Record Labels Make The Case That Irish ISP Is Guilty Of Copyright Infringement

from the inducing-a-joke dept

A few different readers sent in the latest on the lawsuit that the major record labels have filed against Irish ISP Eircom. While the adversarial relationship between ISPs and the recording industry has been discussed for years, this is the first case in which the labels are directly suing an ISP for copyright infringement. Their argument, similar to the "inducement" rule that the US courts made up (it's not actually in any US law) is that Eircom was actively encouraging piracy. In the case, they used internal emails from Eircom execs where some execs jokingly talked about how piracy was good for musicians because it would reduce money for rock stars to spend on cocaine. Apparently, obviously joking comments are being used to establish intent these days. Either way, this seems like a weak case for the record labels. Plenty of people encourage piracy. It's not going to go away if all those people shut up. The industry needs to stop freaking out over the fact that piracy happens, and start focusing on actual solutions in the market.

Filed Under: copyright, ireland, isps, liability
Companies: eircom, ifpi

Did You Know Caching Is How Perverts Avoid Downloading?

from the say-again? dept

We all know that child porn is a terrible problem -- and I have absolutely no problem with severely punishing anyone involved in the production or distribution of it. However, where things get tricky is when you start punishing anyone merely for possession. Sure, if it's a situation where someone is discovered with a ton of it, that might be a different scenario (though, I would think it's more of an issue to be handled with psychiatric help, rather than criminal prosecution), but mere possession in the digital age is problematic. Anyone can send someone an email with a pornographic picture attached, and suddenly the recipient is guilty of possessing child porn through no fault of his own. Or, you could get some malware that pops up such images. There are plenty of ways that people could unwittingly have such images on their computer, and making them criminally liable could result in some pretty awful scenarios.

Apparently, the guy the Irish government put in charge of dealing with the child porn problem hasn't thought about any of this, however. He's recommending that Irish laws be strengthened to make merely viewing child porn a criminal offense, claiming that viewing it drives demand for more such images.

Of course, if you read the article linked above, it sounds even worse. I'm hoping it's because the reporter, rather than the guy who wrote the report, is clueless, but it implies that the guy's report to the government said that child porn viewers are purposely using "caching" to avoid downloading child porn to protect them from legal liability. Except... caching is downloading. The way something is cached is that it's downloaded. So, if you accidentally go to a website that includes child porn, the images are most likely cached, meaning you're now guilty of a committing a crime. Yet, the article (which claims to be repeating what's in the report) suggests that caching is actually a nefarious technique used by technologically sophisticated folks to avoid legal liability. Apparently, the fact that almost everyone uses caching when they browse wasn't explained to someone.

Fighting back against child porn is important, but technologically clueless people going on a witch hunt isn't going to help things very much.

Filed Under: caching, child porn, downloading, ireland

Politicians Still Trying To Outlaw Being A Jerk

from the it's-not-going-to-work dept

Reader eoinmonty writes in to let us know that Irish politicians are pressuring mobile phone companies to stop mobile phone bullying, and saying that if the companies can't do so, they'll be forced to put in place laws that require them to stop bullying. The whole thing is rather ridiculous, and, as one phone company rep accurately pointed out: "It is unrealistic and unfair to expect mobile phone operators to solve what is a broader societal problem." Indeed. It seems as if politicians think that somehow the mobile operators can just snap their fingers and stop undesired activity. They can't. And, to let them in on a little secret: even passing a law won't do much to help. People are going to be bullies -- and passing a law or asking the mobile phone companies to hold back the tide won't do much to stop them.

Filed Under: bullying, cyberbullying, ireland, liability, responsibility

Hollywood Illegally Demanded Payments From Irish Kindergarteners

from the and-this,-kids,-is-what-we-call-a-shakedown dept

It's no secret that the entertainment industry believes that it deserves to be paid (often multiple times) every time anyone accesses, views or listens to any of its content. That's resulted in some really bad policies that limit the potential for future growth, but also some ridiculous scenarios like the one described over at TorrentFreak, concerning the Motion Picture Licensing Company, who illegally demanded 10 euros per child (later reduced to 3 euros) from Irish kindergartens, for the right to watch DVDs in class. It turns out that the whole thing was illegal, as it violated a copyright act in Ireland by not filing for a license to collect royalty revenue (it has since filed for the license). In the meantime, the folks who run these schools are a bit annoyed by the whole thing, noting that they rarely, if ever, show DVDs anyway and don't see why they should have to pay a fee per student. In fact, one educator noted that the only time they showed DVDs was when they would "pretend" to go to the cinema -- and even that would likely lead kids to eventually want to go see more movies.

Filed Under: ireland, kindergarten, movies, royalties
Companies: mplc

As Expected, IFPI 'Advertising' Helps Boost BitTorrent Search Site

from the the-definition-of-insanity dept

For a group that claims it's focused on "educating" people, the recording industry seems amazingly thickheaded in learning lessons itself. Just last week the IFPI succeeded in having an Israeli court demand that Israeli ISPs block bittorrent search site HttpShare. As we noted in that post, this would likely act as tremendous advertising for HttpShare -- and, indeed, that's exactly what has happened. The site claims that traffic has jumped, even requiring the site owners to upgrade the hardware hosting the site -- all thanks to a little "IFPI Advertising."

What's most stunning, however, is that the IFPI didn't realize this would happen. After all, it's happened again and again and again. In fact, just a month ago, a similar action in Denmark over the Pirate Bay greatly increased traffic to the site. Hell, the Pirate Bay first came to international attention (beyond a much smaller niche group of users) after the IFPI pressured gov't officials to take the site down. Of course, rather than recognize this, the IFPI and the RIAA (and the MPAA at times as well) always claim that each of these "shut downs" is a "significant blow" against piracy. Apparently, they never consider what happens next. Makes you think that the execs and lawyers at the recording industry probably aren't very good chess players.

Filed Under: ifpi, ireland, isps, liability, safe harbor
Companies: httpshare, ifpi

IFPI's New Strategy: Sue ISPs For Not Stopping File Sharing

from the making-life-even-worse-for-themselves dept

Earlier this year, the IFPI was successful in convincing a court to force a Danish ISP to block access to the Pirate Bay. Rather than recognizing that this only helped drive more traffic to the Pirate Bay, the folks at the IFPI seem to have gotten it into their heads that the best course of action is to start suing ISPs for not stopping file sharing. Its first target is the large Irish ISP Eircom. Eircom points out all the obvious things: it has no idea what its users are doing on the network, it's just providing the network -- and no one had made it aware of any specific infringing activity. Rather than deal with those very reasonable questions, the record labels responded with the ridiculous "but you know it's happening!" response which we've heard all too often these days. Of course, knowing that unauthorized file sharing is happening on your network and being either liable or able to stop it are two very different things. Basically, the record labels seem to be admitting that they are unable to stop file sharing, so it must be someone else's job. Even worse, they seem to be saying that it's a legal responsibility of someone else to try to prop up their own failed business model. Talk about grasping at straws. I'm not sure if Ireland has laws like the US's safe harbor provisions protecting service providers from liability for the actions of users, but hopefully the Irish courts quickly realize how ridiculous it is to pin liability on an ISP and throw this case out. What's also partly disturbing is the fact that the "but you know it's happening!" comment comes from an EMI exec, just after we thought EMI was moving away from ridiculous IFPI lawsuits. Apparently not.

Filed Under: ifpi, ireland, isps, liability, safe harbor
Companies: eircom, ifpi

How Many Irish Politicians Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb?

from the it's-not-a-joke dept

American politicians have been toying with such legislation for a while, and Australian politicians have already approved similar legislation, but it appears that Irish politicians are in something of a rush to ban incandescent lightbulbs. New legislation would ban the sale of the traditional lightbulbs as of January 2009 -- basically just one year. The Australian plan, that was approved earlier this year, would phase out the bulbs by 2010. While we can understand the basic reasoning, it's still unclear why a full ban is really necessary. Fluorescent bulbs keep getting cheaper and cheaper (and better and better in quality) than incandescent bulbs. They last so much longer and use so much less energy that it won't be long until most people voluntarily move to fluorescents, without any unnecessary ban on incandescents.

Filed Under: energy, environment, greentech, ireland, lightbulbs, politics