France passed this in LAW.

Eircom are doing this as part of a VOLUNTARY EXTRA-JUDICIAL AGREEMENT. They were threatened to be sued into the ground and they basically rolled over. The important fact was that our Data Protection Comissioner lost the case in the High Court and now IP addresses do not constitute privileged information.

But they’re complying on the basis that

(a) They only process 50 a week. (Thats 50 / 750,000 users)

(b) The IRMA is legally obliged to file identical suits aimed at their competitors.

Next up is UPC. Who is Europe’s biggest cable provider. They’ve pretty much started rubbing their hands together in press conferences and said ‘bring it on”.

I’ll leave you with this graph, to put things in perspective;

http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/4599/oecdbroadbandspeeds2009.jpg

Ireland’s broadband speed ranking on the World scale. We’re the second worst in the OECD (thanks Mexico!) and we’re a bloody Island!

(Also, legal concepts like entrapment don’t exist under Irish law, just in case people start making non-helpful sweeping statements)

What you should do is boycott all MP3′s and CD’s and whatever it is that iTunes sells. You have to speak to the companies in the only language they understand.

Ironicly IMRA’s previous attack was to attampt shut down a web site that SOLD cds.

I have conflicted feeling about our lack of response. On one hand I really feel that we should do somthing. But on the other I do really like the way the majority of the courtry just kind of ignores the government as if they live in a paralel reality.

Anyway, bottom line, it will make little diference. We have one of the highest rates of piracy in the world and that is unlikly to change soon. Between encription, alternitive ISPs and eircom’s own incompetance this will be little more that a talking point for a few days.

“Globalization”, haven’t heard that term for so long. Almost as if it suddenly gave up the ghost and departed forthwith.

Meanwhile what are H.R.Clinton and T.Geithner now lecturing China about?

Punishment should fit the crime, yes? So why do BMG and FOX get to kill the family of people who steal their content?

O right, movies and music trumps rights and political participation.

Almost everything is trademarked these days. From the image of that Ford car driving by to the design of that mailbox in the background to the logo or design of the clothes that they’re wearing.

Also, for extra added fun, if you report the infringement to the holder of the rights then they are forced into a “use it or lose it” situation.

Time to coming up with lists of the politicians and lobbyists supporting this sort of lack of accountability and due process and giving them a taste of their own medicine.

They’ve a stipulation in the contract of 99% of ISPs to the effect that infringing any sort of copyrighted material allows them to cut you off without respite. Similarly, getting this info from a 3rd Party (IRMA in this case) allows them plausible deniability.

What major ISP wouldn’t love to trim the top 10% of its bandwith stealers and torrenters?

There’s a lot of highly intelligent, motivated people in the country of Ireland searching now for every possible solution to this. We have some of the worst broadband penetration and speeds in the developed world, but we conversely have some of the most technically gifted minds in Europe thanks to the fact that Google, IBM, Microsoft, Apple etc… all had their European HQs here.

As it is, Eircom are only processing 50 requests a week. It’ll be at least a month before anyone is even disconnected.

The IP address thing? Unless an ISP is prepared to MiTM an SSL connection on a large scale, then its simply an academic matter that’ll need an appeal.

We’re a country of barely 4 million with by *far* the highest concert ticket prices and CD prices in the world. We’re not going to be setting a precedent for any other country and I’m not even sure do we have a digital crimes division outside of Child Pornography (at cracking which they’ve a very admirable track record).

We’re TINY. 1/8th the size of Texas. There’s more people in the US with Irish passports then there are in the country of Ireland. If we weren’t a white, English speaking country with huge cultural connections to the US and UK then you wouldn’t be hearing a word about this.

Now a far more serious thing is the situation where our music blogs are now trying to be forced to PAY A LICENCE

http://www.nialler9.com/2010/05/04/music-blogger-imro-licence/

In their eyes, embedding an mp3 from an outside source is the same as hosting it yourself, unless it’s from a provider like Youtube or Lala that has a very broad-ranging agreement to do so.

As another poster pointed out

”IMRO rang me, asked me to buy a license since some of these bands would be imro registered, and when I asked if it was alright to play my own music – since I am also imro registered – I was told that I couldnt. Even if I wanted to do a full 24/7 radio stream playing only my own material, I would still need a license. Thats how stupid that is.”

And the cheapest licence?

Over $200

We’re well sick of this shit at this stage. If we keep quiet and play along, we’ll gradually give the labels enough rope to hang themselves. We don’t tend to get terribly alarmist about things as a society; we just put the head down and get it done.

The BBC, CNN etc… are merely quoting from a press release put out by the major labels disguised as a lobbyist body.

We don’t like our neutrality or independence threatened by virtue of commercial gain. Neither will we stand by and allow it in any way to affect the production and performance of indigenous music.

(Cory or others, if you want a little OP-Ed piece about the state of affairs in Ireland, I’d only be happy to oblige. You have my Email)

I hope this doesn’t spread far from our shores, copyright law is already far out of wack with the world as it is.

Email addresses are easily spoofed, and I suspect it’s trivial to find a copy of the boiler plate used.

A cheap and easy way to harass dissidents with plausible deniability.

Like this professional agitator who insists on harping on about just how bankrupt Ireland is.

There has to be a decent number of people that would be part of a modern age “sit-in” to show how disastrous arrangements + laws like the above are to normal families.

Quite a few people were.

Now I’m confused. If the EU kills the ’3-strikes’ threat, how can an EU State like Ireland allow it?

Can someone put me right please?