14 DAY TRIAL // Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) decided that the three-strike anti-file sharing mechanism utilized by the Eircom ISP raised privacy concerns and ordered the practice to be stopped.
On the other hand, to make sure copyright holders won’t be upset, the Irish government is preparing to set up ISP blockades that will prevent users from accessing the illegal sites.
While Eircom has made preparations for the three-strike law, that would closely monitor and, if necessary, send notifications to those caught illegally downloading files, since 2009, at the end of 2010, some issues already popped up.
According to TorrentFreak, at the time, 300 account holders that didn’t have anything to do with piracy received warnings from the ISP. After the incident, the DPC began an investigation with the purpose of determining exactly how legal these practices are.
After the DPC decided to terminate the three strike mechanism and the music industry began fearing the worst, the Irish Times announced that the Minister of State for Enterprise Seán Sherlock would publish a new order at the beginning of 2012 to allow media industry representatives to obtain court orders which would enable them to completely block users from accessing certain websites.
EMI Ireland’s Chief Executive Willie Kavanagh, stated that his company planned to file a court action against the State if the new law would not allow them to order ISPs to set up blockades on the websites that provide illegal content.
EMI already tried to obtain court orders that would force Internet providers to block access to piracy sites, but at the time a judge refused to grant the injunction since the legislation didn’t permit such measures.
Not long ago, France declared the three-strike law a total success and went on searching for additional means to stop online piracy, but it seems that not all the countries can manage to adopt the same solutions.