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THE GOVERNMENT is set to issue legislation next month aimed at curbing the illegal downloading of films and music online.
Junior minister Seán Sherlock has said he expects to issue secondary legislation by mid-January which is set to require ISPs to cut internet services for users who are ‘committing digital copyright theft’.
The move follows a consultation earlier this year in which Sherlock published a draft statutory instrument which would allow copyright holders to seek court orders blocking access to certain websites.
In response to parliamentary questioning, Sherlock told two backbench Fine Gael TDs that the public consultation had attracted over 50 submissions, which were sent to the office of the Attorney General for consideration.
Sherlock added that there had been “interaction between rights holders, the internet service providers (ISPs) and the end users, of whom there are millions”.
The legislation, the minister said, would have to ensure that a balance was struck between the rights of all parties.
The statutory instrument has been prepared in response to a court decision that while the rights of one music publisher EMI were breached by internet providers allowing its copyrighted works to be shared for free, the law did not provide any way for this to be remedied.
As a result the High Court ruled it could not grant an injunction blocking traffic to certain websites which facilitated any illegal filesharing. This, Justice Peter Charleston said at the time, meant Ireland was in contravention of European directives.
The outcome of that case meant that music publishers and copyright holders would potentially sue the State for its failure to introduce legislation giving effect to European directives.
Last weekend’s Sunday Times reported that the Data Protection Commissioner had ruled a similar system – where Eircom disconnected users who were found to have breached the ‘three strikes’ principle for illegal downloading – to be an inappropriate use of customers’ data.
Last month, meanwhile, the European Court of Justice ruled that it was illegal for countries to force ISPs to block illegal filesharing on a blanket basis at their own expense.
Because the legislation being prepared by Sherlock will take the form of a Statutory Instrument, it is not required to be put through the Houses of the Oireachtas.
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You can never police the Internet, just don’t even bother.
I finally see you say something that I agree with :P
Yes we can and it should be, it’s teaching our kids the wrong things. Our Broadcasting laws should apply to YouTube and everything, and fine Them any time they show something inappropriate to a child.
@Thevoice Ofreason I usually don’t say this to people – you are a moron.
My 7 year old son has my old netbook. I installed Windows Live Family Safety so he does not see inappropriate stuff online. I control what he sees because I am a responsible parent and I don’t need the government to legislate it for me.
@ Thevoice Ofreason
Please educate yourself… Not our fault you cant control what your kids see’s. By the way, how is it ‘teaching your kids the wrong things’? Does your kid still watch mind numbing advertise ridden television with propaganda filled shows? ..ugh.. I’m not going to get into that side of the topic now :P
I pay for a service, that service is to connect to the global internet.
What that service also provides is the possibility for me to download and upload content to these world servers.
If I so choose to view say a certain pirated bay or other website and download information for that, then that is my right.
there are other ways of illegal downloading other than “file sharing” if you know where to look, which are way more efficient and are next to impossible to police
@Barry
You are very quick to jump to conclusions there barry. I do exactly the same things with my kids as you only with different software, so less of the name calling please. Irish people would want to start looking around them to see what’s happening instead of always thinking about themselves
@Arothos
how is it ‘teaching your kids the wrong things’? I’ll let you figure that one out yourself, your next question will give you a nudge in the right direction.
Does your kid still watch mind numbing advertise ridden television with propaganda filled shows? “Still” you ask, my kids never did. We spend our time reading, cooking, surfing, kayaking, biking, skate boarding, surfing the web together and playing football so we don’t really have much time for TV, although I am a hugh fan of David Attenborough, can’t wait for the day we can stream 3D from the Internet (although I’ll probable have to move to Japan or somewhere if I’m going to experience it in my lifetime) and trust me you’re preaching to the wrong boy about downloading, I’ve been doing it for about 15 years and don’t intend on stopping ever.
To the 55 people who thumbed down my comment about policing the Internet. Do you all think that the police should stop using the internet to catch paedophile rings?
Ring, ring… ring, ring…
“Hello Ireland, ‘Big Business’ here. How are you?”
“We’re great, how can we help?”
“BEND OVER”
“Sure thing”
Proof if ever you need it that the Government don’t represent the Irish people. The majority of internet users in the electorate don’t want this so why are they doing it?
Oh lovely, we can get this bit of legislation thrown out there, yet we cant put legislation in place for bad financial practice, one of the reasons we are in a shit hole. Well done folks, still, I can always enjoy fresh air and the odd chat with friends……on skype.head down Diarmuid, musn’t grumble
very true.
Ireland is keen to introduce rules against free uses of file sharing within a very short time frame but manage to let the rape of children by pedophiles and clergy go un obstructed for decades…
Thats about the height of Irish legislation and I’m not interested in adhering to any court case telling me not to use file share sites period…
Get your house in order Irish state legislature before you tell the Irish electorate they are breaking the law….
Fuming with this state bending over for the Church and Big business like a bunch of cowards….
Im Irish and i will break the law if u introduce unjust laws….
Looking at over 100% increase in Irish people being imprisoned for non payment of fines while the court clerks will not process the payment of fines by installments… This is a dirty rotten little country now the money has vaporized and all the scheming and filth has been exposed….
This legislation is a load of crap, this is big brother at work. If they start with the file-sharing sites where will they stop?
This is ridiculous, The ecj and the data commisioner said it was illegal, so they just go around it a sneaky way…. “Big Brother” is here….
Proxy servers!
That’s how I roll!
I’m with you there chaps… freeserve this mofo
Don’t you mean ‘bad representatives’? #terriblePun
This is actually ridiculous and only shows the pure ignorance of the government.
This type of censorship works well in China doesn’t it? These guys (IRMA) are so arrogant that they will sue the government for not censoring the internet because people aren’t buying their shite music in the shops. The government will do anything for the rich guys (Europe, Music and Movie Industry, bankers, elites) but will do F***ALL for the ordinary people!
This will set a dangerous precedence for the openous of the Internet. The big guys hate not having control over it. Where will this end? What other sites won’t be appropriate for us people?
Just a little lesson people. You can’t block any sites on the internet, this is why they’re so bloody ignorant. Sites spring up everywhere and most sites have multiple domain names anyway. Use blackvpn, TOR, etc. to bypass any of this crap. Use Opendns and Googledns to change your ISPs DNS (it’s better anyway). None of this is illegal anyway as it improves your surfing anyway.
By all means shut down these sites, but do not censor the internet. It’s our last bit of freedom we have!
P.S.
Why don’t we have music services in Ireland like Spotify etc. where you can subscribe for e10 a month or whatever for unlimited music. Same with movies like the services they have in the USA. It’s probably because we have such a small population they need to screw us a little longer!
I think the IRMA torpedoed Spotify here actually. It was available here briefly until they got at it.
Shameful
They worry about this legislation – and fathers rights have been called for change for 16+ years and they allow THAT go drag on!
…But lets rush this one through!
Shows where our current previous/present politicians priorities lie – with those that are making money and big business.
Forgetting contently about the actual people yet again!
Will this effect the hosting sites you can stream off or will it only effect the file sharing sites? This will do nothing to stop the illegal downloading, they will keep changing the name of the sites so people can still access it ! Why cant they put in legislation in to force bankers to pass on the interest rate cut so quick !
Its just political postulating. Savy internet users are far too intelligent for our legislators zzzzz
Kim jong is dead .. long live Enda!! When the government start to dictate what we can and cannot access online its a slippy slope. So in 2012 we have to pay the government for not being homeless and they will dictate what we can view in our homes. All hail our glorious leader!!
Sherlock has some kind of spoof ministry, innovation, cloud computing or some such. The music industry’s idea of innovation was known as cartel building. How on earth Sherlock can square adopting Orwellian surveillance techniques to please one of the wealthiest and inertial enterprises going defeats me. If they competed more on price, it would cut down on ‘piracy’. Competition and lack of innovation might be more the problems than anything else. By the way, the smoked salmon socialists always have the concerns of the ordinary person in their hearts.
File servers are better than torrents!
Internet censorship is a fucking joke!
Are we in china?
I pay a tenner a month for a VPN server that allows me to download music, movies and tv shows from torrent sites. I don’t download a huge amount. Maybe two or three movies and a couple of albums. I watch most tv series on tv channel sites like RTÉ Player. I would happily spend this money downloading it legally if the option was available to me. If IRMA got off their arsed and made a legal site available at a reasonable price I would use it.
Just as a matter of interest, have you made sure you’re using that VPN in your torrent client? Google checkmytorrentip. Just to be safe :)
John it’s ideas like this that will get us out of this recession. Why is this government insisting on pumping money into the banks? It’s all they talk about, they haven’t come up with one of this own ideas to raise jobs since they toke over. They were the opposition for years. They should have been hitting the ground running with all their ideas, but they’ve done nothing. I can’t believe people voted for these people :-(
It’s destroying the film and music industry this is great news
Changed =/= destroyed. They can get revenue in other, better ways but they keep standing in the way of progress.
Sean Parker irreversibly changed the industry with Nappster, and rather ironically, is pioneering the way out of the current situation with Spotify. No point in even trying to bring things back to the way they were.
They’ve milked the public for years, they deserved it. If it comes in then it’s back getting movies and music off stalls at weekend markets.
It’s the junk the producers/actors/singers/bands create that destroys the film and music industry. Show me real good artists that are worth paying for! For that matter, rather than spending millions of euros, which we all will pay from our salaries, why don’t the fellas do something that would allow me to do a ‘one-click’ shopping at a fair price? The reason people share is that it’s the simple way! Make it simple to pay and we’ll see how it goes. Not everybody is in love with iTunes (where you can’t get TV shows in its Irish version). Of course, there will still be those who’ll just steal and that’s it but is it really worth it to annoy all those guys who actually pay?
Destroying the music industry like taping songs from the radio killed the music industry? The film industry is changing with the times like they have to but they are to slow at it !
Happy Christmas
The film and music industry destroyed the film and music industries.
The book world embraced digital technologies and are thriving, so much so that the number of books being read per person has increased.
Although i agree you should pay for the content you consume and that copyright holders deserve to be paid i disagree with policing the Internet. It belongs to no-one and should never be controlled.Find another way. There are other things that can be done but this is just the start of Chinese style internet censorship. Once you allow this, you will lose more.
This government doesn’t understand what the advantages of having a high speed broadband network would be to Ireland. Look at this graph, we are a disgrace
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0711/
All the Internet companies are a disaster in this country, they are leaving us in the dark ages. There is only room for one Internet company in Ireland. Our country is too sparsely populated and companies are only interested in making money. I think it’s of national interest that we find people to invest in broadband in Ireland. We are perfectly set up already, most of the major Internet companies have bases in Ireland and they are businesses so it would benefit them to invest in Ireland. And we need the phone companies to come to an agreement to all work together. It would cut their costs if they could share fibre. ESB, Eircom, NDP, Irish Rail, Bord Gáis and other government companies already have a good network of fibre all over the country but it not being used properly. The government spend millions and millions of our tax money doin this and now it’s just lying in the ground doin nothing. Companies should only be allowed to use their own fibre, otherwise they are never going to invest. Why would they take the risk of losing money when they can be guaranteed a profit, without investing. Every house has an Eircom line, if we could use that to pull in a fibre optic cable it would minimise digging, costs and most importantly time. It would get this country out of recession.
Ted, just so you know…
There was once a time when the copyright holders were justified in charging moderate amounts for musical recordings. Back in the days of vinyls or nothing, there was an investment going on. The manufacture was costly, and required the use of a factory. This risk deserves a reward. With the onset of tapes and CDs, this became less true.
In the digital age, the music industry hasn’t any justification for their actions. There are essentially no costs besides recording. Artists can and do host their songs on their own websites. The labels have become obsolete, apart from the lingering demand for traditional media. To what, so, can we ascribe the ridiculous prices? How can an album be €10 with no costs? Certainly not going to the artists; they get almost nothing, earning essentially all their money from live shows. Advertising? Yes, thank you for putting ads for all the shittiest artists everywhere. That has truly enhanced my life.
The sad truth is that the industry has somehow managed to convince everyone that this is the price of the music itself, and that we’re just swallowing it. You have to fight this. They have to learn that people see through this scam, and will use their power to change it.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha
Proxies all the way. I love being clever.
Also, good luck policing the Internet… There’s ALWAYS another way to do it
SOPA will be passed in America soon so expect something similiar in the EU. The recent revolts around the world are internet driven so its basically a crackdown on free speech and the spread of uncensored knowledge. Facism is coming.
Let’s face it: this is SOPA for Ireland; but I heard on a podcast that the EU had affirmed that they would not allow such measures?
Lads, ye can bitch about it here, or let him know how you feel:
Give this a thumbs up if you send him an email. Please do, let him know how stupid this idea is.
Hypothetically, if I were a rich man, I would hypothetically connect to a torrent but never hypothetically download a bit, repeat hypothetically 3x and hypothetically sue them when they hypothetically cut off my internet, causing grievous hypothetical stress due to lack of internet syndrome. And never hypothetically incriminate myself on the hypothetical wonderland of the Journal comment boardz.
And for anyone interested in how the three strikes works, the recent UPC case had a great description. A firm in France (doesn’t matter because they probably use VPNs) work for the music labels, and send every Irish/Eircom IP on popular music torrents to Eircom/Music labels. Eircom then no-questions-asked issues a strike. (Which is absolutely illegal by the way. No one should be allowed to report a murder and have the person they think who dunnit executed on the spot.) So HINT-HINT NUDGE-NUDGE direct downloads from a server are unintruded. That’s why the system was ‘legal’ in the first place, no snooping as such on your private connections. Connecting to a public music torrent is like yelling ‘IVE GOT GUNS! MY TELEPHONE NO. IS…’ outside a garda station.
I mentioned Tor earlier, but, hypothetically I love put.io :)
Shhh don’t mention put.io
Hmm, I never heard of put.io before. The streaming part looks interesting but you don’t get much for your cash… Most seedboxes give unlimited bandwidth these days. And with a proper seedbox you can control the torrent client from a web front-end. I’ve been putting off getting a seedbox for a while but I think I might go with the “Star Box” option from http://www.super-seed.me.uk/utorrent.html
@Barry, torrents ‘hypothetically download in seconds, and the downloading to their servers doesn’t count towards bandwidth usage. Unused bandwidth carried over. It truly is excellent, but look into things like BTGuard if your really shopping around :)
@Barry, I have to say, the reason I use put.io is for the streaming (I’m not affiliated in anyway) because DivX works astoundingly well on the **** 2.3 Megabits I get from Eircom (NGB 8Mbps my ****) If its protection you are looking for, and speeds are not a problem normally with torrents, just go for a torrent VPN type service. I believe TorrentFreak had a long review of several a while ago. :)
Shit. I had a long reply written out but wasn’t logged into twitter and thejournal gave me an error and I lost it all :(
Anyway, “hypothetically download in seconds, and the downloading to their servers doesn’t count towards bandwidth usage”… I’m guessing they cache the popular torrents so can move then from box to box when the torrent is added. Great idea :D But I download a lot of obscure and hard to find stuff that probably wouldn’t be cached.
Thanks for the recommendation of BTGuard but security is really of small concern to me. The reason I’ve been thinking of a seedbox is because with my crappy 256k upload speed (poorly serviced rural area) I can never get a good ratio and that matters when trying to get into a private tracker. It would also mean I don’t have to leave my PC on 24×7.
Regarding DivX, why?? LOL. Just my opinion, but the DivX player sucks :P It’s slow and bloated and complicated. Like it was made in Flash or something! I assume you know VLC and/or MPC? If you install the K-Lite codec pack with VLC/MPC you can play pretty much anything, easily. Although… I hope you don’t mean the DivX codec :S
@Barry,
Yeah, I think they do cache the popular ones.
However, unusual ones *cough* still only take minutes. As in around 2500 KiloBYTES (yes I know, bytes) per second.
But anyways, they seed to a 1:1 ratio, which is good for everyone. If you work that out, its around 20 Megabits per second.
DivX: I believe it (the web embedded player) uses bandwith optimisation (could be wrong now), and, to be very honest, I think it beats any HTML5 alternatives out there at present. Yep, I seddit. No what I would call ‘frame stutter’ (refresh rate? :O).
I don’t know why, but VLC is painfully slow to load a file for me, and MplayerX (mac version) just fails miserably. I find that DivX player embedded videos stream a lot faster, maybe just for me.
Anyways, hope you get sorted :)
Sure they seed to meet the ratio but they are not seeding from your IP so private trackers will not count it :( I can see the appeal of it to a regular user though. But for a power user who has spent years working with servers a seedbox is a more appealing option ;)
I didn’t realise you meant an embedded DivX player, I have no experience with that :)
Oh, you’re into private trackers.
…
We can never be friends.
Just kidding, I see your point. Have you looked at maybe getting a VPS in Ireland with a Static IP? There must be tons of command line based linux Bittorrent clients floating around on github.
I’m very interested in this seedbox idea. I was looking at getting a VPS for a bit of VPN experimenting, pricing is just mad, but when you look at the site you mentioned, it gives you a 100 megabit connection all for yourself… any places where they’ll set you up with very basic linux but high speed connection?
It’s more of a case that I /want/ into private trackers rather than being already in them. I’ve received invites from online friends but would get booted immediately because of my pathetic Vodafone ADSL upload speed.
As for the VPS, I thought about it before but not sure how the host would react… Apparently hosts will treat complaints quite differently to ISP’s due to fear of being sued. I used to host a site years ago that got in a bit of trouble… All was fine when it was hosted on servers in Russia but they moved to England and almost straight away their attitude went from “couldn’t give a f**k” to “take the shit down, NOW!”
Need I even mention Tor?
Ever tried downloading a torrent using TOR? LOL. Even web browsing is excruciatingly slow, nevermind trying to download a 4GB mkv…
@Barry,
LOL, I could just imagine that.
(40 years later) – “Yes! Yes! It hasn’t changed a hop yet! 99% , yes, come on, ye- oh. Failed connection. Oh what’s this on the home page of that .onion site?
~~~~~~~~~
WE ARE ANONYMOUS
~~~~~~~~~
STOP RUINING OUR DARKWEBS WITH YOUR CHOOB BLOCKING MKVZZZZ
H4K3D BY L0LC4T2030
}
/end
yeah, but I see your point. However, I think it could become as fast as p2p, just as torrents and the likes were wayyy slow back in the day.
HAHA :D
TOR is ok. I messed around with it before but realised I actually don’t ever need to cover my tracks so haven’t used it years! The only thing it would ever be useful for is IRC but as soon as a TOR IP is detected you are booted from most rooms. There are other darknets out there alright… All the “think of the children” people’s heads would explode if they knew about them. That’s where the real sick fucks reside.
Yes, that is very true, and you have to try and block it out. And its also the reason why governments censor the ‘real’ internet, under the excuse of the children. I think the one that will gain popularity over the coming years of censorship will be freenet.
The Court of Justice has ruled that EU law precludes the imposition of an injunction by a national court which requires an Internet service provider to install a filtering system with a view to preventing the illegal downloading of files. http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ne23620
Thanks for this. I knew I had read it somewhere. Freedom!
@Rory, Freedom! ;)
So the government is going to take away the last bit of affordable entertainment from our blighted lives. Oooooh, good call…..
I also don’t see the point in their bitching? Isn’t buying a CD from Gamestop or whatever potentially pirating? Yet you don’t see EMI and the like having a go at them, nope..
I buy CD’s/Films very frequently, I also download against the wishes of these companies very frequently.
I only buy stuff I like and by that I mean when I like something I’ve seen/heard.. I buy it. Always have liked the ‘manual disks’ :D
Also, I bought a CD the other day, I think the producers were WMG and on the back of the booklet in little tiny writing was a clause amounting to the same as “This is WMG’s CD.. not yours, yes you bought it, but if WMG want it at any time ever, we can take it off you no questions asked”
For 1: What the fk? What did I just pay for?
For 2: I was never told this, this was on the booklet inside a cd jewel case which was wrapped in plastic…
I only find this out After I’ve bought the CD? Huh.. me thinks someone should be saying this to the customers.
For future reference
http://blockaid.me/home
Also, watch this to find out about Sopa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM&feature=player_embedded
If passed, YouTube and many other sites that we wouldn’t even consider would go under. Anyone who wants to make a tips video or whatever would suddenly be committing a felony (rather than the current “breaking copyright, but holder hasn’t requested action).
Also, I’m with UTVInternet which are based in Belfast I think so can they tell them what to do even though they’re outside the state?
@Rory
Tor is good, but slow as shit :)
shower of corporatist fuckers
Yet another reason for the youth not to return to Ireland
All that this shows me is that the Irish Gov have absolutely no idea that their traffic lights are stuck in the 1950 ‘s and too slow for the modern economy. I really despair sometimes. They don’t get out enough.
aren’t we paying for the bloddy internet we should be allowed to use it as we wish ….I’m really beginning to hate this government more and more each day.
It wont stop people doing it. They say they can cut peoples internet off. Have they never heard of PAy as you Go mobile internet. Untraceable to a person so you can do what you want and download whatever takes your fancy. :)
PAYG data is very expensive… It would cost you more in bandwidth than it would cost you to buy the content!
@Peter Andrew Stone@ƒR()§†H@X thanks guys for the links. Well done!
Balls!
I can tether my laptop to my iphone, which is on the 3 network and download 15GB per month for free.
Sorry for name dropping.
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In support of the purposes explained in this notice, your device might be considered as likely linked to other devices that belong to you or your household (for instance because you are logged in to the same service on both your phone and your computer, or because you may use the same Internet connection on both devices).
Your device might be distinguished from other devices based on information it automatically sends when accessing the Internet (for instance, the IP address of your Internet connection or the type of browser you are using) in support of the purposes exposed in this notice.
The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.
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