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.

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.

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?

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.