[ILUG] Eircom surrenders

[Michael Watterson]

paul at clubi.ie wrote:
>
> IPs published by trackers are hearsay. Some trackers even 
> *deliberately* publish additional, randomish IPs along with actual 
> participating IPs (TBP does so). So the reporter really needs to 
> download the actual file from the actual IPs before making any such 
> reports. It's also important the reporter is careful about the 
> accuracy of the time.
>
> Reporting IPs based on mere P2P participant-lists is guaranteed to 
> lead to the following headlines (and already has in the UK):
>
>  "<middle-aged or elderly> <person or couple> <sued|disconnected> for
>   downloading latest <gangster rapper album|first-person shooter
>   game>!"
>
> which will surely further sink the reputation of those responsible for 
> anti-P2P actions.
>
> regards,
They have custom clients that actually peer. So it's not just a tracker 
list but a real upload and download. This can all be automated and use a 
wide range of dynamic IPs of different providers to make "guardian" 
lists useless.

I suspect some 3rd party companies (the rights holders contract all this 
out to 3rd parties) may  even set up honey pot servers with watermarked 
content, it may not just be P2P. Or even hack servers or install malware 
on users PCs. Which may be illegal.

In the past some fairly stupid things have been done and if there is a 
time zone error, then of course the IP may be something stupid.

Does anyone really believe that eircom will warn & cut off with out 
looking at traffic usage logs?

Aren't the heavy downloaders the most likely to be reported and is 
eircom likely to cut off non-heavy downloads. The right's holders and 
their IP collection agencies never know who the IP belongs to.

They can't correlate the number eircom says are disconnected nor any 
traffic reduction eircom claims to actual users or numbers of users. 
eircom wants this to succeed as it is cheap and simple and really makes 
it someone else's problem. If they make sure to cut off very high 
traffic users reported the headline traffic reduction can be 50% to 80%. 
The rights holders will be happy.

Does anyone believe that very high traffic (200Gbyte + per month is not 
even full bandwidth) users that get reported more than 3 times (could be 
different IPs) are NOT breaking copyright on a 24x7 x365 annual basis? 
These people are also being subsidized by 80% to 90% of normal customers 
as they pay the same amount per month.

There is an issue of lack of transparency and right of appeal. But 
eircom has always had the right to disconnect high traffic users under 
FUP/T&C.

-- 
Mike