As the UK music industry was pondering over the implications of 'Digital Britain', an Irish internet service provider, Eircom, announced it was introducing the three strikes system.
The announcement comes as part of a deal between the record companies and the ISP relating to a previous legal dispute, and will mean that if record companies provide evidence that one of their customers is illegally file sharing Eircom will send them two warning letters. If the warnings are not heeded the customer will lose their internet connection.
Eircom didn't go as far as to commit to track its customers online activity themselves - something the labels proposed - because it said introducing monitoring software onto its servers could affect broadband performance and breach privacy laws.
Eircom says the labels have said they will push for a similar commitment from other ISPs in Ireland. Of course the whole disconnection system only works if it is applied across the net industry.