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

fight it

[DKP]

fight it all the way and if the iaa wants software installed then let them pay for it not that it would work.

Re:fight it

[mwvdlee]

Sueing somebody to force them to buy a product... isn't that kinda, I dunno, anti-competitive?

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?

Re:fight it

[zoney_ie]

Also ironic in this instance. The ISP involved is the former state telco Eircom, which the govt. screwed up the privitisation of such that they have a monopoly on last-mile, exchanges, etc. and have ensured LLU and DSL reselling is not something other telcos can make money out of (the few "players" in that game are just spending millions to "buy" customer base, with a step 2: ... before step 3: profit).

Actually, I would probably classify Eircom as vastly more evil than the Irish version of the RIAA (IRMA - Irish Recorded Music Association).

Re:Bad Title

[Anonymous Coward]

I read "Irish" and transposed "RIAA" to "IRA(A)" - shadows of another terrorist group.

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.

Re:Here's the only two things you need to know

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The ISP has no obligation and the *AA can't seem to "educate" themselves out of their problem.

This is Ireland. We don't so much have laws here as we have sort of "tribal customs". Over here, even if a law is struck down as unconstitutional, the supreme court has ruled that you can still be imprisoned under it. It used to be illegal for Irish ISPs to hold certain types of data for more than about six months, I believe. It was at one time discovered that Eircom, the ISP mentioned in this article (effectively the Irish AT&T), was retaining this information for three years, the government passed a bill making it mandatory to store it for at least three years.

That's how things work in this country. We're kind of a one party state meets banana republic meets laissez faire capitalism. Basically, laws here are universally subject to interpretation and arbitrary revision. That's when they're not being ignored outright. If Eircom agrees to the censoring and monitoring, then it will become legal. If it doesn't, it won't. I doubt the IRMA is anywhere near as well connected or influential as Eircom representatives, so unless they're willing to pay up, in either bribes or in financing the system, this surveillance simply isn't happening. Anyway, we're all under surveillance anyway, so this entire issue is rather moot.

Re:Smells like standard record company BS

[calebt3]

Because that would make sense.

Re:Bad Title

[Anonymous Coward]

But what would the "Recording Irish-Americans of America" have against an Irish ISP? (Tongue firmly in cheek)

Honda car used to steal my parking spot!

[Kenja]

All Honda cars should be forced to use my special "No park in my spot" tires to prevent this in the future. Only $999 per set of four!

Re:Honda car used to steal my parking spot!

[Solandri]

Police sue automakers for allowing drivers to exceed the speed limit.

Parents of child porn victims sue camera manufacturers for allowing pedophiles to make child porn.

Corporate hacking victims sue computer manufacturers for providing hackers tools to break into their systems.

Violent crime victims sue weapons manufacturers for enabling criminals to harm them.

China sues Western democracies for giving its citizens subversive ideas of freedom and civil liberties.

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.

Re:Lets burn our public libraries

[mr_matticus]

Of course they paid for them. It's a public library, paid for through municipal taxes and whatever endowment scheme your local library uses to supplement that tax income.

The materials in the libraries are all duly licensed for lending, through a combination of statutory exceptions in the US Code, and, where applicable or gapped, through licensing with the copyright holders permitting such use.

The copyright holders have indeed been compensated, both through license payments from libraries (often on DVDs and CDs and similar materials by acquiring the more-expensive rental copies [which often include media replacement]) and through the inherent copyright law bargain.

Incidentally, many library collections include video and audio content licensed for commercial use, which is a great way for a community organization (say, a church or club) to put on such a performance without having to buy a license or negotiate one with the rightsholders. You just check out the video with the commercial license and you're good to go. Your tax dollars at work, literally.

Re:Lets burn our public libraries

[mr_matticus]

The Library has paid for one copy of the book No, usually libraries buy many copies, particularly for important or popular works. Those copies wear rapidly and will slowly be pulled from circulation. Eventually, the library's collection will stabilize at a lower number, lasting a long time. The kinds of books ordered individually are not ones that sell tremendously well to begin with. Multiplied across the thousands of libraries in the country, most specialty books are quite buoyed by library sales--sales they would not have otherwise made because the market for the book is limited, or the cost of the production run is more than most of the market would spend on it.

which does in the end withhold possible profits from authors and publishers as hundreds of people can read the book for free. No. Reading the book is always free. Possession of the copy is what costs money, and it's not free. Running even a small library system costs millions of dollars per year--it's more like social insurance, spreading cost instead of risk. And again, many of these books rely on libraries for a significant portion of their revenue in the first place--revenue that would not be replaced by customers if libraries were to vanish suddenly.

Libraries don't pay a special version of the book licensed for lending, publishers are not compensated any more for books going to libraries then to anyone else No kidding--that's because there's a statutory license for libraries. It's part of the negotiated copyright bargain. Furthermore, there was a time when libraries did pay more for the books. Not for licensing, but for library binding. Today, mass production and lower overall product quality just means that libraries just replace worn out copies more frequently instead of investing more in a longer-lasting copy to start (also because people are far more abusive with library materials than in past years).

There is rarely incentive for me to buy the book after I've read it at the library. If that's the case, then there isn't incentive to buy it, independent of the existence of a library. A library offers a large collection available to all at a lower cost, because everyone contributes a fixed amount. There's absolutely no reason to expect that net sales would increase without libraries. My city's library materials budget is approximately $7 million annually. I sincerely doubt that if that number dropped to zero, that people would offset that loss with increased spending. I think instead that people would just read less. The people who buy books might even buy less without a library, especially given the cost of investing in them--and they are an investment, except trade paperbacks.

laws have been passed that don't just allow it, but encourage and set up the system. Libraries predate the library exceptions to copyright law. We have decided as a society that libraries are a valuable resource, and we protect them in copyright law and other places because that's part of the social contract in granting copyrights. It's not accurate to say that publishers lose money to libraries, because copyright wouldn't exist without libraries to ensure that knowledge doesn't get bound up in copyright. It's explicit in the simple passage of the Copyright Act, and contrary to popular Slashdot belief, it is still a functional bargain.

"Obvious ways"?

[Damon Tog]

The two "obvious ways" to defeat Audible Magic (as listed in the article) do not seem very promising to me. If large numbers of filesharers begin to send huge transfers amounts of data over SSL, it's going to be pretty noticeable. In this day of ISP "traffic shaping," I wouldn't be surprised to see SSL throttled down to the point where transferring large files becomes painfully slow. The second strategy is not currently possible (as the article itself states). It goes on to admit that future OS upgrades would be required. I'm sure Microsoft will be more than happy to modify their TCP/IP stack to help make filesharing as easy as possible.

This technology is not foolproof, but it does require filesharers to jump through additional hoops to distribute files. Hardcore filesharers will no doubt toil obsessively to workaround the issue, but some casual downloaders may conclude that the hassle and risks associated with filesharing is becoming greater than the costs of paying $0.89 to get the song from Amazon, etc.

Eliminating %100 of copyright infringement is not a requirement for the RIAA to regard its strategy as successful. Simply making the process risky and aggravating enough that most people will switch to paying for music is enough. Each generation of this cat and mouse game between the "pirates" and the RIAA has resulted in an increased compartmentalization of p2p networks. Sure the "hydra" will grow more heads and live on, but it's hard to ignore that something that could immediately be located and downloaded on Napster in the Year 2000 now frequently takes time to hunt down and leech via bittorent.

Re:"Obvious ways"?

[aj50]

However, BitTorrent and P2P in general do have some quite specific traits. Since they all rely on connecting to other peers to download, you can easily guess that someone's using bittorrent because they have ~40 open connections, most of which aren't doing much. Encryption does nothing to help this.

Sued for not buying something?

[zmjjmz]

That's messed up.

extortion.

[Bishop Ebonhand]

Doesn't this sound suspiciously like extortion? "buy our 'partner's' software/protection or we'll sue you for infringement" I wonder what kind of kickback they're getting on it?

Re:extortion.

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Doesn't this sound suspiciously like extortion? "buy our 'partner's' software/protection or we'll sue you for infringement" I wonder what kind of kickback they're getting on it? Yeah, to me it sounds exactly like extortion. See what happened when Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, paid $76,000 in "protection" money to Dr. Jacobson's business partners.

Right

[dissy]

If they wanted them to use the software so bad, they would give them a copy for free.
Greedy bastards

Re:Smells like standard record company BS

[Tuoqui]

Because the ISPs don't want their shitty ass code cluttering up their networks. So they need to use the legal system to try and strongarm them (read: Force by means of court order) into installing this crappy glorified spyware onto their networks.

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...

RIAA wants someone else to do the dirty work:

[Fluffeh]

A funny story that sort of shines out as an example here of how this all fits together:

In Australia in recent years there has been a push to stop selling cigarettes to under 18's. There are harsh fines and so forth to both the business and to the individuals who would do the selling.

One smart (or lazy/tricky depending on what way you look at it) cookie decided that as a shop owner who sold tabacco products, he was being asked to do regulatory work on behalf of the state government here who said that he shouldn't sell to minors. He took the government to court - and amazingly won the case. (I couldn't find anything on google though).

THe basic premise is the same here though, the RIAA and governments are imposing rules about what can and can't be done by users of something else, but they want someone else to do all the dirty work imposing the law. It's a bloody great way not to do any work if you ask me - by getting someone else to do it, and pay for it.

While I support copyright, I think that they should stop trying to get ISP's to do all the dirty work.

Re:Bad Title

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference? One's evil. The other is Irish.

For free?

[mr_lizard13]

Or they could just get it off bit-torrent.

Re:Bad Title

[radaos]

The organisation is IRMA, the Irish Recorded Music Association http://www.irma.ie/index2.htm Their website mentions other legal actions taken against file sharers.

Re:Smells like standard record company BS

[aproposofwhat]

we will never see deep packet inspection inside providers, as this is absolutely expensive to do an no provider would do it without coercion

I wouldn't be too sure - the infrastructure needed for Phorm's 'targeted advertising' could easily be adapted to inspect more of the data - it already intercepts HTTP requests, and it's not a great step from there to data inspection (though the lookups are going to cost a lot of latency).

Once the ISPs allow themselves to be corrupted by Phorm, expect to see packet inspection proliferate massively.

Packet Shaping

[Bonzodog01]

"The record companies believed greater availability of broadband will lead to a further escalation in the volume of unlawful distribution of recordings, he added." It looks like they don't like the idea of Broadband getting to Ireland. I live in Galway and use ntl/chorus cable for my Broadband. I have discovered that they are packet shaping my connection, as I cannot get a Bittorrent connection to sail above 5k/s for more than a few minutes at a time, it's hopeless, even downloading legal torrents for ISO's for Linux Distro's. Yeah, I'm Galways Linux User.

What about false positives?

[Gordonjcp]

I *want* people to redistribute my copyrighted material over P2P networks. Preventing this from happening causes me a problem. If my material is wrongly detected as something the RIAA don't want shared, it harms *my* profits.

I suppose the question is, how do you detect false positives, and when they happen who do I sue?