[ILUG] Eircom surrenders

[Michael Watterson]

Phil Bradley wrote:
> Paul O'Malley - gnu's not unix - wrote:
>> James McBoyle wrote:
>>
>> data protection act violation anyone?
>
>
> Not really,
> I don't particularly like Eircom and I think they have misled uninformed
> customers into thinking that they were entitled to download music by
> virtue of paying for broadband (their adverts definitely used to imply
> this) but really, exchanging copyrighted material is already against the
> law and a warning and/or disconnection is a proportionate (IMO) rebuke.
>
> My main concern is that Eircom will equate all P2P activity with illegal
> activity and disconnect customers for distributing Ubuntu ISOs (it would
> fun to watch that argument in the supreme court:)
>
>  -phil

Actually a positive aspect is that eircom won't inspect traffic at all.

No data is handed to anyone.

eircom can simply use this a golden excuse to disconnect high traffic users.

* How does the warned person know eircom recieved and IP with time/date 
stamp?
* The methods the RIAAs 3rd party experts use to gather the IPs are not 
that likely to be from a Linux ISO, though who knows.
* There is no transparency as to how the IPs are gathered (it's Likely 
RIAA and similar don't want to know either)
* It need not be P2P.
* the RIAA or similar may never know who got warned or disconnected or 
even if eircom does anything with the IPs
* No ISP wants the cost and futility of traffic/packet inspection. This 
is a cost free alternative that can even save some ISPs money.


Maybe really the copyright holders are only getting a good feeling out 
of this. :-)

-- 
Mike