Irish RIAA goes after ISPs
p2pnet news | Music:- In a first for Ireland and what may a first anywhere, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, the members of the Big 4 organised music cartel, are going after an individual ISP.
They’ve launched a high court action, "aimed at compelling Eircom to take measures to prevent its networks being used for the illegal downloading of music," says the Irish Times.
The Big 4 recently ramped up their efforts against their customers to try to force internet service providers to act as corporate copyright cops, using feral filtering against their own customers.
This would seem perfectly logical to the labels who haven’t hesitated to try to use legal systems around the world to sue their own customers, calling them file sharing criminals and thieves.
"Imagine a world in which a single industry could control an entire continent’s access to particular web sites, force ISPs to install expensive deep packet inspection gear that would search the complete Internet data streams of millions of users, and force Internet applications to conform to its design parameters or risk being blocked," said Ars Technica recently.
"If you’re a European consumer, this might sound like a paranoid dystopia, but it’s actually a vision of paradise —- if paradise were designed by the IFPI."
The Irish Times story has Willie Kavanagh of EMI (Ireland) and RIAA clone the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) saying a "substantial portion" in falling corporate sales is down to "illegal peer-to-peer downloading services and the increasing availability of broadband internet access".
But, "Digital Rights Ireland says it is strongly opposed to the move as Internet Service Providers like Eircom cannot be expected to monitor everything transmitted on their networks," says the Belfast Telegraph, adding:
"It says ISPs are not legally responsible for the actions of Internet users, in the same way An Post is not responsible for what people send in the mail."
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Also See:
Irish Times – Eircom taken to court over illegal music downloads, March 10, 2008
feral filtering – Big 4’s IFPI demands Feral Filtering, December 27, 2007
Ars Technica – IFPI’s European Christmas list: content filtering and P2P blocking, December 9, 2007
Belfast Telegraph – Rights group slams music industry case against Eircom, March 12, 2008
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March 12th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Holy zhit, we should sue the Department of Transportation because our highways are being used for hot pursuits and smuggling, although that’s not what most people use our highways for, but still, somebody’s gotta pay, right?
March 12th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
That’s right, someone’s gotta pay. They should also sue chickens for thier shit that gets used in fertilizers that gets used to make bombs.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Actually, the governments are the entities responsible for this debacle. For they are the ones legislating or threatening legislation. After all, you can’t blame the IFPI for trying; however, you can blame the governments for their uncontested acquiescence. The speed of their placation is quite disturbing, but not entirely surprising.