Music bosses to sue Eircom

[anto1208]

Now this does nt effect me as as i dont down load music as i used to like to buy the actual CD/ record etc but after IMRA started to sue irish Music fans and the case against CDWOW ( in a bid to protect HMV etc same way the government is now moving to protect the publican )ive stopped buying Irish music but it didnt stop there ive more or less given up on buying any music. Its now down to 2 or 3 albums a year if any at all.

But it now seems that the record companies are going after the service providers rather than the individual fans like they have done before for not putting filters on the internet lines.

It constantly annoyed me I always wondered do bands/ record companies not realize that the people downloading say a U2 album are U2 fans !!! and suing your own fans isn’t the smartest thing to do. If you sue someone they are going to stop listening to any music you produce not go out and buy all your albums and go to your gigs !!! .

Now it appears they have copped this but at the same time if Eircom are sued for Xmillion they will go looking for the people who downloaded the music and since they will have all your download history on file they will be able to go after the downloader very quickly.

[Macy]

Home Taping Is Killing Music, or so they said in the 80's...

It's a nonsense, the progressive bands will adapt and move on (like radiohead, or even more recently The Charlatans), as they have always done, the dinosaurs will die. Bands no longer need record companies, and this is what is driving this nonsense, not protection of the muscian/ band.

However, perhaps more importantly is the potential to censore the internet and censore access to content. This time it's music, next will it be corporations or even the Government after indymedia or blogs/ boards it doesn't agree with? Like MCD v Boards.ie only on a bigger scale? It's a slippery slope if the record companies win...

[Bald Student]

Only one man can save the music industry now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xfqkdh5Js4

[GavinZac]

since they will have all your download history on file

No, they don't. Not only would the amount of 'storage' need to hold such data on their customers be insanely large, but checking every packet would reduce transfer speeds to... to... well, something worse than the rubbish service eircom already provide.

The closest thing to such information is actually stored by a website, and is then handed by them to the authorities. E.g. dahamsta could track the person's IP address, then ask a provider, e.g. eircom or university college cork, for identification of the person.

[Billsthoughts]

I think its their back catalogues they are protecting as opposed to their ability to make cash off new acts. I mean when you look at the major acts out there. How many Greatest hits have they put out each? Was it profits that were down 40 million to a 120 million from last year? They are hardly going broke. What bothers me is artists like the Corrs on about people robbing their music. Firstly I doubt anyone is robbing their rubbish. Secondly again its not like they are broke.

[anto1208]

No, they don't. Not only would the amount of 'storage' need to hold such data on their customers be insanely large, but checking every packet would reduce transfer speeds to... to... well, something worse than the rubbish service eircom already provide.

The closest thing to such information is actually stored by a website, and is then handed by them to the authorities. E.g. dahamsta could track the person's IP address, then ask a provider, e.g. eircom or university college cork, for identification of the person.

Oh right i all ways thought every thing you did online left a trace with them, ah thats grand so i feel a bit more relaxed about it now when im not downloading of course coz thats against the law.

Interesting point was made on the last word that a similar action was taken against sony when they brought out the video recorder by TV and movie bosses saying it would destroy the industry and they felt they could sue sony for providing a platform for the bootleggers to copy there stuff.

Jump foward 30 years and now Sony are taking a case against Eircom for providing a platform for there products to be copied.

[pete]

News article

Insanity. Has this succeeded any where else in the world? If they won this would possibly set a precedent in the EU. This would kill the internet as ISP would in theory be responsible for all content.

IMO music sales may be dropping in small part to illegal downloads but also due the ripoff costs in this country. When they introduced CDs despite being cheaper to produce they used as excuse to charge more. I also think because the legal download sites are regionalised they are inadequate in Ireland.

[GavinZac]

Oh right i all ways thought every thing you did online left a trace with them

The traces are always on either your own computer, or a website's computer. for instance, if for some reason a sicko posted child porn on foot.ie, dahamsta could immediately have his IP "address". this is given out by the ISP, e.g. eircom, so dahamsta would contact them to find out who is at that address. The final proof of the pudding would then be in the virtually impossible to erase traces of evidence of the presence of such files on the person's computer once the gardai have grounds for a search.

thats why you'll always hear that a person was caught with thousands of songs, or thousands of illegal images on their hard drive, rather than that they had just been detected getting them.

What the ISPs can do is enforce a "firewall" (it isnt really what a firewall is, but its common usage in the media is this) whereby certain sites are blocked, like they do in China. This will be close to useless, however, because very few people use websites for distributing music (its too easy to blame the person running the site) and because it isnt very hard to get around the block anyway. More effectively, though marginally, they can control traffic on a certain protocol: different programs talk to each other in different "languages" across the wires; BitTorrent and Plain Old Internet (http) use different ones and ISPs in the states have already begun to slow or block the BitTorrent protocol. This isnt effective because someone will just come out with a new protocol and they end up just in a constant race to keep up with the changes.

What needs to happen is the media companies facing the reality that no amount of suing or actions will stop the pirating. They need to change the market; or rather, they need to find their usefulness in a market that has already changed. Radiohead led the way for such change with their actions and proved you can make money from giving stuff away for free on the internet; however, newer, less reputed bands will always be tied to their record labels. These media companies need to move in the direction that Radiohead went, but they simply dont want to, because at the moment they get to charge €20 for a thin piece of plastic that cost €0.20 to make.

[tetsujin1979]

This isnt effective because someone will just come out with a new protocol and they end up just in a constant race to keep up with the changes

Agreed.
First sites hosted music, when they were closed, Napster took off, when that was closed P2P (eDonkey, Gnutella, etc) took off, when they were throttled, BitTorrent came along, now ISPs have to deal with that.
Bedroom enthusiasts developing the next transfer protocol will always be ahead of the curve, the sooner labels and ISPs realise they are going to be fighting a losing battle and look at better ways to distribute music the more money they are going to lose.