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IFPI Turning To Lawsuits

Posted by kdawson on from the taking-a-hint-from-across-the-pond dept.

Sherman's doppleganger writes "The IFPI (the "European RIAA") has made a lot of noise about filtering this year, but it looks as though 2008 is instead becoming the year of the lawsuit. The IFPI has now sued an Irish ISP in an attempt to keep copyrighted content off of its network. 'The lawsuit accuses Eircom of abetting illegal downloading by allowing copyrighted material to traverse its network unimpeded. The IFPI... wants the ISP to start filtering traffic to scrub all illicitly uploaded and downloaded copyrighted material on its network.' The lawsuit comes less than a week after an Israeli court forced the nation's three biggest ISPs to block access to HttpShare.com."

3 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. common carrier? by blackcoot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    does ireland have a legal concept similar to common carrier in the u.s.? i'm not a lawyer, much less an expert on the irish legal system, but it would seem to me that this case could only work in a country where common carrier laws are either non-existent or very weak. if ireland does have something like common carrier that would cover eircom then a win appears to essentially invalidate common carriers and make any isp that sends traffic through ireland potentially liable, even if both ends of the infringing connection are outside of irish jurisdiction.

  2. Legal filesharing should be kept legal by MichaelCrawford · · Score: 4, Interesting
    File sharing is crucial to the success of musicians such as myself who offer free downloads of their music. We do this to promote our work, and to gain fans.

    But direct HTTP downloads can bankrupt a struggling musician if their music suddenly becomes a hit. To allow mass distribution at modest expense, I offer Bit Torrent downloads of my music.

    I can't really see how an ISP could filter out copyright infringement without also filtering out files that are non-infringing.

    Bit Torrent distribution is also crucial to Free and Open Source software projects, whose installers are sometimes hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes in size.

    In the debate about file sharing, please speak up for the legal uses of it.

    And yes, I know I can host my work on free sites like MySpace, but then it would be MySpace's website and not my own that would benefit from links placed by fans. For business reasons, it's much better for a musician to have their own website if they possibly can.

    --
    Request your free CD of my piano music.
  3. Re:These people need to crawl in a hole somwhere. by Zombie+Ryushu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Pirates didn't pass laws that robbed us of fair use. The Pirates didn't hide rootkits on CDs. The Pirates didn't create this massive DRM laden Windows Vista, Music Renting. The Pirates aren't the one putting bandwidth caps, retarding the Internet's progress and putting levies on blank media. There are a number of other things. But what the *AA and IFPI have done has been far worse than any Pirate.