[Article] Eircom to cut off Music File Sharers ..

My name is URL

pcardin wrote: »

Only reply you will get is a new bill with immediate payment required

haha, I thought as much myself. They've replied to my rants before though. After I upgraded to 7.6MB, I got limited to 4.2MB despite the fact that I live beside the exchange. They soon increased my maximum speeds to the advertised 7.6MB.

lmimmfn

I can see this being a disaster for all involved except the music companies. People getting blamed for downloading stuff they never downloaded, businesses getting warnings and what not.

Its weird that Eircom caved though, other ISPs have already said they cant be responsible for users behaviour

thebman

Wincest is best! wrote: »

What has the recession got to do with anything?

Record Industry has always forced digital download supplies like iTunes/Amazon etc. to charge high prices. Why so? We have no idea. Its not their bandwidth costs, its not their manufactoring costs, infact its a hell of a lot cheaper for the record industry to use digital distribution, outsourcing a lot of the cost to web companies, over having to manufactor thusands of CD's themselves.

A good reason would be they want it cheaper for people to buy CD's than to download [and than illegally burn them onto CD]. They wish to have CD sales high when infact the majority of the market wish to have digital copies for absolute ease of use and trasnferability between all their music devices. The record indistry is doing nothing but trying to ensure they keep their profits high so they can support certain artists lavish lifestyles and line their own pockets.

The Record Industry are continually doing what they think is right for themselves and not what the consumer wants or the market dictates. Back in the Napster days it could be seen there was a market for digital distribution of audio and the demand was there. They decided against doing what the consumer wanted and market was moving towards and attempted to stomp it out. Nothing has changed for years and it took a lot of work to get to the stage of iTunes and other online audio stores, but by this stage people are used to using alternative methods and the indistry are doing nothing to make people want to change to legal ways as they still are not supporting the consumer but only themselves.

As it is, its ****, this agreement has been made and its not going to change. But really, by now is there any music you want that you have not got allready? Why not just stop buying CD's? Do whatever you can to give money to the band directly through their gigs/merchandising as opposed to the IRMA/RIAA/Big 4 through CD sales?

Agree, the issue here isn't with eircom really.

As for peer lists, there are tools (not going to list them here) to prevent you connecting to music industries IP's so they won't get peer IP's.

If people are too afraid to continue downloading music but don't want to pay for it they should consider supporting independent artists.

There are loads of good artists out there and you just have to look for them. If your too lazy, just use last.fm and type the name of an artist you like into it and it will play songs by artists in the same genre. Great way to find new artists.

Or only listen to artists that actually support P2P downloading and aren't on these crappy labels.

thebman

lmimmfn wrote: »

I can see this being a disaster for all involved except the music companies. People getting blamed for downloading stuff they never downloaded, businesses getting warnings and what not.

Its weird that Eircom caved though, other ISPs have already said they cant be responsible for users behaviour

They did resist it, they got taken to court. I imagine they can't afford the cost of the lawsuit.

PaddyTheNth

thebman wrote: »

As for peer lists, there are tools (not going to list them here) to prevent you connecting to music industries IP's so they won't get peer IP's.

Again, these don't work. Unless you block yourself from connecting to the tracker, in which case you're not going to get much of your torrent downloaded.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=58805293#post58805293
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=58802354#post58802354

aidanodr

http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/in-a-state-of-surveillance-1301589.html

An article from early 2008 - "In a state of surveillance"

"We are about to enter into a state where every digital step you take is recorded. At the end of March, the Government will introduce the most draconian law in the history of personal privacy in Ireland: 24-hour internet monitoring. A log will be made of everyone’s internet activity and every email sent and received. Greetings from the State of surveillance."

Timely to resurrect this here? Actually - interesting read, wasnt aware of this. Found a link to this at SLASHDOT - they talking about this eircom case also:

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/09/01/29/1249252.shtml

Aidan

pcardin

Upward Spiral wrote: »

haha, I thought as much myself. They've replied to my rants before though. After I upgraded to 7.6MB, I got limited to 4.2MB despite the fact that I live beside the exchange. They soon increased my maximum speeds to the advertised 7.6MB.

I ordered their broadband they have sent me router after one month waiting and after two months waiting for connection and after two complaints I've posted in their website they said that broadband is not available to my line. They also asked me to send their router back to them and charged me for landline which was activated just because to get the broadband. I was shocked even despite I was quit familiar whit typical Irish ripp-off business.

Boskowski

jor el wrote: »

TIf you are warned, and you are sharing music, then you can simply stop. Problem solved.

If you are given a warning, and you do not share music, then you can let eircom know this. They will be able to check their own logs, and see whether you were using P2P at the given time. This won't be able to say what exactly you were doing, as identifying the packets would require more work, but it would back up the claim by the music companies.

Problem is - like you pointed out - that using p2p software and sharing music aren't the same thing. I know in reality this explanation is kind of lame but technically you could well use p2p software to download/upload something that is not illegal to share.
Also it is not actually illegal to download something that is copyright protected, right? If it was then the MI could simply go down the legal route which they are not as they well know how slippery that slope is and they have failed in most other countries to successfully do this.

My guess is that Eircom were simply scared **** being threatened with civil legal action as Ireland is a soft spot for that kind of thing.

aidanodr

http://news.techwhack.com/9808-eircom

"EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner had asked them to install a software on their network to detect the “fingerprint” of copyrighted music files being sent on its network.

Eircom refused the offer stating that it could interfere with the stability of their network and services."

Interesting?

Aidan

aidanodr

A view from Stateside: ( Kool Pic above )

http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/01/irish-isp-agrees-to-disconnect-repeat-p2p-users.ars

AGAIN this article says "it's a settlement that keeps network sniffing gear out of Eircom's network".

Only reason I am highlighting this is - I wasnt aware this is what the case was angling at ( equipment install onsite ). It seems Eircom settled with the carrot where the potential of the stick was very real if they lost the case!

AND

"But Eircom has agreed to the plan on a voluntary basis, without any government pressure. The move lead the Electronic Frontier Foundation to blast the ISP over its claim that it will consider the evidence presented by the music industry before shutting anyone off.

"The difference is that an ISP is not a court; and its customers will never have a chance to defend themselves against the recording industry's accusations and 'proof,'" said an EFF blog post. "To whom, without judicial oversight, has the ISP obligated itself to provide meaningful due process and to ensure that the standard of proof has been met?"

Eircom has apparently accepted the idea that the ISP has some responsibility for the actions of its users online.

The agreement sets Ireland alone, so far as we can tell. While the French HADOPI law could bring government backing to the three strikes idea (complete with disconnections), Eircom may be the only ISP in the world voluntarily cutting P2P users off without court orders. It also means that Irish labels are pursuing—and Eircom has agreed to—a plan that was explicitly rejected by the European Parliament last year (though the European Commission watered down this stance when it went over the bill in question)."

Aidan

niceirishfella

Ok, so what if you have wireless and the kid next door is downloading for ireland on my wifi signal and you get caught as the BB conectee so as to speak?

What are they going to do?

Cabaal

niceirishfella wrote: »

Ok, so what if you have wireless and the kid next door is downloading for ireland on my wifi signal and you get caught as the BB conectee so as to speak?

What are they going to do?

Nobody can answer this type of situation until a test case goes to court, personally I'd look at it on the bases that its the customers job to secure their ADSL router if its using wireless.

However if its an older eircom router that is using WEP or the cracked Eircom wifi password scheme then thats another matter as these can be very easily broken.

Either way we'd need a test case in court to find out what would happen in this situation, anything until then is pure speculation

yoshytoshy

You have to commit the offence three times. Presumably eircom will issue a "How to" on security with the first warning.

techdiver

I for one am not worried too much about this move.

It is easy to achieve anonymity whilst downloading. I do it currently. If they trace me the trail will find a dead end in another country.

All you need to do is use a anonymous proxy server as well as encrypting your traffic. This is the ideal way to use torrent regardless of what you are downloading.

My name is URL

techdiver wrote: »

I for one am not worried too much about this move.

It is easy to achieve anonymity whilst downloading. I do it currently. If they trace me the trail will find a dead end in another country.

All you need to do is use a anonymous proxy server as well as encrypting your traffic. This is the ideal way to use torrent regardless of what you are downloading.

Are you sure that secures your anonymity? I wouldn't have thought so since individual packets need to pass through the ISP in order to connect to a proxy, and any packets sent back need to be relayed via the ISP.

I'm sure that your idea would stop IFPI from determining your IP but it is not completely anonymous.

sack lunch

Anyways won't really affect me as... 3. if I do, I'm not downloading stuff that those 4 companies would be targeting

This is something I was wondering about. I mostly use p2p to download relatively obscure, out of print music. Will avoiding the Top 30/big seller/Britney Spears stuff help keep me under the radar?

P.S. I'm using NTL broadband so I'm not too worried anyway, plus with the amount of throttling they do I'm lucky to download anything

dbrowne9212

From a strictly business point of view it sets a very worrying precident. Eircom will be just as unhappy about this as we are. Irish ISP and telecoms companies are struggling at the moment (for many long running reasons i won't go into here) and additionally will now have to operate under the ever watchful eye of the record companies.

It takes a lot of time and effort to get people to sign up to those residential DSL and phone contracts, the last thing they are going to want to do is to start disconnecting and blacklisting potentially huge cross sections of their customer base. As such ISPs have been turning a blind eye to any and all breaches of said contract, except in cases that dealt specifically with criminal misuse.

I will be very interested to see how this works in practice. Having worked for an ISP i'd guess Eircom aren't even too sure of this yet themselves. If they do start to disconnect customers they will potentially have to deal with many many individual law suits againts the company and vastly increased call volumes and complaints to their call centers and PR departments -which in effect means they will have to foot the bill to employ staff and legal aid that will effectively just work for the record companies.

I'd guess they may try to placate the record companies by only targeting serial offenders who are downloading huge quantities of copyrighted material.

akenny01

lol its funny, they don't realise the biggest reason why people are buying broadband is to download music, lmao

Cabaal

sack lunch wrote: »

This is something I was wondering about. I mostly use p2p to download relatively obscure, out of print music. Will avoiding the Top 30/big seller/Britney Spears stuff help keep me under the radar?

P.S. I'm using NTL broadband so I'm not too worried anyway, plus with the amount of throttling they do I'm lucky to download anything

Seriously lads you need to stop being incredibly thick admitting to downloading music and breaking the law.

If the music is copyright and you don't have permission to download it then you are breaking the law, it does not matter if its top 10 stuff or not

akenny01 wrote: »

lol its funny, they don't realise the biggest reason why people are buying broadband is to download music, lmao

No the biggest reason is for faster internet connection and the ability to do stuff faster and play games and do business, just because you may have bought it for download warez doesn't mean the majority have

Hobbes

I'm curious if they are held liable for record downloads then shouldn't the ISP also be held liable for other stuff?

Catch a trojan that steals all your stuff? Sue eircom for not tracking it. Next door neighbour looking at kiddypics and assaults some children? Why didn't you tell us Eircom?

I thought the whole point of an ISP not reviewing the data didn't make them liable. Bit like how Eircom not listening in on your calls doesn't make them liable when someone uses a phone to commit a crime.

Either way the system is a joke because people are either going to move or they will transfer to black networks which the record companies don't have access to. At best it stops the 12 year old newbie downloading.

... one other point. Streaming radio. I am not on eircom but I often listen to streaming music from online radio stations (which do pay royalties and moan about it). How is this any different then listening to a pirate radio station?

Hobbes

Or for that matter if you listen to a song on youtube?

devildriver

The thing is how will they be able to distinguish between somebody illegally downloading Britney's latest bag of guff and the same person legally downloading torrent files from Nine Inch Nails.

Is their detection process that sophisticated or will they just presume that anybody with gigabytes of torrent traffic is downloading illegally?

jor el

techdiver wrote: »

It is easy to achieve anonymity whilst downloading. I do it currently. If they trace me the trail will find a dead end in another country.

All you need to do is use a anonymous proxy server as well as encrypting your traffic. This is the ideal way to use torrent regardless of what you are downloading.

An anonymising proxy will not hide your IP when you're using P2P software. If it did, you wouldn't get anything. Encrypting traffic will hide what you're doing, from your ISP, or anyone else who's looking in. It will not hide you from the tracker, which is where they will be waiting for you.

People have been warned already to stop mentioning ways to do this. Last warning, next person to mention, or ask for, ways to get around this, gets banned.

jor el

devildriver wrote: »

The thing is how will they be able to distinguish between somebody illegally downloading Britney's latest bag of guff and the same person legally downloading torrent files from Nine Inch Nails.

Is their detection process that sophisticated or will they just presume that anybody with gigabytes of torrent traffic is downloading illegally?

Please read the thread, no one is monitoring what you download. The music companies are getting another company to set up peers, and they will log all the IP addresses of the people who download from their peers.

This will NOT effect anyone using legal P2P.

niceirishfella

Ok ,so its just eircom so far that have caved in?
Was there any word today on the time scales of when the rest of the isp's will do the same as eircom, if ever?

techdiver

jor el wrote: »

People have been warned already to stop mentioning ways to do this. Last warning, next person to mention, or ask for, ways to get around this, gets banned.

Hold on for a minute here. Let me get this straight, you are treatening to ban people for discussing perfectly valid legal technological protocals and access methods.

Outlining ways of connecting to proxies and encrypting your traffic is not the same as telling people to break the law, it's an explanation of usage and how to protect yourself and maintain your privacy online.

jor el wrote: »

An anonymising proxy will not hide your IP when you're using P2P software.

This in inaccurate. An anonymising proxy hides your ip and acts as a middle man for request/response traffic.

FruitLover

Upward Spiral wrote: »

Are you sure that secures your anonymity? I wouldn't have thought so since individual packets need to pass through the ISP in order to connect to a proxy, and any packets sent back need to be relayed via the ISP.

I'm sure that your idea would stop IFPI from determining your IP but it is not completely anonymous.

If he's using encryption between himself and the proxy, then it's more trouble than Eircom would go through to determine whether he's doing anything illegal.

Hobbes wrote: »

I thought the whole point of an ISP not reviewing the data didn't make them liable. Bit like how Eircom not listening in on your calls doesn't make them liable when someone uses a phone to commit a crime.

They still aren't liable, they just have agreed to certain practices (I imagine to avoid lengthy, costly high court appearances, and the possibility of a moron judge awarding the case to the record companies). I'm guessing they're going to do this in the usual half-arsed way anyway.

devildriver wrote: »

The thing is how will they be able to distinguish between somebody illegally downloading Britney's latest bag of guff and the same person legally downloading torrent files from Nine Inch Nails.

They're presumably not just monitoring torrents in general, they (the record companies) are specifically monitoring downloads of their copyrighted material. (Edit: I see this has been answered above while I was typing my post!)

jor el wrote: »

An anonymising proxy will not hide your IP when you're using P2P software. If it did, you wouldn't get anything.

This is not correct.

Cabaal

techdiver wrote: »

Hold on for a minute here. Let me get this straight, you are treatening to ban people for discussing perfectly valid legal technological protocals and access methods.

Outlining ways of connecting to proxies and encrypting your traffic is not the same as telling people to break the law, it's an explanation of usage and how to protect yourself and maintain your privacy online.

This thread is clearly about the music industry and eircom who have made a deal to locate users who break the law and download copyright material.

It is 100% clear that posts in this thread recommending ways for people to hide their IP by means like VPN's etc are clearly directed at people in this thread so they can continue downloading copright material.

If people were downloading legal content from P2P this thread would not be worrying them in anyway!

Yes there are many reasons for using such services due to privacy concerns but in this thread it is very clear they relate to allow people to continue to break the law, as such it is in boards.ie interest to protect itself.

Are you suggested that such posts in this thread are not related to Eircom and the music industry finding users who break the law in anyway? Cause I'm going to split my sides if you do.

Bottom line is posts will be deleted and users banned if they continue and this is done to protect boards.ie from a legal standpoint.

Cabaal

FruitLover wrote: »

If he's using encryption between himself and the proxy, then it's more trouble than Eircom would go through to determine whether he's doing anything illegal.

Your missing the point and clearly do not understand the plan behind this deal.

Eircom don't track anyone, eircom don';t monitor anyone or bother determining if people are doing anything illegal.

The music industry simply connects to trackers, logs all IP's connected and downloading copyright material and then report all the info they gather to the ISP...in this case Eircom.

Eircom then take action accordingly.

FruitLover

Cabaal wrote: »

Your missing the point and clearly do not understand the plan behind this deal.

Eircom don't track anyone, eircom don';t monitor anyone or bother determining if people are doing anything illegal.

You appear to have missed the point that I was replying to another user's question on the matter of the ISP being able to view a user's traffic, not to the original point of the topic. If you correctly read the user's quoted text above my own, this is quite clear.