or filter material from its network that is being used to download music in violation of copyright and licensing rights.

The companies say certain specialised software - such as that provided by the US-based Audible Magic Corporation - can block specified recordings from being shared.

Last October Eircom told the companies it was not in a position to run the Audible Magic software on its servers.

Eircom's solicitors also told the companies that it was not on notice of specific illegal activity that infringed the companies' rights and it had no legal obligation to monitor traffic on its network.

However, Mr Kavanagh said Eircom was well aware its facilities were being used to violate the property rights of record companies on a grand scale.

He said legal actions brought against individuals with a high number of illegal files on their computers at specific times were very costly and time consuming.

He said illegal downloaders come from all walks of life and the reality for many young people was that they had never known a position where they actually have had to pay for sound recordings.

Mr Justice Peter Kelly admitted the proceedings into the Commercial Court list this morning.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0310/download.html

Well with all the yap yap out of France and the UK recently from organisations in relation to downloading illegal files, it's our turn.
Is this a first in Ireland?

Is there a just reason for an illegal downloader to be worried?

utick · 11-03-2008 03:32AM

maybe if these record companies werent overpricing there product there wouldnt be so many people illegaly downloading it. ive downloaded stuff illegaly before, if it wasnt availabel to download though there would still be no way i would buy it legaly

twinQuins · 11-03-2008 04:17AM

ISP level filtering is nothing new. I think it was only inevitable that we would be targeted, though we were lost for a time amongst the bigger players.

As to Eircom knowing their service is being used for these means...what ISP doesn't? In all honesty, if P2P services were gone tomorrow ISPs would see a marked decrease of people on the higher end of their BB products. At least to residential customers.

What kind of common carrier laws do we have? I've been following the Comcast story in the US for a while now but never gave thought to the fact that I might see something related here.
Anyway, even if Eircom complies P2P clients will simply employ tougher encryption.

invincibleirish · 11-03-2008 04:20AM

What a joke, why are these record companies fighting a losing battle, instead of harping back to the days when a cd was £20, the record companies need to diversify and come up with new ideas to generate profit instead of clinging onto outdated business ideas & models.

Mossy Monk · 11-03-2008 04:41AM

When You Pirate MP3's You Are Downloading Communism

Kinetic^ · 11-03-2008 05:14AM

Nothing about the music they release being shìte in there!!!!!!!! :rolleyes:

Mr.Nice Guy · 11-03-2008 05:20AM

F*ck them anyway. Out of interest, is it illegal to record a song off of the radio rather than going out and buying it? If so we might as well make sure the radio no longer plays music. We wouldn't want those poor recording artists to lose out on any money and go hungry. They're barely getting by as it is. *Puke*

Fremen · 11-03-2008 05:25AM

The sooner the record companies die off, the better. Damn luddites (and I'm using that in the historical sense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites )

JæKæ · 11-03-2008 06:04AM

No matter what these idiots come up with there will always be lads out there capable of coming up with a work around to counteract it. I'm sure the code/methods behind this 'Audible Magic' can easily be side-stepped.
It happened with DRM, there is always a work-around.
These kind of draconian tactics will only serve to turn people more and more away from buying from these companies.
Interesting points made here:
http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-isp-must-end-music-piracy-080310/

'Illegal P2P file-sharing may have helped drive broadband subscriptions in the past, yet today these activities, particularly in respect of movies, are hogging bandwidth'
Ridiculous, the only bandwidth it can hog is your own ie. the bandwidth you paid for.

Terry · 11-03-2008 10:16AM

JæKæ wrote: »

No matter what these idiots come up with there will always be lads out there capable of coming up with a work around to counteract it. I'm sure the code/methods behind this 'Audible Magic' can easily be side-stepped.
It happened with DRM, there is always a work-around.
These kind of draconian tactics will only serve to turn people more and more away from buying from these companies.
Interesting points made here:
http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-isp-must-end-music-piracy-080310/

'Illegal P2P file-sharing may have helped drive broadband subscriptions in the past, yet today these activities, particularly in respect of movies, are hogging bandwidth'
Ridiculous, the only bandwidth it can hog is your own ie. the bandwidth you paid for.

With the likes of Clearwire, you can hog the bandwidth of others.
However, with DSL you are just using your own.

They can battle BitTorrent all they want. the thing is, if they do succeed, something else will take its place.

If Eircom do throttle torrents, I'll just take my business elsewhere.

I'm off now to put in a blank casette and record some music from my friend's vinyl collection.

smemon · 11-03-2008 10:23AM

record companies suck.

why won't youtube just start up their own label, allow people to download mp3's and videos's, slap a few ads before/after video and album & then share revenue with popular bands and bang - end of record companies.

Terry · 11-03-2008 10:26AM

smemon wrote: »

record companies suck.

why won't youtube just start up their own label, allow people to download mp3's and videos's, slap a few ads before/after video and album & then share revenue with popular bands and bang - end of record companies.

Indeed.
Most bands make their money from touring anyway.

gurramok · 11-03-2008 10:30AM

He said the record companies believed the greater availability of broadband would lead to a further escalation in the volume of unlawful distribution of recordings.

There ya go, do your duty as an upstanding citizen and go back to dial-up!

He said legal actions brought against individuals with a high number of illegal files on their computers at specific times were very costly and time consuming.

They've brought action against a few dozen and they moan the cost. Just like the RIAA in the US, they cannot act against many, only the few.

Terry · 11-03-2008 10:34AM

I'd just like to add here that linking to torrent sites will result in a ban.
Let Google take the fall on that one.

togster · 11-03-2008 10:35AM

Meh i can't see why people can't just buy the music from the like of i tunes.
I can't see why people seem entitled to get something for free when it was not intended for sharing.

Red Alert · 11-03-2008 10:36AM

I don't like the internet being censored. Why can't they sue people the way they currently do - oh no that's right they say it costs them too much! Well it costs everyone a lot when legal cases are taken. Why should Eircom help them lower their legal costs?

11-03-2008 10:55AM

Terry wrote: »

With the likes of Clearwire, you can hog the bandwidth of others.
However, with DSL you are just using your own.

They can battle BitTorrent all they want. the thing is, if they do succeed, something else will take its place.

If Eircom do throttle torrents, I'll just take my business elsewhere.

I'm off now to put in a blank casette and record some music from my friend's vinyl collection.

Eh no.

Just because you use DSL doesn't mean you have your own dedicated 3mb connection straight to the internet. There is contention at the exchange at the ISP and at multiple other stages..

But its true, they will never suceeed in totally filtering access at the ISP level. The problem is if they start doing it they start a dangerous precident and guess who will have to pay for their expensive filtering software?
Whats next after that filtering websites?

gurramok · 11-03-2008 11:01AM

togster wrote: »

Meh i can't see why people can't just buy the music from the like of i tunes.
I can't see why people seem entitled to get something for free when it was not intended for sharing.

If you hadn't noticed, itunes is only for the ipod and non-transferrable for the average novice user.(us techies can get around restrictions)

Also, 10% of a cd sold only goes to the artist, see here for fact.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7265070.stm

Hence the labels are stirring up the storm for years!

Eric Cartman · 11-03-2008 11:03AM

if you steal a handbag or a dvd somebody else is without a handbag or a physical dvd, when you "steal" music off the internet nobody is now without that music,

im a student, i dont have the money to pay for it anyway, if i didnt have p2p i would just record from the radio, or borrow and rip cd's. im not going to buy the music anyway so the record industry isnt losing any money from me

togster · 11-03-2008 11:03AM

gurramok wrote: »

If you hadn't noticed, itunes is only for the ipod and non-transferrable for the average novice user.(us techies can get around restrictions)

Also, 10% of a cd sold only goes to the artist, see here for fact.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7265070.stm

Hence the labels are stirring up the storm for years!

Oh right i wouldn't be as cool as you tech guys so i had no idea. So there's no other site online to buy music legally?

So you agree downöloading something that isn't your is wrong?

muppetkiller · 11-03-2008 11:13AM

togster wrote: »

Meh i can't see why people can't just buy the music from the like of i tunes.
I can't see why people seem entitled to get something for free when it was not intended for sharing.

Well besides the fact that iTunes is a woeful piece of sotware, The bit rates are terrible, it costs the same as the cd (And you don't get the CD), and they only accept credit cards which rules out a major amount of people.

If I can buy the cd on cdwow for 11 euro delivered from Hong Kong I'm sure I should be able to download it for 5 euro or less and save them the postage,staff and physical medium.
The music industry is a joke.

Mizu_Ger · 11-03-2008 11:43AM

This is ridiculous. Suing an ISP for illegal downloading is like suing the council everytime there is a car crash (they supply the roads and thus give motorists the means to cause crashes, so they are responsible!).

The record companies haven't a clue how to move into new markets.

If they allowed music to be bought/downloaded very cheaply, I bet that most of us would start buying music that we would not normally buy (I would anyway!). And the record companies would be making more, but they are too paranoid to do anything different.

hottstuff · 11-03-2008 11:51AM

I hope Eircom show them who's boss.lol

Dragan · 11-03-2008 11:54AM

Terry wrote: »

Indeed.
Most bands make their money from touring anyway.

The bands do.

The majority of money that the actually company itself makes is from Unit Sales.

You give a band profits from something other than touring and the won't want to tour!

Wazdakka · 11-03-2008 12:03PM

Why dont more bands go down the Radiohead route.
Alot of there last album was released for free on the website.
There was a donate if you want policy.
A very small percentage of the downloaders actually made a donation but seeing as the cash wasnt sent through all the normal bullsh1t channels of a record label the band made ALOT more cash, plus there were more downloads than forcasted record sales so better exposure.

Ps: Wooo pacman returns

:pac:........

matrim · 11-03-2008 12:08PM

Wazdakka wrote: »

Why dont more bands go down the Radiohead route.
Alot of there last album was released for free on the website.
There was a donate if you want policy.
A very small percentage of the downloaders actually made a donation but seeing as the cash wasnt sent through all the normal bullsh1t channels of a record label the band made ALOT more cash, plus there were more downloads than forcasted record sales so better exposure.

A few bands have done this recently, the new NIN album was released this way as was a Saul Williams album.

AFAIK Radiohead never released the full figures for downloaders vs buyers so you can't fully tell the success of the distribution method unless this is released.

Edit : I've just checked and for both of these the free version was limited. For NIN it was for 9 or 36 songs, For Saul Williams it was only available for the first 100,000 downloads

Robbo · 11-03-2008 12:15PM

Wazdakka wrote: »

Why dont more bands go down the Radiohead route.
Alot of there last album was released for free on the website.
There was a donate if you want policy.
A very small percentage of the downloaders actually made a donation but seeing as the cash wasnt sent through all the normal bullsh1t channels of a record label the band made ALOT more cash, plus there were more downloads than forcasted record sales so better exposure.

Ps: Wooo pacman returns

:pac:........

Because Radiohead are a well established band who have a legion of fans who would quite frankly buy a recording of Thom Yorke singing "I'm a Little Teapot" in the shower?

11-03-2008 12:19PM

Robbo wrote: »

"I'm a Little Teapot"

That's a classic tune, some of my first memories are of that being banged out.

ScumLord · 11-03-2008 12:45PM

**** them fat *****! There are very, very few "artists" out there that deserve to get any money for the muck they shovel out as music. They're no more artists than my dog is a ****in' pigeon. They greedy money whore's and they won't get a cent off me.

There's only one album I was willing to pay for and that was Does it offend you, yeah. Went up to Galway and no place had it. Emule had it though.

I'd be more willing to pay for Irish singers like that Cathy Davey one, Irish bands and singers do put in the effort and build up a fan base before they make it to radio.

I never thought I'd say it but go Eircom! There should be marches on the street against this kind of Nazi behaviour.

Das Kitty · 11-03-2008 12:46PM

My main problem with the record companies is that they've been trying to fight new technology rather than embracing it and dumping some of their money into researching methods of getting the most out of it.

Getting the ISPs to filter the content has a nasty whiff of censorship about it. If I wanted to be told what I can look at online I'd move to China.

hottstuff · 11-03-2008 12:48PM

Das Kitty wrote: »

If I wanted to be told what I can look at online I'd move to China.

Or even the U.S. lol

4 record companies in bid to compel Eircom to stamp out illegal downloads

Comments