Eircom to cut broadband over illegal downloads - READ POST#1 WARNING

Spocker

Looks like this thread made the papers yesterday:

The Sunday Times wrote:

War on pirates
After firing the first broadside against illegal downloaders, Eircom has angered many – but not bands

It doesn’t take much to get the internet chat sites buzzing but last week boards.ie, Ireland’s most popular online forum, was overdosing on indignation. The object of its users’ ire was Eircom, the state’s largest internet service provider (ISP). With about 500,000 broadband customers, it is regularly criticised when its service slows or fails completely. Last week’s anger, however, was about the company’s move to start a process that will lead to customers involved in music piracy being cut off.

The boards.ie users called for a mass exodus of customers to alternative broadband providers but Eircom was prepared for this. Aware that its deal with the Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma) left it at a competitive disadvantage, Eircom pointed out that other Irish ISPs may soon have to follow its lead.

Full article here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055926301

BrianD

Spocker wrote: »

Looks like this thread made the papers yesterday:



Full article here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055926301

it's great to see boards.ie making the papers but in the interest of fairness you should have paste the entire article including the point of view the musician quoted (Steve Wall) who's not a big label musician and will suffer from his work being stolen.

BrianD

Blacknight wrote: »

Which ISP are you using??

I use mobile broadband. I never assumed or presumed that what I browsed was anonymous and some record was not being retained. Some with my phone calls. There's a log generated of what numbers I have called etc. With this European directive hanging around and Ireland having one of the longest data retention, I had given up the notion of my Internet use being private years ago.

RangeR

BrianD wrote: »

I use mobile broadband. I never assumed or presumed that what I browsed was anonymous and some record was not being retained. Some with my phone calls. There's a log generated of what numbers I have called etc. With this European directive hanging around and Ireland having one of the longest data retention, I had given up the notion of my Internet use being private years ago.

Your internet connection was never private, even in the dialup days. Your ISP may not monitor what you do but they have always kept a log of what you do for a period of time.

And what is this mobile broadband* concept you mention?

*Rhetorical

BrianD

RangeR wrote: »

And what is this mobile broadband* concept you mention?

*Rhetorical

Apologies, I meant midband/reminds me of 56K dialup, your honour.

Red Alert

If they cut somebody off, can they just not then switch provider? Or am I missing something?

FloatingVoter

Red Alert wrote: »

If they cut somebody off, can they just not then switch provider? Or am I missing something?

Trouble is, no matter what your point of view, if upc go down the same route, you'll be running out of options soon.

johanz

FloatingVoter wrote: »

Trouble is, no matter what your point of view, if upc go down the same route, you'll be running out of options soon.

This.
If they can take down the big ISPs, then getting small ones shouldn't be a problem.
UPC can't do that, I just signed a contract.

At least UPC have already stated that they are going to resist the demands of the IRMA in court.

Eircom eventualy would of done it voluntarily, the court case just sped it up.

Spocker

BrianD wrote: »

it's great to see boards.ie making the papers but in the interest of fairness you should have paste the entire article including the point of view the musician quoted (Steve Wall) who's not a big label musician and will suffer from his work being stolen.

In fairness, I linked to the full article in the media forum.

Jev/N

cisk wrote: »

Eircom eventualy would of done it voluntarily, the court case just sped it up.

Would they have? I know a lot of people were surprised with their actions due to the way the case was running, apparently in their favour

vipervillain

i see too eircom have announced price rises as well...dont think this will go down well with customers either either...

Resi12

Their 'next generation' broadband is 8MB?! :pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac: and so on..

Cabaal

vipervillain wrote: »

i see too eircom have announced price rises as well...dont think this will go down well with customers either either...

Price rises which have no impact on ADSL prices, call charges only

BrianD

Spocker wrote: »

In fairness, I linked to the full article in the media forum.

You didn't behave fairly. You quoted selectively. So allow me to quote this piece that demonstrates that its not just the "greedy majors" who will be affected but anybody who want to make a living out of their creativity:

"... STEVE Wall, a musician with the band The Walls, is entirely in favour of Eircom’s crackdown. “Something has to be done about illegal downloads, because it’s getting harder and harder to be an original musician writing, recording and releasing your own stuff,” he said. “The income streams from the sales of music are getting hit all the time.”

Last week Wall was putting the final touches to Stop the Lights, his band’s first album in four years. Band members have invested money earned playing at weddings, doing voice-overs and commercials in this new album. Whereas the band sold 10,000 copies of their 2006 album, Wall said 6,000 Irish sales was now a good result, because the market had shrunk so much due to increased illegal downloads.

“Money couldn’t pay us for all the time and resources we’ve put into this album,” he said. “People have this notion that it’s major record companies that suffer, but that’s not the case. A lot of bands are recording their albums themselves and licensing them to record companies.”

FloatingVoter

Perhaps downplaying the upcoming sales projections for The Walls new album has something to do with
" I, I, I just think that the.. uh.. their appeal is becoming more selective. ..."*

:rolleyes:


(C) Spinal Tap

ZeRoY

From the Sunday Times, page 10, main section 30.05.2010]
"... STEVE Wall, a musician with the band The Walls, is entirely in favour of Eircom’s crackdown. “Something has to be done about illegal downloads, because it’s getting harder and harder to be an original musician writing, recording and releasing your own stuff,” he said. “The income streams from the sales of music are getting hit all the time.”

If this dude thinks this stunt by IRMA is going to change anything .... good luck. It wont, never has and never will. Ever since Mininova.org removed their illegal torrent links the P2P scene has been in decline and other method of acquiring music illegally are in use which will completely bypass this IRMA Big Brother scheme. Maybe its time the Music Industry bring the price down and availability of music up. Last i looked on pay website it was 99c for a single track, what a joke.

ZeRoY

jimi_t2 wrote: »

First of all, only four countries in the world that I know of have Internet access legally determined as a human right. Of those, one is Greece which is up **** creek and another is France who has the three strikes thing as national law.

There is one major difference with the 3 strikes law in France: no disconnection can be done by the ISP without a Court ruling. LINK

moogem

Heres a different approach to looking at this.
If you went out tomorrow and bought a CD from anywhere, and keep the receipt, You can then download any song from that CD, having the receipt for the CD dated before you downloaded the song means you have paid for the right to have a digital copy of it too, you can even put it on to a tape if you wanted to.

Have a read here.... http://www.whatsthedownload.com/whats_the_controversy/faq/#8

Particularly this part ....... If I buy a song or album on a CD, can I legally copy it? What are the legal ways I can make copies?
As noted above, it is generally permissible to make copies of a lawfully purchased CD for personal use. This means we can copy that CD onto another CD for use in our car, for example, or onto a tape for our Walkman. Or, we can make a copy of the CD on our hard drive to play the file on our computer. Burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player won’t usually raise concerns so long as the copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own and the copy is just for your personal use. Giving away the copy or lending it to others for copying is not a personal use and is not legal.

If everyone took the same approach, and downloaded a song from the purchased CD every day, the result would be so much data that eircom and their watchdogs would be tripping over themselves with red tape.

They cant deny all of us the use of broadband service, the loss of revenue to themselves would be enough for them to ditch the idea.

Off Topic.
This is similar to what happened when bin collection charges were introduced.............There are parts of Dublin and Cork where whole housing estates dont pay for bin collection, because they simply refused to comply right from the get go ! And, their bins are still collected as regularly as those people who DO pay.

Fight back, stand up for your rights !!!!

jor el

People, please ignore most of moogem's post. Firstly, that website is based in the USA, and it's copyright laws do not extend to Ireland. Next, if you buy a CD, you do not have the right to download a copy of any song on that CD for free, unless it's explicitly allowed by the copyright owner, and the site or network that offers the music is also given permission to host it.

Anyone following your advice is looking to have their Internet connection terminated, simple as that. Very foolish advice, and very foolish to follow it.

As for standing up for rights, the music industry, artists, recording studios, etc, are standing up for their right not to have their work copied and downloaded without being paid for. Downloading music for free is not a right, and you therefore there is nothing for you, or any of us, to stand up for.

moogem

Maybe I'm going about it the wrong way. The point I'm trying to make is, instead of letting the music industry force our hand, we can force theirs.

If they threaten to "cut off your broadband", let them, and soon enough no-one will have a broadband account and they (broadband provider) will be losing millions of euro's, and soon enough they'll realize that this way is'nt working.

Have you ever borrowed an LP, or CD from a friend and copied it for yourself ?
I'll bet no-one was threatening to not allow your friend to get any more LP's or CD's then.

Use your own judgment on how you get music.

dub45

moogem wrote: »

Maybe I'm going about it the wrong way. The point I'm trying to make is, instead of letting the music industry force our hand, we can force theirs.

If they threaten to "cut off your broadband", let them, and soon enough no-one will have a broadband account and they (broadband provider) will be losing millions of euro's, and soon enough they'll realize that this way is'nt working.

Have you ever borrowed an LP, or CD from a friend and copied it for yourself ?
I'll bet no-one was threatening to not allow your friend to get any more LP's or CD's then.

Use your own judgment on how you get music.

There is a huge difference (irrespective of whatever the law may be even) between borrowing a cd from a friend and copying it and uploading music that you do not own for thousands of people to copy.

What you appear to conveniently forget in your quoted examples and I suppose it is apt that you chose to talk 'rubbish' is that those who pay for music and those who pay for their rubbish to be collected are effectively subsidising those who don't.

RangeR

moogem wrote: »

Maybe I'm going about it the wrong way. The point I'm trying to make is, instead of letting the music industry force our hand, we can force theirs.

If they threaten to "cut off your broadband", let them, and soon enough no-one will have a broadband account and they (broadband provider) will be losing millions of euro's, and soon enough they'll realize that this way is'nt working.

You highly underetimate the number of people who will be disconnected from eircom. In fact, you highly underestimate the number of people who give a ****.

jor el

moogem wrote: »

If they threaten to "cut off your broadband", let them, and soon enough no-one will have a broadband account and they (broadband provider) will be losing millions of euro's, and soon enough they'll realize that this way is'nt working.

We, as in all customers of ISPs, need to realise that the free ride is over. You cannot get your music for free without consequence. Simple as that. There is no excuse. If you are downloading/sharing music for free, then you need to stop now. If you ignore the warnings (of which you will be given 3) then you deserve to be cut off.

moogem wrote: »

Use your own judgment on how you get music.

And pay for it.

Many people, myself included, believe that the current legal downloads are charged at far to high a price. That is not an excuse to download for free. Buy your music elsewhere, but do buy it.

Peanut

jor el wrote: »

We, as in all customers of ISPs, need to realise that the free ride is over. You cannot get your music for free without consequence. Simple as that. There is no excuse. If you are downloading/sharing music for free, then you need to stop now. If you ignore the warnings (of which you will be given 3) then you deserve to be cut off.

It's not going to stop it though - let's be realistic.

And as long as there are alternatives such as Grooveshark (and Spotify in Europe) (and even YouTube), I just can't see people getting worked up with moral panic about downloading vs. streaming on demand.

The streaming sites may not be paying a fair deal to artists either, but I do think eventually a middle ground will be reached between consumers and artists, unfortunately this will be to the detriment of the labels, and they know that.

johanz

Peanut wrote: »

It's not going to stop it though - let's be realistic.

And as long as there are alternatives such as Grooveshark (and Spotify in Europe) (and even YouTube), I just can't see people getting worked up with moral panic about downloading vs. streaming on demand.

Grooveshark is technically illegal too, since they allow you to listen to user uploaded music. They have no contracts what so ever.

Cabaal

moogem wrote: »

Maybe I'm going about it the wrong way. The point I'm trying to make is, instead of letting the music industry force our hand, we can force theirs.

If they threaten to "cut off your broadband", let them, and soon enough no-one will have a broadband account and they (broadband provider) will be losing millions of euro's, and soon enough they'll realize that this way is'nt working.
.

Your argument is flawed though, its paramount to suggesting that going 80km in a 50km area is ok and we'll get our way if everyone does 80km in a 50km area and gets caught.

Sure the Gardai will have so much red tape from all the people they catch we'll force their hand
:rolleyes:

Have you even thought through your suggestion?

Your suggestion that a povider will go under due to people having their broadband being cut is also laughable

The users that will be disconnected represent a tiny percentage of eircoms customer base, such users will be no loss to eircom or for that matter any ISP.

Infact an ISP is more then happy to get rid of such users as they cost more and they create a liability

Off Topic.
This is similar to what happened when bin collection charges were introduced.............There are parts of Dublin and Cork where whole housing estates dont pay for bin collection, because they simply refused to comply right from the get go ! And, their bins are still collected as regularly as those people who DO pay.

Yeah cause I enjoy paying fopr these lazy scumbags waste, if they can buy the products create the rubbish then why the hell should I have to pay for them to get rid of it.?

I suppose if they demanded ESB for free they should get that too?
:rolleyes:

Peanut wrote: »

and Spotify in Europe) (and even YouTube)

Spotify, sure you can get free access to this thats advert supported but free access is very rare, otherwise you pay a very high monthly fee (imho).

In addition Spotify only works in some countrys.

As for youtube, you'll note that ALOT of copyright material has been removed off of that, audio tracks and the likes.

They are generally removed when the uploader doesn't have rights to distribute the track and the owner wants it removed (which is fair enough tbh)

conor.hogan.2

Does this extend, or will it soon extend, to movies and tv shows and software etc?

What about streaming songs from youtube?
What about recording from audacity?
What about g2p as opposed to torrents and p2p?
What about streaming shows and movies from megavideo - google video etc?

Since this is a third party scanning and not eircom, proxies will make it look as if someone innocent downloaded something?

On a lesser note;

Copying cds? - Ripping from ipods?
Internal network sharing?

download from open hotspots in cafes etc?
download from mcdonalds or other free eircom spots?

axer

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Does this extend, or will it soon extend, to movies and tv shows and software etc?

IRMA has nothing to do with those so no it won't.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

What about streaming songs from youtube?

There is music on youtube that is authorised by record companys. Generally anything that is not authorised is removed as soon as there is a complaint.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

What about recording from audacity?

Not sure I follow.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

What about g2p as opposed to torrents and p2p?

They are illegal if the songs are not authorised to be distributed.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

What about streaming shows and movies from megavideo - google video etc?

Again nothing to do with IRMA but are illegal if not authorised to be there.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Since this is a third party scanning and not eircom, proxies will make it look as if someone innocent downloaded something?

And that is why there is a hotline that people can call whereby Eircom will provide support to innocent parties.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Copying cds? - Ripping from ipods?
Internal network sharing?

All illegal if not authorised.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

download from open hotspots in cafes etc?
download from mcdonalds or other free eircom spots?

Business customers will not have their broadband disabled.

This will only apply to sharing of music by unauthorised distributors and only in relation to music from Artists IRMA represent. It is very difficult to prove downloads or any other form of piracy so I don't expect those methods of piracy will ever be targeted.

Peanut

johanz wrote: »

Grooveshark is technically illegal too, since they allow you to listen to user uploaded music. They have no contracts what so ever.

They have a licensing deal with EMI, not sure if this just applies to the US though.