ISP Sued By Irish RIAA

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "An ISP in Ireland has been sued by the Big Four record labels because its subscribers have engaged in P2P sharing of the record companies' song files. The record companies claim the ISP should be buying Audible Magic's CopySense, the software being peddled by the RIAA's expert witness, which supposedly would filter out copyright infringement. Of course, not everyone agrees."

Comments

Re:Bad Title

[Jafafa Hots]

He meant the Irish version of the RIAA - One of the As in RIAA stands for "America."

Here's the only two things you need to know

[TubeSteak]

While the record companies had taken various measures to discourage record piracy, including public awareness campaigns and legal actions against individuals engaged in piracy, these had proven very costly and time consuming and were not enough to stop people using illegal services on a broad scale. AND

[Eircom] ... had no legal obligation to monitor traffic on its network. There isn't much more to say.
The ISP has no obligation and the *AA can't seem to "educate" themselves out of their problem.

Lets burn our public libraries

[CrazyJim1]

People are using books that they didn't even pay for there. I think this is causing a big impact on book sales. More authors would make books if it wasn't for the Library. It is in the public's best interest to burn their libraries.

Re:Lets burn our public libraries

[wvmarle]

Not a very apt comparison.

Books from the library are read there, or borrowed to be returned later. The number of copies in existence remains the same (unless people go to a copy machine to copy the book - a non-trivial and fairly costly operation, probably more costly than going to the book shop and buy yourself a copy).

Libraries can be compared to music/video rental shops (many book libraries also do this). Those disks are rent or lent, and are returned a week or so later.

Music and video downloads (and e-books) however DO increase the number of copies. And copying is as good as free in effort and cost.

Of course the publishers also complain about libraries (not so much, they are considered a given due to their long historical existence), and video rentals. They claim it also lowers sales. Just like reselling used copies of books/CDs/DVDs. But no matter what, on-line file sharing is in a league on its own.

That's nothing, my house was robbed...

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'm suing my town and state because their roads were used to transport the stolen items away. That could have been easily avoided had they employed a security guard from my company at each of the intersections...

Re:fight it

[L4t3r4lu5]

IANAL, but I thought threatening legal action (and engaging in it for not conforming) into parting with funds for a particular purpose was Demanding Money with Menace.

Extorsion, maybe?