Whatever your opinions on music piracy, there is no doubt that what EMI, (Evil) Sony, Universal and Warner are trying to do in Ireland is just plain wrong. Together they are trying to sidestep the Dáil (the Irish parliament where law is decided for our country) and introduce their own piracy laws in Ireland. Their lawyers have threatened to sue 4 ISP’s here if they don’t implement a 3 strikes system. In this system anyone detected downloading copyrighted music 3 times would be banned from the network. Eircom folded and implemented these rules. It’s not surprising Eircom folded; they admit to being wrong out of habit these days. BT Ireland is saying that they are going to fight back along with UPC. Why would they not implement this system?
- Their administrative costs would increase because they’d have to implement mechanised and human systems to detect downloads.
- Human costs would vastly increase to discriminate copyrighted downloads from open license downloads – there’s no way to really automate this.
- Legal costs could be huge because incorrectly banned users would rightly go after the ISP directly via legal avenues and via the regulator.
- THERE IS NO LAW REQUIRING THE ISP’s TO DO THIS.
How dare corporations try to bypass the elected government of this country. I hope people continue to pirate your music for this. Maybe you should have a look at yourselves, eh? How come a CD in the UK is being advertised on TV €12 but it’ €22 here? The difference in sales tax doesn’t come anywhere near explaining that and neither do exchange rates. I just wonder why people in Ireland wouldn’t buy your overpriced crap?