UPC, Ireland's third largest ISP, has prevailed in a court case brought against them by the Irish Recorded Music Association. IRMA had argued that UPC should enforce a three strikes rule against alleged file-sharers on their network using details provided by IRMA without any judicial oversight. Such a system makes the assumption that everyone ( Read more... )

The story so far: The Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) have successfully persuaded Eircom, Ireland's largest broadband provider (42% of the market), to censor their service and threaten their own customers with disconnection if they are merely accused of illegal file sharing. In effect the recording industry have introduced a de facto three- ( Read more... )

Need to crack the security on the wireless networks of 250,000 - that's almost two-thirds! - of Eircom's broadband customers so you can share copyrighted content without falling afoul of Eircom/IRMA's private HADOPI law? There's an App for that.

Technically the Dessid app is marketed as a "password recovery tool" though the author admits it could ( Read more... )

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Things are about to start happening in the War on Irish Internet Users.

According to The Irish Times the recording industry's favourite broadband provider, Eircom, will start blocking thepiratebay.org on September 1st. Well, actually it says "piratebay.org" which is just an alias domain, but who knows ( Read more... )

The Irish government, in a fit of what can only be described as some form of political mental illness, has reintroduced a law criminalising blasphemy.

Aside from a €25,000 fine (reduced from the €100,000 originally sought by the government), the new Defamation Act gives the authorities the power to stage raids on publishers: the courts ( Read more... )

Just to catch you up. This year my ISP, Eircom.net, settled a dispute with the Irish Recorded Music Ass. (IRMA) who had taken them to court over illegal file sharing. The claim was that Eircom were complicit in the illegal activities of their users. the evidence against them included internal emails showing Eircom execs joking about copyright ( Read more... )

Ireland's Broadcast Bill 2009 is about to be passed by the government here and it has come to the attention of a few watchful souls that something looks a little off.

Part of the bill deals with changes to the TV license. One of the these changes is the definition of "television set":

"television set" means any electronic apparatus capable of ( Read more... )

This is just too delicious.

Here we have a view on Delusions of Intellectual Property from none other than the 6th century High King of Ireland, Diarmuid. The king is asked to pass judgement on a case involving the copying of a book of gospels owned by St. Uinniau of Moville (Finnian) by St. Columba (Colmcille):

Extract from the Royal Irish ( Read more... )

If you have ever needed an example of why our current system of copyrights needs radical improvement, this is it:

A Stanford University professor on Monday sued James Joyce's estate for refusing to give her permission to use copyrighted material about the "Ulysses" author and his daughter on her Web site ( Read more... )