Irish ISP Wins Major Legal Victory Against Record Companies

An anonymous reader writes "The High Court in Dublin ruled today that there was no precedent in Irish law to force ISPs to identify and disconnect people accused of illegally downloading copyrighted files. The court case was spurred by objections to the recording industry's three-strikes system from Irish internet provider UPC. Earlier this year, Eircom, one of Ireland's other large ISPs, gave in and implemented the system, as we discussed previously. This resulted in many of the more 'technical' users leaving that ISP in droves. Nice to see an ISP willing to take a stand."

Comments

Economics

[Nidi62]

And people here say the economy doesn't fix itself when corporations do things consumers don't like.

Re:Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see the geographical breakdown between ISP's in Ireland. If a monopoly doesn't exist for any particular region, then yes. Your claim is substantiated.

Otherwise, this just shows its consumer-base, and the winning ISP for that matter, have more backbone than loads of other bandwidth consumers around the world who are in the same predicament.

Re:Economics

[RingDev]

Only if consumers have choice. In the US, were most of the country only has 1 or 2 choices for broad band services, there is no meaningful choice.

-Rick

Re:Economics

[Lumpy]

Satellite is not really broadband. Anyone who has had to live with it for more than a day will agree to this.

Most of the united states has 0 to 1 choices for broadband, large swaths of this country has ZERO broadband accessibility. By geographical square meters, most of the USA has no connectivity other than Dial up or Satellite.

Based on population, it's still dismal. I know people in NYC that cant get broadband. CableTV Broadband wont work, and DSL wont work as the building has wires from 1907, or were half assed and can not carry what is needed. They can watch low channel cable TV, but the RG59 30% shield garbage installed by the lowest bidder in the late 80's just wont cut it. And the phone wires are as bad or worse.

That's the problem in the United states... Companies whine about letting competition use "their" wires, while ignoring the fact that they took Public money to build those wires. Corporations here like to believe that any public funds for telecommunications are a free gift to their shareholders.

Re:Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Same old rubbish US wahwahwah excuse. No one is talking about US broadband covering every single inch of the land. Any decent size city can have dozens of ISPs, but they don't. We still have the silly system of local authorities giving companies local monopolies rather than having them compete. We have companies blocking municipalities from installing their own infrastructure, and winning, thanks to legal delaying tactics. Only when we stop this bullshit will we get competition and better service, with customers having the ability to choose from various suppliers instead of 1 DSL, 1 cable, and if they're lucky, FiOS.

Re:Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US however, we're much more spread out. 40 out of our 50 states are larger than entire country of Ireland. It's just much harder for multiple companies to cover that much area, particularly with so much of the mid-west being sparsely populated farmland.

No it's not.

You have one non-profit company / co-op run the infrastructure, and the competition occurs at the service level. The entity that runs Layer 1 doesn't care about bandwidth caps, IP addresses, or anything else. Neither do they care about you're using it for plain IP, or home phone service, or video on demand.

The people you give you an IP address then have to compete on giving you the best connection to the Internet (and/or VoIP, and/or video), and don't care about building out and maintaining fibre or co-ax.

If the USA was able to string out telephone and electrical wire across the country in the early 20th century, there's no reason why fibre optics can't be strung out in the 21st. It's just another cable on the pole.

The ISO layers are very handy. Let's use them.

Re:Economics

[frank_adrian314159]

... the economy doesn't fix itself when corporations do things consumers don't like.

Yeah. That's why there's ACTA.

Re:Economics

[sjames]

So you're claiming that as long as it is in theory possible to pay a gadzillion bucks you don't have there is a market choice?

By that theory, government isn't a monopoly either. I COULD in theory hire the world's largest mercenary army to topple it and install my own.

I could also point out that a T1 is NOT consumer broadband at all.

Re:Economics

[sjames]

So of course, in New York City there's hundreds of broadband providers to choose from due to the very high population density. OH, WAIT!

Re:Economics

[Ephemeriis]

Or you can get a business class line, like a T1.

You have choice. You just don't want to pay for it.

First of all, a T1 barely qualifies as "broadband" these days. It's only 1.5 Mbps. That's not horrible... But it isn't terribly impressive when compared to the 10+ Mbps advertised for most residential connections.

Second, a business class connection like a T1 is not a "choice" for a residential connection.

That's like suggesting that somebody build their own cell tower because the reception is spotty where they live.

Re:Now why is it

[Anonymous Coward]

It does nothing of the fucking sort.

Corporate personhood is a mockery of the very notion of personhood.

Re:the users

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's illegal to distribute copyrighted material without consent.

Re:Bullcrap

[Nadaka]

The density argument is also bullshit. With a the exception of a few ultra dense asian cities, US cities are no more or less dense than similar sized cities around the world. And we still have high priced crappy service with mono|duo-polies is those markets as well.

Re:Now why is it

[Bigjeff5]

That's only true if you only look back 60 years. If you go back 100+ years, you'll find there was an active marxist movement and an active fascist movement. The original Pledge of Allegiance was actually written written by the vice president of the Society of Christian Socialists a fascist group presenting itself as an alternative to the marxist groups. The original salute to be given during the pledge was the same as the German Nazi military salute. It was only after WW2 that the US was an enemy of Nazis.

These groups really only transformed - they never went away. The only reason the US was anti-Nazi is because we fought a war against them. The reason we hated the Communists was because Russia did not return what they had gained during the war to the people who it actually belonged to. It later grew into a strong cultural aversion to communism and fascism, but really you could drop the communist and fascist and say we were simply anti-oppression (at least at first).