Government may replicate Britain’s file-sharing move
A ‘three-strikes’ file sharing law looks closer to being introduced in Ireland, following a senior British cabinet minister’s pledge to introduce it into British law later this month.
Peter Mandelson, the British secretary for business, innovation and skills, has pledged to table legislation requiring internet service providers (ISPs) to cut off persistent illegal filesharers. The move follows similar
legislative moves in France earlier this year.
If enacted, it will add to pressure on the Irish government to follow suit from the international music industry.
‘‘It is something that the whole music industry supports,” said Dick Doyle, managing director of the Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma). ‘‘In Ireland, we will be pressing the government to go in that direction.” Irma represents the multinational music labels operating in Ireland, and has led recent legal actions against illegal file-sharers.
Earlier this year, it struck an agreement with Eircom that saw the country’s biggest ISP implement a three-strikes rule based on complaints against individuals from Irma.
‘‘It’s taken a long time for this to sink through,” said Doyle. ‘‘But now, governments are beginning to respect intellectual property. In the meantime, the music industry has nearly been wiped out. While the film industry has only really begun to feel the effect in the last two years, we’ve been feeling it for the last eight years.
The reality is that it is very difficult to compete with free things.”
Doyle said that the music and film business was a vital part of the European economy, representing 6 per cent of the continent’s gross domestic product.
He said that the music industry’s legal actions against The Pirate Bay, formerly the largest file-sharing portal in the world, had rendered the website a ‘‘non-event’’.
‘‘The Pirate Bay has now been blocked in so many countries that it is becoming a nonevent,” said Doyle.
‘‘In Ireland, it is also blocked by the country’s largest ISP, Eircom.”
Doyle said that Irma would continue legal action against large Irish ISPs that refused to co-operate with blocking illegal file-sharing sites.
‘‘We have a court date for February with UPC, and we are set to begin talking to Vodafone, which purchased BT’s consumer broadband business in Ireland,” he said.
