Ireland: Music industry sues ISP, demands filtering

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal have sued Ireland’s largest ISP, Eircom,
demanding that it install filters to prevent users from illegally sharing or
downloading music. The action was admitted by Mr. Justice Peter Kelly to the
Commercial Court, meaning that it will be heard on an expedited basis.

Eircom has said that it is not on notice of specific illegal activity that
infringed the rights of the companies and has no legal obligation to monitor
traffic on its network. Previously the music companies had sought to have
Eircom voluntarily install software such as that produced by Audible Magic,
which will “fingerprint” music files, but Eircom refused indicating that it
could not run that software on its servers.

The Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland (ISPAI) has previously
said that it opposes any filtering of this sort, with General Manager Paul
Durrant saying:

“The Association is totally opposed to any obligation (such as that
apparently in this Belgian court decision) that ISPs should monitor all of
their customers’ Internet communications on the off-chance that someone may
be distributing copyrighted work which they do not have permission to use.
(How is an ISP, or any other third party, to know whether a communication is
copyrighted, who owns the copyright or whether permission has or has not
been granted?)

The privacy of all personal and business communications is at stake here.
This is the electronic equivalent of the post-office steaming open every
letter in the sorting office, checking the contents and never delivering the
bits some unknown worker believes should be censored. If legislation forced
ISPs to monitor, never mind the democratic or moral issues, in practice
everyone would immediatly switch to encryption rendering any such monitoring
useless, the monitoring process itself would slow the Internet to an
unusable snail’s pace.”

Digital Rights Ireland has condemned this action, saying that it will
jeopardise the privacy of internet users, add to the cost of broadband,
“overblock” legitimate files, and ultimately be easily circumvented by
encrypted peer to peer programs.

Irish Times, Eircom taken to court over illegal music downloads (10.03.2008)
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0310/breaking61.htm

RTE News, Record firms seek to ban illegal downloads (10.03.2008)
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0310/download.html

Digital Rights Ireland, IRMA v. Eircom – Why ISP filtering for the music
industry is a bad idea (11.03.2008)
http://www.digitalrights.ie/2008/03/11/irma-v-eircom-why-isp-filtering-for-the-music-industry-is-a-bad-idea/

Paul Durrant (ISPAI), Comment (18.07.2007)
http://www.tjmcintyre.com/2007/07/can-isps-be-required-to-block-file.html#954318685854293200

(contribution by TJ McIntyre – EDRi-member Digital Rights Ireland)