File Sharing and Eircom

From Slashdot:

““One of the biggest broadband providers in Ireland will make the country the first in the world (according to broadsheet newspaper, the Irish Times) to introduce the ‘three strikes’ rule. ‘EIRCOM WILL from today begin a process that will lead to cutting off the broadband service of customers found to be repeatedly sharing music online illegally. Ireland is the first country in the world where a system of graduated response is being put in place. Under the pilot scheme, Eircom customers who illegally share copyrighted music will get three warnings before having their broadband service cut off for a year.’ … The mechanism by which it operates was challenged in the courts by the Data Protection Commissioner. Apparently, IP addresses do not constitute ‘personal information.’ Personally, I use filesharing all the time, but I use it to download large open source Linux ISOs. How will Eircom legally differentiate between that content, and the content that some ragamuffin may be downloading illegally, without infringing privacy laws?”

My thoughts on this one are quite simple.

This kind of crap is just the start of things to come.   In the mean time, I am just glad I am not forced to use Eircom as a broadband provider.   (I use the word broadband loosly)

I don’t use Peer 2 Peer file sharing, as frankly it is an open gateway to getting spyware and viruses.   That said, I don’t believe for one moment that Eircom have the right to decide what I can and cannot use the web to lookup.

Last time I checked, I did not live in China.

/Rant over