Ireland's largest ISP to cut the broadband of pirates from today

Mon 24 May 2010 3 Comments

downloading screenIreland's largest internet service provider, Eircom has confirmed it's going to start disconnecting the broadband connection of users who are accused of illegally downloading copyright material.

According to a report in the Irish Times Eircom is the first country in the world, and certainly the first European internet service provider for which the system has been actively put into place.

Starting today, any broadband subscriber found to be repeatedly sharing music online illegally will get three warnings before having their broadband service cut off for a year.

At the moment, this scheme is within its pilot phase and as such, Eircom has agreed to process approximately 50 IP addresses a week. To put things into perspective, it currently has a user base of around 750,000 broadband customers. It will also be concentrating on users who are actively sharing copyright material rather than simply downloading. This method will be review after three months.

First of all, suspected pirates will be telephoned by the internet service provider to see if they're aware of the dodgy activity on their broadband network. Then, once they've hit their three strikes they will have their service temporarily disabled for seven days. If they're caught out a fourth time they will have their internet connection cut off for a whole year.

Speaking on the new system, Dick Doyle, the director general of Irma, commented: "We are trying to encourage people to go back to legitimate networks to get their music."

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Comments

  • neutral

    by Fubar at 13:35 on 24 May 2010Report abuse

    I would simply change my ISP. I won't pay money to a company who want to behave this way. The nature and power in the internet is that it diminishes monopolies and certain peoples strangle hold on things like the music industry. The people will vote.

  • neutral

    by Mark Newman at 13:42 on 24 May 2010Report abuse

    I wonder how much the film and music industry paid off the managers and owners to do this?

  • unhappy

    by Corporal Clegg at 22:08 on 24 May 2010Report abuse

    Internet service providers are making vast amounts of profit from joe public and should pay a standard copyrite fee to the appropriate bodies out of the huge surfiet they are making by selling large broadband packages to people who they are quite aware are using torrent sites for downloading large amounts or copyrite material.
    Its no good them saying "we just provide a service, its up to the individual to not download". They are making money from people because they download. Its no good them saying "we dont control what people host on the internet". when they are fully aware where their money comes from with relation to torrent site users who buy into thier large broadband packages. This sort of disclaimer comes over as "plausible deniability". Well it does not work. Everyone knows that the internet service providers are gleaning their profits from the very fact that people use torrent sites. They could very easily control what people are able to access in the way of torrenting. Then they would lose vast amounts of money because people would not bother with large internet packages. If they are saying that they cannot control the proliferation of copyrited media. Then there can be no other reasonable way but for them to make a blanket payment out of their surfeit. Its not that there is not enough to go round. Just a matter of distribution. These greedy fat cats have to sort it out. They are the ones making the huge profits from the proliferation of copyrite material.
    We are the people. We do it because they provide it. WE BUY IT FROM THEM because they PROVIDE it. They would not even dare to try to control it. They would lose money, and they know it. They are the ones who must clean up their act and Pay their premium like everybody else.

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