The Irish internet industry is lining up to oppose record industry proposals that they introduce the infamous three-strike system which would see persistent illegal file sharers lose their internet access if they failed to heed two warnings that their sharing of unlicensed content online amounts to copyright infringement.
As much previously reported, the three-strike system has been much touted as one way internet service providers could do their bit in policing online copyright theft. It was first formally raised in France, where the government adopted the system as policy and have since been busy pushing it through the country's parliament - the upper house has already passed it, debate in the lower house is ongoing.
While French politicians went through the legislative processes, the New Zealand government swiftly got its variation of the three-strike proposal passed into law, though with seemingly little consideration as to how exactly the disconnection system will work, ie who will decide who is sufficiently guilty of file sharing to warrant being cut off and what, if any, will be that web user's right of appeal. Not to mention who will pay for any administrative or quasi-judicial procedures that are required. The country's net firms and content owners are currently trying to hammer out a system both sides can agree to, though the internet providers, who opposed the laws, are in no real rush to agree such a system, because the new three-strike law kind of sits in limbo while the talks are ongoing.
In Ireland the record industry is trying to introduce the three-strike system through coercion rather than legislation. The Irish Recorded Music Association successfully persuaded the country's biggest telecoms company Eircom to introduce the three-strike rule as part of an out of court settlement relating to a wider copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the record companies. The labels were pushing for the ISP to introduce content monitoring software to track the unlicensed distribution of copyrighted material. The net firm figured signing up to the three-strike system was preferable to being possibly forced by the courts to introduce monitoring software that could be a drain on their bandwidth and maybe even breach their own privacy rules.
As part of its deal with Eircom, IRMA pledged to lobby the net firm's rivals regarding them also introducing the three-strike system - which arguably only works as a deterrent if its applied industry-wide - and to pursue any ISPs who wouldn't comply through the courts. But it looks like doing so is going to require quite a bit of litigation on the record companies' part because pretty much all of Eircom's competitors have publicly dissed the three-strike proposals, relying on the thing often quoted by net firms keen to not have to cut off their fee-paying but file-sharing customers, European privacy laws.
A trade group called the Irish Service Providers In Ireland, which counts BT Ireland, O2, Verizon Ireland, Vodafone, Clearwire, Google Ireland, UPC Ireland, and, for that matter, Eircom as members, has issued an open letter confirming its members have received correspondence from the major record companies threatening legal action if they do not adopt similar measures to Eircom. But they argue that threats of legal action are "spurious" because "there is no evidence of wrong-doing by the ISPs". More over, they say, introducing the three-strike measures the labels propose would impact on Irish and European privacy laws.
The body says: "Privacy of user communications is protected in European and Irish legislation. ISPs can not be expected to ignore these merely because it does not suit another private party".
The record companies are yet to respond to the letter. It is not clear what happens to Eircom's commitment to introduce three-strike if the other net firms successfully block efforts to make them do so too - ie whether the IRMA/Eircom agreement requires the labels body to just try and get the other ISP to comply, or whether Eircom have any get out on their commitment if no other net company will play ball.