Major Record Labels Go To Court Again To Force Irish ISP To Bring In 'Three Strikes' System

from the this-is-getting-boring dept

Mon, Feb 17th 2014 5:26am — Glyn Moody

Last September, Techdirt wrote about an extremely thorough review of the "three strikes" schemes around the world, which showed pretty conclusively that they simply don't achieve their stated goals. But that doesn't seem to worry the recording companies, which are trying again to compel the second-biggest ISP in Ireland to bring in the "three strikes" approach, as TorrentFreak reports:

The world's largest record labels have gone to court to force Ireland's second largest Internet service provider to take action against file-sharers. Following a failed bid three-and-a-half years ago, Sony, Universal and Warner are back with fresh action against UPC, demanding that the ISP implements a three-strikes-and-you're-out approach to its pirating customers.

There's quite a complicated backstory to all this, which Techdirt has been tracking for a while. In 2008, recording companies sued Ireland's largest ISP, Eircom, over alleged file sharing by its customers. As part of a settlement, Eircom agreed to bring in a "three strikes" system. The recording companies then moved on to UPC, which refused to roll over, and went on to defeat the labels in court. However, since then the legal landscape in Ireland has changed, as TorrentFreak explains: The case, set to go before the Commercial Court, could turn on whether legislation introduced in Ireland during 2012 will allow a judgment in [the Irish Recorded Music Association]'s favor. Already the courts have shown a willingness to clamp down on illegal file-sharing, ordering ISP blockades of sites including The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents.
It's really ridiculous to see the international recording industry expending so much money and effort trying to force ISPs to punish their customers in this way when we have evidence from around the world that the "three strikes" approach just doesn't work. It's also sad to see the Irish government aiding and abetting them in this pointless attack on its own citizens.

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Filed Under: ireland, isp, record label, three strikes
Companies: eircom

38 Comments

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Ninja (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 5:10am

First they go to court, then upon a defeat they write their own laws (via bought politicians) and come back for a second round. There are variations of this (sometimes it's trade agreements, not laws) but it has been the tactics of the MAFIAA for a while. And unfortunately they have scored some important victories in this front. In the end they'll be subjugated and dragged kicking and screaming into the XXI century. But as many have pointed out not before causing tons of damage.

The war for Culture is on. Unfortunately the people are the "under geared" guerrilla. Fortunately, this poorly armed and organized bunch will be happy to hand the MAFIAA their own collective asses ;)
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Rikuo (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 5:41am

Eircom broadband customer here. I'm unable to go to TPB or Kickass.to
So what I do is I log in to my VPN, and I'm able to go to those sites anyway. Problem solved (well for me that is). I imagine now the 'AAs will go after VPN providers.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 6:04am

Re:
Oh they didn't exactly buy any politicians in order to get the laws changed this time. The Irish SOPA in this case, an executive order that altered the basic premise of the ruling against the labels, happened to coincide with a massive lawsuit by EMI against the Irish government, a lawsuit that hit during Ireland's most dire economic times and suddenly vanished when the Irish SOPA passed...
Aren't investor state disputes fun kids?
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Capt ICE Enforcer, 17 Feb 2014 @ 6:15am

Money Spent
Please realize that we do not use any money from the 1% who owns 99% ofcthe wealth. Instead we only use the money from the 99% workers who own less than 1% of the wealth. Remember 1 minute of my time is worth 40,000 hours of your time.
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Tom Perkins, 17 Feb 2014 @ 6:31am

Re: Money Spent
The actions of the 1% haters are exactly the same as that seen in the holocaust.

Also, the uber riche should be afforded more votes than the serf classes.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 6:47am

Because HADOPI worked so well.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 7:12am

The way the MAFIAA moves around the planet paying off any Government that gets in it's way that puts me in mind of an Alien Invasion film. Our weapons are to keep downloading and forcing them to eventually use up their resources and wither away , what's really disappointing is they own the isp's and cable companies. what a tangled web we weave.
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Hephaestus (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 7:35am

Re:
The thing you have to remember is the MPAA and RIAA are funded by the content industry. They need to show they are doing something to continue to get paid. Hence the stupidity of suing their clients customers, 3 strikes, etc.
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ethorad (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 8:04am

three strikes for all
Surely if the legacy content industries fail three times to get their beloved three strikes rules implemented, then they should be forced to stop pushing it?
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 8:26am

It sure is a good thing that there's a blog to demonstrate how much Google loves the piracy business.

Thanks Techdirt!
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Ninja (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 8:29am

Re: Re:
Again it baffles me that the countries don't lift a big middle finger to those disputes.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 8:32am

Re:
They aren't interested in whether something works or not. If they were they would be trying to fix their increasingly broken business models that are falling apart before their eyes. No they are only interested in being able to exert control over all of the media and by extension the vast majority of the population at large as they have in the past. That is why they continue to push for these sorts of measures even if they know that they don't work to achieve the goals that they claim they are designed for.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 8:32am

Response to: Anonymous Coward on Feb 17th, 2014 @ 8:26am
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886914000324
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 8:37am

Let's stop having others do the recording industry's job for them
I wish the courts would go the other way and determine it's not an ISP's responsibility to enforce other people's copyrights or block access to any website. Courts should enforce "dumb pipes" as a standard for all ISPs to follow.
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That One Guy (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 8:53am

Re:
You know, you could have just gone with 'Look, a distraction!', would have been a much more entertaining way to try and draw attention away from yet another pathetic attempt by the recording industry to retain control via the constantly failing 'strikes system'.
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That One Guy (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 8:55am

Re: Let's stop having others do the recording industry's job for them
If memory serves, that's pretty much what happened when the recording industry tried this stunt in another country(Australia I believe).

They went after a smaller ISP, tried to get them to cave and set precedent they could use to force the larger ISP's to act as their enforcers, and got pretty thoroughly crushed in court. I'll see if I can dig up the article on it.
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That One Guy (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 9:06am

Found them
The articles in question, where the movie studios(not the recording as I thought) tried to get an ISP, iiNet, to act as copyright cops for them. iiNet told them to get lost, and naturally they got sued.

Opening salvo:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081120/1214592902.shtml

iiNet wins, opposing side ordered to pay fees:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100203/1516058028.shtml

Opposition makes last ditch attempt, gets crushed again:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110224/00490713240/iinet-wins-again-australian-appeals-cou rt-says-isp-not-responsible-copyright-infringers.shtml
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 9:06am

Re:
Since when is piracy a business? Oh that's right this is the fantasyland that they RIAA and MPAA lives in that we are talking about here.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 9:08am

Re: Re:
I think I've heard about the business plan for this business you speak of somewhere before...

1. Download and share content for free.
2. ???
3. Profit!
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That One Guy (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 9:09am

Re: Re:
Well, since (according to their numbers) piracy costs them billions, nay, trillions of dollars each year, obviously that means those pirate sites are just rolling in huge piles of money, since that (imaginary) money has to be going somewhere, and the idea that it would instead be spent on other things is just preposterous. /s
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 9:14am

Re: Re: Re:
Is using Hollywood math kinda like an extreme version of calculating dog years?

$1 trillion dollars in Hollywood math is the approximate equivalent of 35 cents in the real world.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 9:22am

Re: Re:
Copyright infringement used to be profitable back when you could only get stuff on tape/disk/CD. Now that we have the Internet, the bulk of "piracy" is non-commercial in nature, and that's what scares the industry most: their business could crumble not at the hands of "pirates", but at the hands of consumers.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 9:27am

the main result that will be looked for is whether Ireland disobeys the EU law stating that broadband is a necessity, part of everyday life and no one must have that right taken away. if Ireland does go down the road the industries want, it will be extremely interesting to see what the EU court then does! siding with the entertainment industries against the consumers is not going to go down well at all, particularly when the entertainment industry is really a branch of the USA industry, when the results of the EU Commission that were released a few days ago openly states what steps are needed from the industries before anything else should be done and the law is already set. again, moving against EU law in favor of the USA is gonna cause some real big issues!
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artp (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 9:29am

I support this
As long as it's reciprocal.

If the three strikes applies to the **AAs, too, then I'm all for it! Just think, if they make three mistakes in DMCA takedowns (which should take about 3.5 minutes), then they are kicked off the Internet forever!

Then you might as well just break them up, release all their content to the public domain, sell the remainder and put all the execs in prison for life. I have skipped the extreme reactions to their third strike, because I don't want to descend to their level.

Yah, I'm dreaming. Sue me.
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DogBreath, 17 Feb 2014 @ 9:38am

Re: Money Spent
What those 1% who own 99% of the wealth will soon come to realize, is that when the 99% of the workers who own less than 1% of the wealth get hungry, the 99% will have but one option:

"When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Not a statement of fact, but a statement of history repeating itself.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 9:45am

Re: Re: Re:
And those pirates then still were a drop in the bucket with regards to the affect it had on their business. And then end of them still won't be at the hands of the consumers. It will be of their own doing. A lack of respect for the people who you rely on to purchase your products means less and less of those people will respect you until you have virtually no one left who will buy from you. Countless studies have shown that people will buy even though they can get it for free some other way if there is added value, it is easy, and flexible.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 10:22am

Re: Re: Money Spent
Wrong comparison, it is much more like the lead up to the French revolution.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 10:34am

Re: Re: Re:
You misspelled culture.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 10:36am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
I didn't even use the word culture in that comment.
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Karl (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 10:52am

Re:
It sure is a good thing that there's a blog to demonstrate how much Google loves the piracy business.

I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm.

I mean, here you are on a blog that has nothing to do with Google, commenting on a story that has nothing to do with Google nor with endorsing piracy (much less "the piracy business"). And somehow that's proof that this blog demonstrates how much Google loves the piracy business.

If it isn't sarcasm, then it's being an agent provocateur against the copyright industry. Whether intentionally or not, you're simply making "your side" look like raving idiots.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 11:20am

Ireland is part of the EU, so if this 'Three Strikes' program involves termination of internet access it cannot be enforced, as the EU mandates (thanks to the Pirate Party representatives) that Internet access is a basic and fundamental right.

That's what got France in so much trouble for passing Hadopi.
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That One Guy (profile), 17 Feb 2014 @ 11:30am

Re:
That's okay, it's not 'termination' of their net connection, it's just 'throttling until you might as well not have a connection', totally different. /s
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DogBreath, 17 Feb 2014 @ 12:17pm

Re: Re:
Throttling a internet connection can be basically seen to be just like copyright lengthening laws.

Infinity minus a day on copyrights is still only "throttling" the public domain, because any law that governments pass will still meet the definition of "for a limited time".

I'm sure the corporations and their government lackeys will argue throttling an internet connection will still be fine and legal, as long as it's not forever. "Life + 70 Years" ought to do it (Hey, it's working out for copyright).
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Digitari, 17 Feb 2014 @ 4:04pm

Re: Re:
IMHO, they ARE, they really really ARE!!!
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 4:31pm

Re:
France didn't get in trouble for passing HADOPI, but that didn't stop it from being a massive failure.

Then when the new government cut its funding, HADOPI sent out even more letters than they had when they had more funding.

So HADOPI was much more inefficient when their salaries were higher. Most people would call that "bullshit", but that's copyright enforcement for you.
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Anonymous, 17 Feb 2014 @ 4:48pm

Pirates? As if they don't already have enough trouble with leprechauns.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 5:01pm

Re: Found them
FYI: They're back at it in Oz

http://torrentfreak.com/australian-government-signals-online-piracy-crackdown-140214/
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2014 @ 8:30pm

Copywrong is doomed.
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