UPC in hot water over file sharing

Life

The Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) has served legal summons to UPC Broadband, the telecoms collaboration of former companies Chorus and ntl.

IRMA, which represents the record labels EMI, Sony, Warners, and Universal, has been suing several Internet service providers (ISPs) on the grounds that they should be monitoring the illegal distribution of music occurring on their networks.

UPC responded publicly to the summons, stating, “The company [UPC] is now preparing its defence and intends to vigorously defend its position in Court.” UPC will argue that at this time there are no Irish laws requiring ISPs to monitor their customers’ utilisation of their services and to do so without a court order would be a serious infringement of a user’s privacy.

Also mentioned in UPC’s statement is their regard for Eircom’s decision in the same matter with IRMA. In February, Eircom agreed to monitor movement on peer-to-peer programs for illegal downloads. They will deliver two warnings to those users sharing copyrighted music, whereupon the third offence will result in the loss of broadband connection.

Eircom was the first ISP in Europe to agree willingly to cooperate with IRMA’s requests, but other companies are not yet following suit. IRMA has extended its warning of legal action to other Internet intermediaries, filing suit against Blacknight Solutions, an Irish provider of domain names and Web hosting. Blacknight responded that they are not Internet access providers and should not be held accountable. Like UPC, Blacknight said that only in the event of court order will action be taken against a client.

France attempted to implement a three strikes law in 2008, which would create an ISP monitoring agency, but earlier this month the country’s Constitutional Council refused part of the bill.

The reasoning was in line with many Web users’ concerns that IRMA would be violating basic human rights of privacy and expression by monitoring innocent people, and in the event of actual copyright infringement only a judge could legally make the call.

Read More: Telecoms & Broadband