Irish RIAA Takes ISPs To Court To Force 3 Strikes
Written by enigmax on June 21, 2009Earlier this year Ireland’s RIAA, IRMA, and the country’s largest ISP, Eircom, reached private agreement to implement 3 strikes and disconnections for alleged pirates. At concerns that this would place Eircom at a competitive disadvantage, part of the deal would see IRMA go after Ireland’s other ISPs too. IRMA kept their promise.
Last year EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner commenced legal proceedings against Eircom, Ireland’s largest ISP. The four labels control 90% of Ireland’s music market and citing huge losses to piracy, decided to force Eircom to do something about illicit file-sharing. They demanded that the ISP should introduce filtering technology to stop it, but the ISP refused and soon found itself in court.
After initially telling everyone how it would never cave in to the labels, Eircom quickly changed its tune. A few days into the court case, suddenly there was a “world-first” agreement between the labels and the ISP.
Eircom had entered into an entirely voluntary agreement with the labels, where they would simply accuse alleged copyright infringers (via DtecNet, the RIAA and BPI anti-piracy partner), and on the third accusation the ISP would disconnect that subscriber on a Terms of Service violation.
Although it hasn’t been put into place yet due to “ongoing technical discussions concerning implementation,” this deal does seem very cosy.
And it gets cosier still. As part of the agreement with Eircom, the Big Four agreed that they would go after other ISPs to force them to agree to the same terms as Eircom did, so the company “would not be at a competitive disadvantage.”
So who would be next on the hit-list?
According to a report in the Irish Times, that honor has been bestowed on Ireland’s second-largest telco BT Ireland, and the country’s largest cable operator UPC Ireland.
On Tuesday, two sets of legal proceedings were issued at the High Court by “EMI Records (Ireland) Limited and others”, one against BT Communications Ireland and another against UPC Communications Ireland. IRMA, Ireland’s equivalent to the RIAA said it targeted these ISPs since their customers share the most music.
While a spokesman for BT said he couldn’t comment at this stage, a spokeswoman for UPC said their company position hasn’t changed. It will not enter into an agreement with the record labels that goes further than existing legislation – i.e no voluntary 3 strikes.
“There is no basis under Irish law requiring ISPs to control, access or block the Internet content its users download. In addition, the rights-holders’ proposal gives rise to serious concerns for data privacy and consumer contract law,” she said adding: “UPC intends to vigorously defend its position in court.”
Eircom took that position too, but look where they ended up – in the lap of the Big Four. Time will tell if UPC can maintain its strength against determined opposition.
Previously: Moby: The RIAA Needs to be Disbanded
Next: Pirate Party Enters the German Parliament
67 Responses
Hope Ericom dies in a fire together with the RIAA, and that PT and UPC stand the fight…
Good luck Irish folks!
and just by what law would they have this right i wonder? maybe the same one that allows the European league make laws for member states?
I hope other ISP’s, in Ireland or other country’s will not follow.
Otherwise, the economic crisis will be expanded at the division of Internet supplying…
1st
I though 3 strikes crap was outlawed by the EU?
good luck isp’s
@4
The EU is even worse then USA
If UPC holds its positions and wins, the MAFIAA just granted it a very nice monopoly. And “graduated response” is illegal in the EU, but AFAIK Ireland is not part of the group. Finally, it’s really interesting the different ways in which the MAFIAA is trying the same all over the world, to see what sticks.
My bad, Ireland is a member. I don’t understand, then… Erlcom can be charged of violating basic human rights.
.F.I.R.S.T.!.!.!.
Say goodbye to the IRA, say hello to the IRMA, a whole new commercial version of terrorism in Ireland.
this battle the likes of RIAA is clear they want to stop the competition before it starts and thus far they are winning…
preventing the new artists from not having to use them to get known is why they are trying… fighting for their meager existence!!! even violating laws if needed but usually creating or immorally influencing it so as that they are not breaking any laws… its our burden to prove them to be bad before they criminalize p2p on line!!!
the best route for this is a 100% boycott!!!
now you must die! *the maffia*
@ Posts 4 and 9
YOU FAIL
And Yea, They need to stop kissing ass and say FUCK YOU TO IRMA
“the four labels control 90% of Ireland’s music market ”
How is that fair??
if the various governments dont do something to stop this sort of thing from happening, there is gonna be big problems. as soon as it is realised how much money is not being put into government coffers, because the isps have lost 90% of their customers, maybe they will then see what absolute pratts they have been. when they then realise that corporations are running/controling the internet, they will see what even bigger pratts they have been. trouble is, it will be too late then. there is no way that the amount of money that is supposedly being lost because of downloading will be anywhere near as much as that being paid by customers and isps in tax. once customers have been lost, it is a hell of a job to get them back!! once the internet is lost, it will never come back!!
this makes me ashamed to be irish, the whole world is laughing at us now and its all because of the IRMA these guys are assholes, ISP’s need to stand up for themselves, Im with eircom and some of my friends have been fined 2,000 – 3,000 euros and some of them received legal ”THREATS” for not paying their response was ”FREE TOILET PAPER” and they were never taken to court, something needs to be done with these retards
Eircom are pathetic losers.
Anyone can hijack an Eircom wireless connection in seconds using the freely available “Eircom WEP key generator”.
If all this is put into practice I hope anyone that gets accused of piracy uses this in their defense and it costs Eircom a fortune replacing their junk routers.(They have sent letters telling people to change the default WEP keys but trust me very few pay attention or even understand).
Is there some kind of a map, which would display, which countries/states’ ISP agreed with any kind of repressive measures against pirates? It would be nice to check back and then which countries has MAFIAA covered and where should BitTorrent trackers move their servers :)
yeah no. 16 is right i have the eircom wep key generator, i connected to about 20 different networks in the town of balbriggan and none of them changed teir password on their router, and i downloaded music from some of them so they probably received some letters demnding a few thousand euro, so if i ever get caught on my own (which i ont because i use a VPN service) all i have to do is say what the hell is a .torrent and i no nothing about computers and i only use mine and to check my mail, and say it must have been my neighbour or something that used my connection,then just delete everything from my PC and back it up onto my 500 GB had drive and they will have no choice but to beleive you, they have to because i have used other peoples connections to get music, i even know a guy who doesent pay for broadband because there is 6 routers in range of his house.
cool story bro :)
No matter what you do, WEP can be penetrated in seconds. So Eircom are the ones putting all your wireless connections at risk!!!
John Jim
Movie and TV alternative:
- Miro
Music alternatives:
- Jamendo
- magnatune
If you wanna do something just stop promoting the artists that the RIAA represents, they do this because of the money take that away and this will show them how much it will cost to keep that route and the nice thing about alternatives is that you don’t have to worry about being disconnected.
Anybody knows about this guys here:
http://www.opensourcemusic.com/
http://www.opsound.org/
http://www.dejunair.com/
What are Eircom getting out of it? Something’s not being said here.
@21
Yes of course WEP is easily hacked but how many ISPs do you know whose security can be hacked with a goddam keygen?lol
Its not even hacking,just type in the SSID and bingo there is the WEP key.A 2 year old could do it.
I believe their new customers are receiving routers now that have WPA2 encryption but what about all the current customers?
Let start the openmusic movement where can you find free music.
I do it in jamendo but am lookin in other places too anybody have any ideas of others places?
what makes this sort of thing even more dispicable is that if it was another type of industry or an individual putting these type of threats out, not only would they be ignored by those being threatened, the respective government would be on that industry or individual like a proverbial ‘fly on s**t’!! just shows to me that there is a colosal amount of money being thrown in the ‘right’ directions by the RIAA etc, all to try to save one of the most antiquated forms of distribution now going, on an even more antiquated form of media. again, this whole exercise is to try to get and then keep CONTROL!! they can see now what fools they have been and how slow they were. instead of admitting the mistake and getting on board now, they wont admit anything and everyone else is suffering! still, this is what happens when you have a bunch of greedy idiots (whose heads are up their own asses so they cant see the dangers around) in charge of something. pathetic!!
I WEP for Ireland LoL
The Harvard Study suggest that the more strength copyright has the less people feel inclined to produce work and the less copyright the more people are producing citing countries where “piracy” is rampant as examples of booming creativity LoL
Now you guys have proof that artist are a lazy bunch that don’t like to compete LoL
if UPC does hold up their position, I sense it might just become the new biggest ISP in ireland… I know if my ISP just gave up like eircom did I would switch… And wasn’t eircom the one with the broken wifi security or something like that?
Basiaclly what they are doing is suing the car industry because poeple drive to fast… Except people are not killed in this process…
i live in ireland, using UPC 20 mbit.
the law is the law, simple as that.
so how can upc be forced to do anything?? THEY CANT.
CHANGE THE LAW FIRST.THEN IT WILL WORK.
Because you see, UPC is not a crumbling failing, bloated shell of a company like eircom, the .gov do not own half,(unlike eircom, think about that) and so its harder to pay an exec to run this company into the ground.
dont make me buy a VPN, then UPC couldnt give them proof if they wanted.
and they cost five euros!!!
oh noez
The RIAA, albeit the Irish version or not, has my personal permission and recommendations to:
1) Die in a fire
or
2) Die in a fire
Oh! almost forgot the C-46 Canadian law proposal make it criminal to annoy people on by any electronic communications means LoL
VPN’s are not secure, you don’t have control over the server on the other side you cannot trust it.
If you are really concerned about privacy use an anonymous, encrypted P2P solution or Retroshare for IM, emails and other stuff.
http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
ps: By the looks of it and by many forums retroshare is a mature solution for privacy.
If they control 90% of the market, then why aren’t they being prosecuted for price fixing? Last time I looked everything was the same price. Why don’t governments intervene like they do with other markets? Oh I forgot, politicians are bought and paid for, silly me.
@fight_the_tyranny
because the RIAA only represents a group of music producing companies… they are their thugs the RIAA petitions courts and legislates congress and the senate to put mandates to make competition illegal…
artist dont need the warner brothers, emi’s, and bmg’s of today anymore to get their music heard and the RIAA has to by what ever means possible shut down this avenue of release to the independent artist… that is their new agenda from the record labels they work for…it is imperative they do this…
so they are not considered a monopoly because they dont produce the music they dont make a profit from selling music… they profit by shutting down pirates… they are very similar to the function of the IMF of the bank world… if they fail their customers(we are not their customers) will not be able to pay them so u can see there motivation…its a do or die for them!!!
dont buy!!!
Warning, Reasoned Mind may post on this site and attempt to cram FUD down your throat in order to bully you into submission. This may happen while neostyles is calling you a thief (for filesharing) and a moron (for bringing up legitimate points against his claims). Read these comments at your own risk, but keep in mind that these two are evil-supporting nobodies who are in the extreme minority and should not be taken seriously.
UPC will enforce their position on this. Eircom neither had the funds nor the business sense to do so. They are slowly dieing. Unlike Eircom which has a dominent position in the market UPC is trying to attract business from every sector of the market especially those who has an interest in the technical operation of the network. (UPC currently offers the fastest broadband packages in the country)
As a BT Ireland customer I would hope they also follow UPC’s example and hold strong to this position.
Unlike Eircom both these business have the sense to fight these unjust court cases. Their is no cause for this in Irish law nor should there be.
the irish isps are bound to fight this. i pay 55 euros for a 4mb connection (4mb up 4mb down)per month. plus i pay 20 euros a month for two voip landlines.
they are making big bucks, and they know that people will vote with their feet and change isp.
the eircom situation was clarified recently when eircom said that they would divulge user info and then cut the user off only on presentation of the correct court order.
47th! xD!
cut everybody off and watch their music/movie sales go up then!
cant wait
I’m with UPC and know for a fact they’ll fight this to the death.. because if their customers (me) can’t download songs and movies then what’s the point in having superfast broadband.
I’d quit and join another ISP. But UPC will win this. Irish and general European law favours the ISP in this circumstance
What the MAFIAA really wants is to transfer the responsibility. The bad PR brought them to their knee’s with a sharp drop in CD sales in 2008 CD sales drop 50%.
Now they want to find a proxy and shield themselves don’t let the rats do it :)
@4nd
Just because you personally happen to disagree with what Reasoned Mind/neostyles, or anyone else may have to say doesn’t mean that they should be censored from voicing opinion here. It’s for the individual reader to weigh the arguments presented and make decisions themselves as to whether they agree or disagree with them, and if inclined, offer a rebuttal response accordingly. It’s not for you to attempt to make that decision for other people. In your efforts to do so you just read as someone who feels threatened by what it is they have to say, which doesn’t speak so highly of you.
changing isp is not gonna happen cause there wont be any isp to change to. if this is fought and defeated, each isp will be picked off until there are none left and i mean none left, not just none to change to. that will mean RIAA etc, massive win. the World and everyone and everything, massive lose! doesn’t take a genius to work out which is the best option, does it??
@M.Zeki
“4nd” isn’t asking for censorship, so please do everyone a huge favor and learn how to read.
Apart from that he’s right, those two are obviously lousy mafiaa trolls, who apparently get payed to spew their pitiful propaganda here (rather unsuccessful yet in an annoying way over and over again). And it wouldn’t be very surprising if you were one of those too, which doesn’t speak very highly of you either.
@anon2
sounds like they need to join private sites so that any spies will not truly know what anyone is doing…since they can not monitor bandwidth only public sites… and some of these private sites are near to impossible to get into…
there is several hundred torrent sites out there now and growing everyday… soon this number will be so large that it will cost $$$mils…
the RIAA is “F”ed they will not win no matter the morally incorrect laws they bribe officials to put into place… with this latest campaign they have committed too they are only speeding up their demise faster!!!
i have several friends that went to college some in different fields 1 particular one became a copyright attorney and he used to agree with the RIAA along with his friends but they have all turned even my other friends and their friends against the RIAA because of their immoral behavior…pushing laws that infringe on ppls rights the harder they push the worse it is…they might get it enacted as law… it doesnt make it right!!!
they are truly their own demise in the PR side of things…3 yrs ago most educated ppl agreed with the RIAA and that it was steeling to dl but they now lost this moral battle… when the high educated begins to see things arguably different (of course i dont mean all educated ppl)but the numbers are growing larger and larger everyday against them… the boycott will begin to hurt them severely in the coming yrs financially…
for me i love making all my friends and anyone whom asks me any copies of anything that i have dled all for free… of course i tell them to share them as much as they can so as no one needs to ever buy…its a great feeling that i feel so justified in this war!!!
I remember when the same group sued CDWOW for selling cheap cds. that also allegedy cost IRMA 100 billion or whatever made up figure they came up with
So let me get this straight, the IRMA is taking an Irish ISP to court for something that’s not illegal? I don’t understand why someone would take something to court that’s legal.
That’s no different then my neighbor coming up to me and telling me to get rid of my car because he doesn’t like the color, then taking me to court for it and demanding me to get rid of it.
@M.Zeki
“Just because you personally happen to disagree with what Reasoned Mind/neostyles, or anyone else may have to say doesn’t mean that they should be censored from voicing opinion here.”
Reasoned Mind/neostyles doesn’t voice his opinion. He lies. And then he lies again. Like some kind of dishonest broken record.
Nobody except for him knows what his real opinion is, since his comments are simply propaganda that the MAFIAA pays him to spew.
Ah… But I don’t have to tell you that, since you likely ARE Reasoned Mind/neostyles. Nobody loves to play the I’m-a-victim-of-censorship card more than he does when he’s confronted for being a liar.
Eircom is going to get hit by tons of lawsuits by innocent customers.
And none of this matters anyways, since UPC is already throttling P2P uploads.
Thanks for posting about my tip :D
I don’t think UPC will give in. Their network is so advanced over the rest of Irish ISP’s that file sharing doesn’t damage their contention with other users.
They want to get more market share so will support the file sharers IMO as long as they can.
Eircom are going bankrupt and owe probably in the region of 3 billion to banks so cannot afford to fight the case and a few other companies are looking at buying them out because of their financial difficulties.
I hope this gets resolved and that Irish consumers aren’t treated as criminals for file sharing of any kind which I’m sure is IRMA’s intention. They don’t seem to really care if it is legal file sharing or not. All file sharing is bad as far as their concerned because it all effects their bottom line.
This is why you don’t give in to terrorists. You only embolden them. If the Irish have any brains, an ISP that doesn’t cave in to the MAFIAA will be able to steal some pretty impressive market share from the collaborationist ISPs.
welcome to RIAA internet. Just goes to show you that the RIAA is more powerful than governments and Companys. They are the king and we are the servants. Fuck em. Bring back AOL so I can start paying for dial up modem and READ stuff on the internet. Lord knows I dont need to be paying $50 no more a month.
If only the principle of what’s good for the goose applied here. Then the IRMA could be accused of copyright infringement three times (say by a disgruntled artist ripped off by the recording industry), and then have its internet access cut off.
But we all know damn well it won’t work that way. I’m sure there’s a clear double standard that excludes the IRMA or any major corporate entity from being treated the same as ISP users are.
And what about due process? Seems that you ought to be innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. And will there be an appeal process where the accused infringer can dispute the claims of those making the accusation?
This is more than a battle over who should and shouldn’t be allowed to download music. This is a battle over privacy and who you want snooping on your personal internet activity.
Not only that but If enforced an ISP will have to come up with complex and expensive means for monitoring your connection. This is a problem in Ireland where lots of small wireless ISPs exist in the country-side many with a relatively small customer base and smaller profit margin. Will they too be forced to shell more than is profitable for a monitoring system? Most likely not and thus we may see a reduction in internet dispersion in the country….as if it isn’t bad enough already.
Someone brought up why IRMA is allowed to propose Eircom use the Three Strikes thing when it’s illegal in the EU.
As I recall, the EU directive is that it’s illegal for a government to force their ISPs to follow this. This doesn’t apply to individual ISPs. Thus, IRMA has found a rather handy loophole, which they will exploit like mad.
I’m currently connected to UTV Internet, which means they are sourced in the UK, which has quite plainly, as I recall, thrown out the Three Strikes thing as being breach of privacy or something similar.
BT may have the same protection, since it is originally a UK company that expanded into Ireland. UPC, on the other hand, is originally a Dutch company.
Of course, if each country’s individual members are let alone, then it’s doubtful that this will make a difference to any ISP.
Well atleast ireland has a pair. Good job ireland.
where are the fat babies?we have a paradise for you . http://www.biguklove.com/ here it is,enter it and sign up,you can seek friendship and romantic relationship among your fat guys!
the easist site for torrents (movies, music, software, games) is http://www.entertane.com – faster, simpler – and you can search all your favorite torrent sites.
this is going to be bad for eircom at the end of the day, its the internet, freedom to the people.
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