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Irish High Court Orders ISPs To Turn Over Names Of File Sharing Account Holders

from the but-what-does-it-mean? dept

Mon, Jun 11th 2007 7:45pm — Mike Masnick

eoinmonty writes in to let us know that the Irish High Court has ruled that ISPs in Ireland need to hand over the information on 23 people that IRMA, the Irish equivalent of the RIAA, is accusing of copyright infringement via unauthorized file sharing. This isn't all that surprising, given similar rulings in other countries, but as some people are already noting, the same questions should still be raised. Just because IRMA has IP addresses is hardly evidence that infringement definitely took place, and even if infringement did take place, an IP address simply identifies the account holder, not who might have been using that connection at the time the alleged infringement took place. Somehow, though, we doubt that this will stop the recording industry from moving ahead with lawsuits.

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6 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jun 2007 @ 9:35pm

Unfortunatley, the account holder is responisble for it. This gives them someone to sue. The fact that it's easy to use someone elses' connection or spoof their address is why the laws need to be updated to deal with the new mechanics. Any law that allows you to harass innocent people instead of going after the guilty ones, and REWARDS you for it needs to be fixed.
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Hidden Force, 12 Jun 2007 @ 4:16am

IRMA?
Does that stand for Irish Republican MAFIAA Army, the latest terrorist organization to pop up in Ireland?
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John, 12 Jun 2007 @ 7:31am

...another reason why people should switch to encrypted file sharing...a great example which encrypts exchanges is http://www.gigatribe.com
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|333173|3|_||3, 12 Jun 2007 @ 9:35am

Gigatribe spammers
I think that teh spam filter should automatically drop any comment mentioning gigatribe. We have all seen the damn links in every story about file sharers getting punished, and a are quite sick of them.
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Get a Clue, 12 Jun 2007 @ 7:25pm

Just Say No
Say no to sharing someones copyrighted files with the world that is not your copyright and you will have nothing to worry about. Very simple really.
Yeah the gigatrash spam is annoying. Plus it is not any good at keeping secrets. FreeNet thought it was secure too.
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Dustin, 12 Jun 2007 @ 10:36pm

Not as simple as you think
"Say no to sharing someones copyrighted files with the world that is not your copyright and you will have nothing to worry about. Very simple really."

You do realize how trivially easy it is to spoof someone's IP address right? If any two bit hacker can do it to get around spam filters I doubt a file sharing system would be much harder.
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