Internet Censorship in Ireland
I tweeted about this yesterday but it’d still on my mind. This type of thing is driving me to despair about working in the technology sector in Ireland:
IRMA, which represents major music groups EMI, Sony-BMG, Warner and Universal, is to begin compiling lists of websites that it claims are damaging its business. It will then apply for a court order, requiring Eircom and other internet providers to block access to these sites…
Under the terms of an agreement between Eircom and Irma, Eircom will not oppose any court application, meaning that the orders will be automatically granted. A spokesman for Eircom confirmed that Eircom ‘‘will not oppose any application [Irma] may make seeking the blocking of access from their network’’ to blacklisted websites.
I do not endorse illegal distribution of copyrighted material but I am very, very much against censorship of the internet in any shape or form.
Either I am missing something or this SBP article is incorrect but if not is this the most extreme form of legalized private industry censorship that exists in any country in the world? Civilized, democratic nations do not allow private industry association to dictate what information their population can/cannot read.
Irish government, you should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves for not defending the rights of your population against private industry censorship. If you wanted to show the entire world that the legislative and judiciary process in this country cannot keep pace with advancements in technology then congratulations, job done. I can only imagine that internet multinationals now have yet another reason to establish their European bases elsewhere instead of in this “knowledge economy” of ours.
Irish businesses, if this censorship is allowed then is “Ireland Inc” a viable base for technology leaders? Or is Ireland a luddite nation that restricts access to information at the behest one industry sector who cannot adapt to technological progress? I hope this doesn’t impair your ability to trade and build up your company here but I doubt your foreign partners will look on this as a positive development for your operating base. If your business website contains any user generated content (and I mean any) then you could be blacklisted with no avenue for recourse. Is that a risk you are willing to take?
Is there any move afoot to organize (or engage with an existing organization like the Electronic Frontier Foundation) to defend Irish free speech, privacy and consumer rights? We are clearly not explaining to both legislators and electorate why agreements like this are modern day luddite fallacies. This couldn’t happen if we were.
This statement:
“…Eircom will not oppose any court application, meaning that the orders will be automatically granted”
is not accurate.
The owners of the websites will have to be given notice of the applications, and even if they fail to oppose them, the court itself does have a discretion not to grant them.
During the voting machines debacle, An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern proclaimed that the governement were ploughing ahead with their plan as Ireland was the laughing stock of Europe because we were still casting votes manually.
Then, as now, they demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of the modern world. Ivory towers and all that.
Head over to http://www.digitalrights.ie
@fergus on the ball as ever, thanks for clarifying. I wonder why the Eircom peon said otherwise. Regardless, I still have a problem with any mechanism that entitles a private association to go directly to the high court to request censorship of information.
Do you have any pointers on what process websites have to go through to oppose a request? Would it be prohibitively expensive and does this process accommodate websites that have no base on Ireland (or say the EU?)
@simon Digital Rights Ireland looks vaguely interesting but whoever runs it needs to be a bit more transparent about who they are, their charter etc before I’d consider supporting them.
It is not really a question of going “directly to the high court to request censorship of information.” IRMA would be seeking to prevent people stealing others’ intellectual property. If they went straight to court without notice, they might not get their costs even if otherwise successful.
Opposition would probably result in a trial, in which IRMA would seek to prove that the website was naughty and the website owner would seek to show it was not. Use of lawyers advised. Not cheap.
Obviously, the further away the website owner would be, the more difficult and/or unlikely s/he might be to bother to resist, but the right to do so would be exactly the same as an Irish-based owner.
As you say Fergus, lawyers required and the website in question may not be bothered to oppose when they would only loose a fraction of 4m readers. The end result is still the same, a private industry association is effecting censorship via bad laws.
If affected parties cannot be bothered to oppose, then things *will* happen. How do you suggest that victims of copyright infringement should react, if not by legal action ?
Fergus,
Censoring/filtering via intermediate networks is a sledgehammer approach to the problem that infringes on far too many other civil rights to be in any way justifiable.
Let me proffer an analogy: this is akin to a national airport being told to refuse planes to/from certain foreign cities just because some travellers coming off these planes in the past had not declared goods or had drugs in their pockets. Except of course this is worse – this is a private organization calling the shots, not our elected government. Crazy.
Btw, have you read the letter sent to Michele Neylon (of Blacknight, an ISP, not a broadband service provider)? See http://blog.blacknight.com/irma-threatens-irish-isps.html
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on what their overall strategy is here. Is it a ‘threaten everyone in the internet business and see what sticks’ strategy? Is this the global industry attacking Ireland as a test bed because they know our legislative/judiciary processes are out of date and hence a soft touch compared to our European neighbours? Or is it just pure greed on behalf of a local association? Does this law firm understand the nature of the technology infrastructure that they are threatening?
The victims of copyright infringement should target the sources of the infringement, not intermediates, be they ISPs or hosting providers.