Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, designs, info-tech and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. Read, post comments and participate!

The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward and Merpel. E-mail the Kats here!

The team is joined by GuestKats Kevin Bercimuelle-Chamot, Jocelyn Bosse, Alessandro Cerri, Anastasiia Kyrylenko, Marcel Pemsel and Anna Maria Stein.

SpecialKats: Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo (TechieKat), Antonios Baris (Book Review Editor), Rose Hughes (PatKat) and Chijioke Okorie (Africa Correspondent).

InternKats: Asude Sena Moya and Söğüt Atilla.
Home / "three strikes" / Ireland / Jeremy Phillips / STOP PRESS: First Irish Three Strikes decision

STOP PRESS: First Irish Three Strikes decision

- , ,
The IPKat thanks his friend Deirdre Kilroy (LK Shields) for telling him that the first Irish High Court decision on the Republic's "three strikes" law has just been handed down today by Mr Justice Charleton in EMI Records (Ireland) Ltd and others v Eircom Ltd [2010] IEHC 108. You can read the decision in full here -- which is more than this Kat has done, since he is just in the act of winding down for a day off.
STOP PRESS: First Irish Three Strikes decision STOP PRESS: First Irish Three Strikes decision Reviewed by Jeremy on Friday, April 16, 2010 Rating: 5

4 comments:

  1. Francis DaveySaturday, 17 April 2010 at 00:37:00 GMT+1

    That's not quite an accurate summary since Ireland has no "three strikes" law. What the case is about is whether a settlement agreement between the music industry and Eircom (the largest ISP in Ireland) which would implement a "three strikes" system for Eircom, is lawful.

    So it was a settlement approval decision.

    The Irish Data Protection Commissioner had challenged the lawfulness of the settlement. The judge reject the Commissioner's criticisms and approved the judgment.

    This is a different approach (and a different reaction by an ISP) to that taken in the UK where the music industry has been reluctant to try to use injunctions against ISP's to achieve the same result (I think wisely) and has tried to obtain the same result via legislation (perhaps not so wisely).

    So really this is a decision to appeal to data protection buffs rather than copyright watchers. Interesting nonetheless.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousSaturday, 17 April 2010 at 18:17:00 GMT+1

    A remarkably disappointing judgment! It reads in places more like an IFPI press release than serious common law jurisprudence.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thomas DillonSunday, 18 April 2010 at 00:34:00 GMT+1

    Charleton J agrees with French judges in not swallowing the notion, much pushed by privacy commissioners and the copyleft, that an IP address is per se personal data even where there is no possibility for the person processing it to connect it with a specific machine, let alone a specific individual, through his own efforts. Refreshing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownSunday, 18 April 2010 at 03:50:00 GMT+1

    Please correct this when you're less tired and have read the judgment. This is a three part Judgment which the Court may have erred on. The third question deals with the lawfulness of a settlement agreement which agreed the '3 strikes' deal, it remains inapplicable to others until ordered by a Court. No legislation exists to the contrary unlike the UKs Mandelson led bill ... This man complained of lobbying when C4 exposed the various MPs in the UK, yet he was directly lobbied by Music firms before rejoining government. Just ask the former Head of Ofcom, Lord Carter who may have resigned over Mandy's approach.

    This Irish ruling also declares IP addresses as not being personal data. It conflicts with the French Constitutional Courts findings and also maybe elements of the Article 29 Working Groups views.

    I'm not convinced this also sits correctly with Directive 2000/31/EC which should allow for mere conduit protection for ISPs and also Article 3A of the 2009 New Communications Regulatory Framework which was Amendment 138 to same.

    Please amend your main post. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )
Powered by Blogger.