Blackout Ireland

international | arts and media | news report

Thursday March 05, 2009 18:15

by Laois Man

What is happening?

IRMA, the Irish Recorded Music Association, wants to block Irish Internet users' access to certain websites. They have written letters to Irish Internet providers telling them, under threat of legal action, to allow IRMA to tell them what websites to block. Eircom has already agreed to this. They will settle every application for website blocking out of court. No sites have been blocked yet. We have limited time to act before the bans are set.

A copy of the letter sent out to Irish ISPs has been kindly made available by Michele Neylon of Blacknight Solutions. Read it here.

Why?

IRMA believes that by blocking websites like thepiratebay.org it will reduce piracy in Ireland and preserve some of its profits.

What's the problem?

Blackout Ireland does not think that this will be effective in combating piracy. Furthermore, we think it is a serious breach of civil liberties and that it constitutes censorship.

There is no certainty in what sites IRMA will include in their requests for banning. Will they seek to ban websites that merely link to copyrightable content, without actually hosting it? Proxy websites that could serve to circumvent the ban? Sites like riaaradar.com that promote boycotting members of record label associations? Blogs that criticize IRMA's actions? This very website? There is no telling where IRMA will draw the line. This is a very slippery slope.

Blocking websites never works. It creates free publicity for the site in question. Pirates will always be able to circumvent blocks with ease. Legitimate paying users will be once again be the ones most inconvenienced and have their freedom of communication restricted the most.

Censorship is not a solution. It is avoiding the issue. It does not pay artists for their work.

Blackout Ireland thinks the solutions proposed by the EFF and theEuropean Green Party Free Alliance are much more effective. Their respective solutions benefit both artists and music fans. They embrace new technology rather than shunning it.

What can I do?

Please contact your Internet service provider (ISP).
A list of emails addresses to contact can be found here.
Make it clear in your email/letter that you are, as a customer, very concerned about this issue.
Tell your ISP that if they implement IRMA's threats you will consider changing to a provider who does not cave in to demands for censorship.
Be polite and clear.
A sample letter may be found here but please personalize it to reflect your thoughts and opinion
Please contact the TD for your constituency.
Contact details may be found here.
Tell your representative that this is an important issue to you, as a constituent.
Ask them if they are willing to stand up for the right of Irish people to communicate freely on the Internet.
Tell them why you think giving third-party companies the power to ban websites is a bad thing and is setting a dangerous precedent.
Tell them that their actions relating to this issue will strongly affect your voting preferences.

Please contact Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan TD
He can be phoned at 01 - 618 3097
He can be emailed at eamon.ryan@oireachtas.ie or minister@dcenr.gov.ie

Tell him you are extremely worried about IRMA's desire to censor Irish communications.
Tell him Ireland's image will be damaged internationally if we gain the reputation as a place with restricted Internet communications.
Remind him that in Italy, a very similar blocking of The Pirate Bay was overruled in court citing European Directive, 2000/31 CE which is also applicable in Ireland.
Ask him if he is willing to implement any of thesolutions proposed by his party?
Take part in Blackout Week
To demonstrate your feelings about this issue online you can make your avatar black on any websites you have a presence on.
This is inspired by Creative Freedom New Zealand's blackout campaign.

From Black Thursday on the 5th of March, for one week, set your picture on sites like Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, MSN, etc black to raise awareness for Blackout Ireland.

On that Thursday we encourage you to express yourself publicly about this issue. Whether by blog posts, letters to newspapers or any form of communication you can think of.

Who are Blackout Ireland?

Blackout Ireland are a group of Irish Internet users who are concerned by the prospect of Ireland having a censored Internet. We do not think private companies should be allowed dictate what websites the Irish people are allowed to visit.

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Comments (17 of 17)

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Indy

by Tara

Thu Mar 05, 2009 18:38

Would that affect Indymedia in any way?

Rebirth of Censorship?

by Joe Burke

Thu Mar 05, 2009 18:47

This is yet another indication of Ireland in the shape of Eircom cowing down before the international bully boys, we have the EC expecting us to cower before them, anti-terrorist brigade saving emails for how many years, what next can we expect to be told we musn't drive on the left.

I thought we had seen the last of censorship ?

and apparently the first target is......

by Baybugg

Thu Mar 05, 2009 19:16

the pirate bay

Thing is, apparently 80% of linked content there is legal , according to evidence given at the recent pirate bay trial. However such trivial facts don't matter when it comes to protecting the failed business model of the music industry. I guarantee many useful sites will be blocked willy nilly without a proper transparent decision process.

There is evidence that downloaders buy more dvds and cds than average. In fact when forgotten artists release free stuff on the sharing networks, their back catalogues often experience large sales boosts. Personally I can understand why people download music because they wish to hear an album before they part with 20 euro. I like to hear an album before I buy it too. If it's a load of crap, then I don't buy it. If it's great then I like a proper copy on a decent factory pressed cd (not a dodgy cdr) without any stupid spyware/rootkits on it and am prepared to pay for that. Most people I know feel the same way.

Wake up and stop alienating your best customers IRMA!! Music downloaders download because THEY LOVE MUSIC. And those are also the kind of people who tend to be fussy about quality and will want to buy a proper pressed copy if it's good.

And stay to hell away from people's internet connections.They are used for many purposes, not just auditioning music.

Already these idiots have managed to get a "three strikes and your internet connection is cut off" policy implemented. Who the hell do they think they are?
(And as far as I'm concerned, the amount of tax bono should have paid in this country but avoided entitles every citizen in the country to a free copy of his new album, not that many would bother downloading it because it sucks so badly!!)

You expect them to block sites using non transparent filtering in countries like china, not Ireland. Who is to say this process won't be abused here too once set up? Its an easy matter to add an ip address to a filter. Who knows, maybe somebody will "accidentally" add indymedia to the filter just when some important news is breaking about shell or something. Of course it'll be accidental and apologies will be issued but they might drag their feet in re-instating the site until the event blows over somewhat. That's just one of many potential scenarios. It's a really slippery slope and very prone to abuse and function creep, if it's done by unaccountable vested interests in a non transparent manner.

This matter is a lot more serious than stopping people downloading some crappy and often badly encoded music from the internet. It's about free access to information without some unaccountable third party deciding for you.

I suggest we have a poll where people are asked if this ridiculous infringement on internet civil liberty would make them switch to another internet provider. Enough votes might make eircom think twice in these difficult times.

So how about a poll on the main page Indy? :-)

by Mick

Thu Mar 05, 2009 19:35

So they're going to block torrent websites? I hope Linux, BSD and all the other open source projects and artists that distribute through torrents take Eircom to the fucking bank. I've just unplugged my Eircom modem and won't be renewing it, fuck this Orwellian bullshit.

A more effective form of internet protest

by WhiteHat

Thu Mar 05, 2009 23:01

Not that I'd ever advocate doing such an awful thing but usually when people wish to protest in an effective manner against a company which has a large internet presence and is behaving in a socially underhand manner, they usually register their protest by getting together en masse and simultaneously trying to access the bad company's site repeatedly at the same time. there's even software available to automate this process if you look around. setting up a website with access to this software and a highly publicised countdown to the moment of the action might be a good idea too if you were that way inclined. Might even get the press worked up enough to write about it. Of course none of us would engage in such awful behaviour so please don't bother reading this comment. It's purely for educational purposes!! ;-)

On Eircom

by Ed Galligan

Fri Mar 06, 2009 02:34

"I've just unplugged my Eircom modem and won't be renewing it, fuck this Orwellian bullshit." - Mick
I never thought I'd be defending Eircom, God forbid, but in fairness to them if you read up on the recent court case, they do seem to have fought the action, and the views on it within Eircom do appear to be fairly liberal. Other than that note though, yes, fuck this Orwellian bullshit.

AudioLemon Coverage

by MP3 Downloader

Fri Mar 06, 2009 07:38

This Irish run blog throws more insight and background information on all this.
http://audiolemon.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html

mcgunness is not good for you.

by .

Fri Mar 06, 2009 10:01

Sounds like the brain child of a certain band manager . Back in 1979 Ireland had a fanzine called "Heat" being a high quality publication a distribution deal was struck with Easons .Having previously been sold in Rough trade,Advance records and Good Vibrations.The fanzine had just hit the shelves when they had to be pulled under legal threat.It carried a story about dirty tricks and downright lies used by a certain band to secure support slots with international bands over other local bands. This was the final Zine.

Idea of action

by Soundmigration

Fri Mar 06, 2009 10:47

These guys have offices and faces

Irish Recorded Music Association,
IRMA House,
1 Corrig Avenue,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co. Dublin,
Ireland.

Telephone: + 353 1 280 65 71
Fax: + 353 1 280 65 79

Lets get a sounds system, and get music/actc who are copyleft and do a demo/gig/ party outside it

Fri Mar 06, 2009 16:09

Great Idea Soundmigration, Lets blast these arseholes.

Not to worry...

by Mark C - Contact.,ie

Fri Mar 06, 2009 19:47

As far as I know there is another torrent site on the Internet. People got scared when they heard thepiratebay.org was going to be blocked. So now there are two (at least).

What a load of shit. Does IMRO really think people will stop torrenting just because Pirate Bay is blocked?

Mark C.

it's not quite that silly....

by Audioslave

Sat Mar 07, 2009 14:59

mark, the power to shut down sites without transparency is still worth having for scumbags like them, don't you think?

Of course they won't stop torrenting. They know that. It's all about getting the power to shut down sites, take little people to court and fine them disproportionately, and the fear of getting caught all this generates. People will get scared and stop seeding their torrents and unfortunately this is a real weakness in torrenting. If nobody seeds, they die out. Make the ISP feel it in their pockets. Thats the only way you can get them to stand up for users. Meanwhile I suggest use peerguardian, tor , torrent encryption settings and other such tools to the fullest while file sharing to protect yourselves folks.

torrent sites

Sun Mar 08, 2009 05:21

"As far as I know there is another torrent site on the Internet... So now there are two (at least)"
As far as I know there's over 1000 torrent sites on the internet (most private "membership by invitation only" setups), but it's not a matter of blocking a specific site, they're proposing blocking the actual torrenting technology itself which these sites employ. You can use tools such as Tor to attempt to circumvent such measures, but there's large disadvantages to this.

unworkable tactics by those who champion an anachronistic model of business or society

by peace pirate

Sun Mar 08, 2009 19:52

On December 23rd, 2008 "watch-movies.net" was sued by Paramount and Warner Bros. for copyright infringement. This was only a little while after it had clocked up 1,000,000 regular users who recognised its excellent service for collating all links to streams & pirated versions of commercial movies. http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuit.asp?id=43175 Later in February when the site disappeared, there was briefly a flurry of worry across the internet (or at least the 0.5% of the internet's users who were aware of the site) that somehow Hollywood had managed to persuase ISP providers to block its address within the USA and EU. http://blog.buttermouth.com/2008/10/watch-moviesnet-shu....html But in the end it transpired that had only migrated to a new address :- http://www.watch-movies-links.net/ & there it continues to provide the best service for those interested in such things - be it the "illegal" downloading of such material or the completely legal "watching such material through online streaming". Here's the list collated in February for such sites http://blog.buttermouth.com/2008/02/top-25-websites-to-....html

and if you're interested in Spanish language versions check out http://cinetube.es

http

Pirate Bay Founders are Jailed

by LC

Sat Apr 18, 2009 07:37

From RTE.ie

"A Stockholm court has found four men guilty of promoting copyright infringement.

The four ran The Pirate Bay, one of the world's top websites for illegal filesharing.

The court sentenced the four, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstroem, to a year in prison."

Continues at link.

should I give credit card details?

by Cinematographe

Tue Jan 05, 2016 20:58

In order to register for one of the given free film viewing sites I am asked to give credit card details, although it is stated that the service is absolutely free and I won't be charged anything on my account. I am worried about giving details of my card. How safe will the details be? Why should I have to give details like this if the website holder isn't going to use them?

don't be stupid

by paradroid

Wed Jan 06, 2016 22:34

don't give any dodgy site like this your credit card details ok?
if you do so you really are an idiot and you are doing so at your own risk

FYI
if you want movies free
then you could simply download from a torrent

https://isohunt.to/torrents/?iht=5&age=0

you'll need a program to do so:
http://filehippo.com/download_utorrent/

(However no internet activity is ever private and you do so at your own risk!!!)

better yet, just install the free program "kodi" and the fusion addon:
and stream thousands of free movies and tv shows. Less risk of getting into trouble too.

http://kodi.tv/download/

http://www.tvaddons.ag/fusion-installer-kodi/

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Comments (17 of 17)