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.

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.

"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.

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

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: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?

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?