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

[robotito]

Now they only need to fix the service, which is so shite.

Re:Economics

[RapmasterT]

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

Or even just 1 choice. Personally, I can get my broadband (god I hate how misused that term is) access from Comcast, or I can get a dial-up modem, that's my choices. So I'm functionally under a monopoly, if Comcast does something I don't like, like eliminating USENET service without lowering my bill, then I'm free to suck it up or do without internet.

Re:Economics

[erroneus]

It's all a matter of where the incentive lies. In this case, the ISP probably doesn't get any money from the recording industry at all so they have no incentive to support their interests.

My first reaction was "well, technical users probably use their support services a LOT less often and so cost them less in terms of support and so the loss of their tech savvy customers is a big loss in terms of support costs per customer." That should factor into additional incentives to care about their tech savvy users but certainly not enough by itself.

Re:Economics

[MBGMorden]

Exactly. In smaller countries like this, it is feasible for multiple companies to build out infrastructure.

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.

In almost everything but large cities you have at most 2 choices for broadband. Some don't even have that. I myself have only the DSL offered by the phone company. No cable access is available. Luckily I'm fairly satisfied with the speed and such we get, albeit at a higher cost than most pay, but if I wasn't, my only option to change ISP's would be to sell the house and move.

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

[scot4875]

In the US however, we're much more spread out.

Please quit spreading this misinformation. We aren't more spread out than several countries that completely kick our asses in both rural and metro internet access.

And being spread out *still* doesn't provide any justification why there would be effective monopolies with poor service in most major metro areas.

U.S. citizens are reamed for Internet access. Stop playing the Stockholm syndrome victim and acting as an industry apologist.

--Jeremy

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

[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.

Eircom are a former state owned incumbent, they don't quite have a total monopoly but are many people's "default choice" of provider. Because the Irish market is quite small there are relatively few resellers and outside of major urban areas there are few other choices apart from mobile based operators.

The original article mentioned "This resulted in many of the more 'technical' users leaving that ISP in droves". They didn't exactly attract technical users before. Until quite recently their default ADSL package had only a 1gb download limit and charged 36 cents PER MEGABYTE after that. For a while it was actually cheaper to use mobile broadband. They have improved their offerings a bit recently but its not brilliant compared with elsewhere in Europe.

Re:Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

He could also get a series of squirrels to hand deliver pieces of paper with handwritten ones and zeros to communicate the internet.
It would take a while to train all the squirrels though....And his ping might be quite high (depending how fast the squirrels are)

Re:Economics

[Rising Ape]

Here in the UK, BT are deploying VDSL2-based FTTC despite having to open their networks to others, with the prices they charge to others being regulated. So it can be done.

Re:Economics

[OldeTimeGeek]

Nope, nothing to do with those.

I'm not talking about competing with a locally-managed ISP, but why it happens that cable companies get monopolies in the first place. Not every community has the time, money or expertise to build their own infrastructure. Especially the money.

Re:Economics

[OldeTimeGeek]

And the locality gets the money to do this from where? I'm sure it will be really popular at the next town hall when the elected officials try to explain that they need an increase in budget to pay for trenching, laying cable and an increase in staffing to manage the facilities. With streets getting worse and police and fire department personnel getting laid off because there's no money, this should go over really well...

Re:Economics

[Falconhell]

In .au Telstra the former public carrier is forced to allow ISP acces to its copper lines for ADSL.

I have literally a dozen or more choices of provider.

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:Economics

[Alphathon]

I'm not 100% sure about this but in the UK at least I'm fairly sure most, if not all, ISPs are available everywhere in the country* with the exception of virgin media cable internet (since you need to be in a cabled area, and you can still get virgin broadband via phone-line (ADSL/ADSL2+)). I'm no broadband expert but my understanding is that all equipment is owned by BT and then rented by the smaller ISPs (with the exception of some of the other big ISPs who use their own tech in major telephone exchanges). As such, any ISP is available anywhere that is capable of ADSL*. There aren't the regional monopolies that seem to exist in the US since almost everyone uses ADSL(or 2+) and rely on the same pone system. I don't know if the situation is the same in Eire/ROI, but it I suspect it is and that Eircom is their equivalent of BT.

*some very remote areas with no/very poor phone line are obviously n/a

Re:Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Zero choice huh? I live in the suburbs in the Northeast, I have MANY choices of broadband internet... Neighbor 1, neighbor 2, neighbor 3 and so on and so forth.

Re:Economics

[Dodgy G33za]

As a poster "flamebaited" earlier in this thread, Australia, one of the least densely populated places on the planet*, has a varied choice of ISP. I have a fixed line ADSL2+ in Sydney and a mobile 3G service at my inland property which is good enough to stream ABC video. They have achieved this by forcing the previous monopoly (Telstra) to allow other ISPs to place DSLAMs in their exchanges, or simply on-sell Telstra services after getting them at the wholesale rate. *Having said that, it is also one of the most urbanised.

Re:Economics

[yukk]

Well, a nice economic fightback tactic would be for the ISPs to say that after 1 "strike" (being caused by the user downloading music) the ISP then demands that since it's music causing the problem, the music companies must now strike that person off their own customer lists.
Therefore the person is no longer allowed into any music stores or to buy music from those companies by any means.
Once the labels can show that they are doing their part of the work, they may go ahead and serve more notices for downloading. Once they have shown all their paperwork proving that their culprit has been turned away from stores and the comprehensive list of "downloaders" is being enforced at every outlet, they may go on to strike two and, eventually, 3.
It is unfair that the ISPs are made to do all the work for the labels in this respect AND to cut off their own paying customers who may have paid for 50GB of bandwidth and used a measly 5MB of that (.1%) in order to infringe on the labels' copyrights.

Re:Economics

[Nidi62]

It's scary when you go for Funny and end up with Insightful

Re:Economics

[Eivind Eklund]

While I right now live in Ireland, I used to live in Norway, which has about one third the population density of the US.

And broadband competition.

It's very simple: You regulate in competition. The natural situation is for the companies in this sector to turn into monopolies due to infrastructure investments partially born by taxpayer or through enforced rights; you must regulate away the monopoly to get a functioning market, e.g. by requiring competitor access to infrastructure at regulated prices.

Eivind.

Re:Economics

[VocationalZero]

Corporations here like to believe that any public funds for telecommunications are a free gift to their shareholders.

I've always wonder why the government just gives the money away instead of exchanging it for stock. Its all the burden of an investment with none of the benefits.

Is any other type infrastructure ever considered a risky investment that needs to be publicly subsidized? Is it immoral to harass/vandalize a telco that has been jerking us around for years with poor customer service and spotty at best connectivity? How can we affect change if we can't even vote with our dollars?

Re:Economics

[volcan0]

are T1's even still available outside of the telco world ?

Re:Economics

[tsm_sf]

"But we're picking up the cost of infrastructure - what's in it for us?" I say.

You get to build out on private property without needing to pay market value for the land, OR negotiate with every person whose land you cross.

It's a bit of a red herring, though. There's no good reason for infrastructure to be privately held. "If you build it, they will come" should be the motto of every municipality.

Re:Economics

[uninformedLuddite]

So if a Stockholm syndrome victim knew he/she was suffering from Stockholm syndrome what would the conversation with their captor asctually look like? And if n one was there did they make a sound?

Re:Economics

[Neil Boekend]

There are two options:

• 1. You lay your cables. Costs a bunch.
• 2. You charge a lot for the service to have return on your investment.
• 3. The other guy comes and lays his own cables. Costs him a bunch
• 4. You lower your price before he has his cables in place
• 5. He can't charge as much as you did, because then he wouldn't have return on his investment.
• 6. You are cheaper, so people will stay with you
• 7. No (...) required
• 8. Profit

Or another option:

• 1. Lay the cables
• 2.Charge a lot for a crappy service
• 3. Some other guy comes around
• 4. Stop selling to customers.
• 5. Lease the bandwith to Guy 1 and Guy 2
• 6. No (...) required
• 7. Profit

Re:Economics

[jaggeh]

seconded, my only problem is a shoddy wireless network card i need to fix.

Re:Economics

[thyrial]

Eircom did have a monopoly on residential broadband in most of the county for years though.They sat on their asses and are part of the reason that 1-7mb lines here are still the norm. Eircom are losing customers hand over fist here as the other ISPs offer decent packages , as they cant really compete on price. They still , to the best of my knowledge they "own" most of the fixed line infrastructure and get money back on any other providers ADSL packages. UPC(the guys in this article)( are a cable outfit though so don't have to pay them as far as I know.

Re:Economics

[Zan Lynx]

I've got one. It's the best option available where I live. The other options are modem (no thanks), ISDN, IDSL (both a bit slow), or satellite (awful).

For three times the cost of IDSL I get 10 times the bandwidth.

Re:Economics

[Zan Lynx]

If someone is a consumer and they pay for a T1 it is, ipso facto, consumer broadband.

And yes, if you can get what you want in the market then you have market choice. A price multiplier of three or four is the same as that between an unlocked cell phone and a contract, or a Kia and a Porsche.

Slashdot car analogy for the win!

Re:Economics

[sjames]

Wow, that means we have consumer spacecraft and nuclear reactors!

I'm not sure of the exact elasticity of a point in a /. discussion, but you're stretching this one very close to the limit.

Re:Economics

[RapmasterT]

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

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

Well played. I like the way you point out that I do in fact have the choice to do something ridiculously impractical.

You've opened my eyes and now I see a world FILLED with choices. I could also get horrid satellite internet, I could dig and lay fiber at my own expense to the closest MMR, I could invent a broadband internet protocol that runs off of compressed air puffs, I could tape micro-sd cards to pidgeons and engage in half-duplex HIGH latency networking.

Basically, I'm saying I don't like you.

Now why is it

[Moryath]

that the only sane people seem to be in other countries? In the US, the normal people get trodden on all over the place, the idea of a "choice" of ISP is a joke, and despite the prohibition on ex post facto laws, the Supreme Court ruled that a bought-off Congress could keep extending "copyright term" ad infinitum - even setting it to a "million bajillion" years if they felt like it.

 

Re:Now why is it

[catmistake]

that the only sane people seem to be in other countries? In the US, the normal people get trodden on all over the place, the idea of a "choice" of ISP is a joke, and despite the prohibition on ex post facto laws, the Supreme Court ruled that a bought-off Congress could keep extending "copyright term" ad infinitum - even setting it to a "million bajillion" years if they felt like it.

Wow... how the world has changed in only 60 years or so. You see, the irony here is, The United States used to be the enemy of nazis... the US was the nazi's worst nightmare, and nazis often traversed through neutral Ireland on their way to new identities. And now it seems the roles have reversed. (If my quip offends anyone, let me just say, to calm your pure hearts, that the independent ('indy') record companies are not nazis; they're more like the French Resistance).

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: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).

Re:Now why is it

[gknoy]

despite the prohibition on ex post facto laws, the Supreme Court ruled that a bought-off Congress could keep extending "copyright term" ad infinitum

A lawyer can correct me, but I believe you misunderstand "ex post facto" laws.

The prohibition is on laws which make illegal things which used to be legal, and then punish people for things they did in the past. (e.g., if they made abortion illegal, and then fined/imprisoned people that had gotten abortions last year.) The prohibition is NOT on making laws which legalize things which used to be illegal.

economics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats special about record companies anyhow............shouldn't they be poor now? I haven't seen records anywhere in years.

Re:economics?

[Critical Facilities]

I haven't seen records anywhere in years.

According to this that may change.

the users

[KevMar]

It was nice to see the users take a stand and for the ISP to notice.

Re:the users

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:the users

[TENTH SHOW JAM]

It's still illegal to upload copyrighted files which you do not have permission to.

Fixed that for ya.

As a UPC customer

[Gopher971]

I'm delighted with the stand they are taking. I was previously with Eircom and was one of the thousands who left when they caved into IMRO. While I woldn't case myself as purer than pure, I do frequently download iso's for various Linux distributions.

As an aside, I've found UPC to be a much superior ISP, with great customer service, not like the bad old days of NTL.

Re:As a UPC customer

[dewie]

Yep, I'm with UPC too, and as long as they keep fighting this they have my guaranteed continued custom, as well as my positive word-of-mouth to anyone who asks me for ISP recommendations.

UPC...

[mariushm]

Just a note ... UPC is not an Irish ISP in particular ... they're also in other countries, like Romania where I am. In other countries it's called Chello but they're slowly re-branding in some: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chello

Don't claim victory just yet

[Adrian Lopez]

If ACTA were law I suspect the court's decision would go the other way. Given the inaccuracy of DMCA accusations so far, any kind of three-strikes law that doesn't require three convictions would be disastrous. Heck, even a "three convictions" rule would be a problem given how important the Internet has become to our daily lives. Any law calling for a user's disconnection (except in cases of parole/probation) would doubtless constitute a curtailment of that person's freedom of speech and association (whether or not the law ends up recognizing it as such).

I don't think it's too much to ask for copyright holders to prove their case before penalizing users, and I don't think it's fair for such penalties to include disconnection once the term of conviction is up for those who are guilty.

Kudos to UPC

[xednieht]

May you live long and prosper

RTFA: Not a major victory -- not a victory at all

[hdon]

I saw this story covered at BoingBoing earlier and I have to say -- has anyone actually read this article?

This is not a major victory. This is a temporary set-back for the record labels who wish for overreaching legal powers to stop the unstoppable.

Here are some very meaningful excerpts from the same story covered by the Irish Times:

"...the judge said laws were not in place in Ireland to enforce disconnections over illegal downloads... this gap in legislation meant Ireland was not complying with European law."

"The judge made it very clear that an injunction would be morally justified but that the Irish legislature had failed in its obligation to confer on the courts the right to grant such injunctions, unlike other EU states."

"Irish Recorded Music Association director-general Dick Doyle said his office would pressure the Government to reform the law in favour of record labels."

RTFA

Oh sure, let the market decide...

[HeckRuler]

The problem with your assumption is that Eirecom is going to lose money off of this. Now, I'm not sure how it works in Ireland, but if this exact scenario went down in the USA, Eirecom would be congradulating themselves as they found a way to shluff off all the "band-width hogs". You know, those 'technical users' that actually use the connection they purchase. ISPs here make bank on mom and pop who check their email.

Re:Oh sure, let the market decide...

[Kjella]

Well that's because there is no competition around the Mom & Pop users, it's more "do you want broadband or don't you?" and so the price is far higher than the service delivered.

I just checked and in my town there's at least 22 broadband providers. The four largest (2 dsl, 2 cable) are all within 20% of each other, roughly the same speed (1-2Mbit down, 0.5-1 Mbit up) and is probably a fair price given the cost of delivering service at all like modem including delivery/returns, line including maintenance, rack space, support, billing and so on. Bulk bandwidth costs as such are almost none, you might notice the complete lack of bullshit "up to X Mbit" claims, the specs aren't impressive but they're delivered.

Everybody on a higher plan pay their way for bandwidth, would they be offering my 25 Mbit line if they weren't making money on it? I doubt that. Sure, they might not make money on everyone in this class as you can reach pretty hefty downloads, but running off all their high speed users would be losing money. If you're trying to tell me we are some sort of loss leader subsidized by the Mom & Pops, I certainly don't believe you. It might be different in the US but there the fraudulent marketing puts mom & pops and high end users on the same "unlimited" line.

Re:RTFA: Not a major victory -- not a victory at a

[ionix5891]

You are correct, the spokesman on the radio (here in Ireland) was blabbing on about them putting pressure on the government now via lobbying.
government who in all honesty have better things to be worrying about such as getting the country of out the deepening depression we are still in (and one that they helped get us into!)

Re:RTFA: Not a major victory -- not a victory at a

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I saw this story covered at BoingBoing earlier and I have to say -- has anyone actually read this article?

Welcome, friend. You must be new around here. Let me tell you how things work here.

You see, there's no real requirement for submitters to read or understand the articles they link to. That makes it very common for us to get submissions where the submitter says something like "The article says X. The article says X!" when the fact the article says "not X". I wish it was better around here, but it's not.

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.

Damages to ISP

[metalmonkey]

If droves of customers leave the ISP after implementing such a system, should the ISP be able to sue for loss of revenue?
I guess it would be difficult to quantify, maybe not as difficult to quantify as the loss of revenue due to copyright infringement.

Re:Damages to ISP

[Drakkenmensch]

All they need to do is just make up a number, some random amount of billions in lost revenue. It's what the recording industry does, and nobody ever seems to call bullshit on those numbers.

Correlation != Causation

[mjwx]

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

This is a definite case of correlation not equalling causation. You assume that they sued the record companies because some users left, I'd be a great deal on the real reason being that filtering and logging software as well having a human go through the logs to find the answers to the deluge of piracy complaints was costing them way too much. ISP's operate on a shoestring profit, not a lot of fat in it so if a few heavy users leave, all the better (less international bandwidth being bought) but when they have to spend more to keep an eye on users that is a terrible thing from a business perspective.

So ISP greed vs movie studio greed, in Soviet Ireland ISP greed wins. Eircom is far from the worlds most altruistic ISP.

I say "good riddance"!

[Locke2005]

Those "more technical" users' bittorent feeds were using up all the bandwidth anyway, and slowing down my porn downloads!

A Victory? Perhaps not

[WindShadow]

I am not a lawyer, but just because there is no precedent in law, doesn't mean a new law can't be binding, does it? If there was precedent that it was not allowed, that would be a strong argument, but a law requiring a remedy for a crime which didn't exist until recently is bound to have no precedent.

Perhaps some lawyer could explain this leap of logic. There's no precedent for fining or jailing people for sending spam, posting kiddie porn, or cyberbullying, either. Does that mean there can't be? Is this a quirk of Irish law or just a poorly written story?