Blackout Ireland

Charly visits IRMA, hand delivers letter.

Originally published on my podcast’s site, www.ViewFromTheQuad.com. This guy has, what we call in the industry, “Balls”

My good friend Charly, the guy who wrote that amazing stock email to his ISP and others (feel free to use it) hand delivered a letter to the IRMA today. Again, he is letting me publish it online for those who want to download it themselves, edit their name in, and post or deliver it themselves. The full text of the letter is below , and you may download a .ODT (Open Office file. Works in Word and Pages, as far as I know) copy of the letter here.

Irish Recorded Music Assocation
1 Corrig Avenue
Dún Laoghaire
Co. Dublin

01/03/09
Subject: Blocking websites to combat Internet piracy

To Whom it May Concern,

I am concerned by recent news that you plan to force Eircom and other ISPs in Ireland to block access for their subscribers to certain websites.

In fact, if I understand correctly, the first website your association would like to see blocked is The Pirate Bay. It’s a website that hosts absolutely no unauthorized material, it merely provides links to user submitted content just like Google or any other search engine. The Pirate Bay has never been found to be illegal in an Irish court.

Please be aware that The Pirate Bay has links to many works of music, software and film that are not infringing on copyrights. All of the following links refer to material that is permitted to be shared online.

• Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV
• Nine Inch Nails - The Slip
• Ubuntu 8.10
• Steal this film - Trial Edition
• Aristotle Complete_Works
• Flash Gordon - Conquers The Universe
• Modern Times

If you choose to block The Pirate Bay, you are blocking Irish people’s access to legitimate works. I do not think you should be permitted to do so.

I would also like to know what other websites you plan on blocking. You’ve already stated that mere links to copyrightable material are going to be banned. What about links to links? What about proxy websites that people will undoubtedly use to evade your bans? What about sites like riaaradar.com that encourage behaviour that cut your revenue? What about blogs that give instructions on how to circumvent your blocks? What about blogs that criticise your actions?

I would imagine that you have been in this industry for quite some time. By now, you should realise that attempts at censorship are doomed to fail (google “09 F9”). Banning a website online only makes is more popular by many orders of magnitude. Pirates will always be able to circumvent any ban, and it will be yet again the legitimate consumer that is inconvenienced  and have their free speech restricted the most. Your association and its members will suffer a damaged image as an oppressor of communications on the Internet.

There are other solutions available to you. It is important you pursue a strategy that has the potential to succeed. Whatever way you look at it, the Internet is the place where people want their music now. People buy iPods, not Walkmans. It is also important to realise that the technologies that pirates have developed are light-years ahead of anything in the legitimate market right now. Bittorrent is fantastic way to distribute music online. Unfortunately, up to now it has been used, by some, illegitimately.

There are ways to harness new technologies’ power in a way that allows musicians to be paid. The EFF have proposed a solution that I feel is a very viable solution. It benefits both musicians and music fans whilst harnessing the technologies developed by pirates. Please find it attached to this letter.

It is vital you choose a viable solution to this problem. Censorship will not pay artists. You need to implement a correct solution, not a misguided knee-jerk reaction that will solve nothing.

For the love of music, please make the right choice.
Yours faithfully,
*Sign here*

-Cian Mac Mahon

A digital guantanamo

Today we have a great guest post from Damien Mulley. — Ben

The Internet has brought us amazing new freedoms over the past few years and when people have been touched by these freedoms the world has become a better place. While we are bombarded in the press by financial meltdowns and job losses a sinister force is at work to shut down these freedoms.

It’s begun with eircom honouring requests from the record industry by blocking access to websites such as the pirate bay but it’s not going to stop there. Other sites will soon be blocked and more and more of these sites will have less and less to do with piracy and ripping off billionaire record labels. Soon if opinions aren’t liked, these sites will get blocked.

A digital guantanamo has been created with all these sites being locked away along with our freedom to surf on the rare chance that an act of copyright infringement could happen. Like many locked away in orange boiler suits in cages, now our freedoms are doing the same thing. We are not criminals, we are not pirates, we are not threats to security, yet we are being treated as such.

The message that the industry machine is pumping out to us is that it’s for our own good, they are the judge of our potential behaviour and without trial they are saying we can’t be trusted. They are doing it because they say in our future we will download music and hurt their profits but pirates are clever people.

They’ll be the first people to come up with a way around these systems. Before they killed napster, they had gnutella and then limewire and now bittorrent. As long as one clever person is annoyed by the record industry and their attacks on freedoms, there’s going to be piracy.

Blocking websites is futile. The record companies will only beat piracy if they shut down the Internet and it appears this is their way of doing it, one website at a time. We are not the pirates, we are people that enjoy the fact that we were allowed to make up our own minds on where to go on the Internet. Blocking where we can go on the Internet is the new book burning and we’re opposed to it.

— Damien Mulley

Source says we need to start Blackout Ireland NOW

This is a quick blog post, originally from my own blog as it is getting rather late at night.

First, if you have no idea what is going on, you NEED to check out two places. Firstly, BlackOutIreland.com, which should hopefully be online tomorrow. This site, run by somebody with MUCH more free time then me (Ben McRedmond - He will be much more active with this then I will, due to my huge lack of free time with exams, and his over abundance of free time) will soon contain the best source of information on the blackout. Secondly my previous blog post which might answer some of your questions.

Now, a roundup of what has happened in the last 24 hours.

• BlackKnight got sent one of the nasty IRMA letters they have been sending out to all the ISPs. Ignoring the fact that BlackKnight is NOT an ISP, it is a really interesting read. The Register have a pretty thorough dissection of it, so I won’t go into too much detail here.
• Several members of the #blackoutIRL group are seeking legal guidance as to what should happen next.
• As I mentioned before, Ben is starting up a dedicated Blackout Ireland site. Him and Ben Chapman is also organizing some leaflets, possible public demonstrations and the organizers of Blackout Ireland are working on something cool enough to blow your socks off. Can’t say much more now, but if it happens, it will HAPPEN!
• It has been decided that Blackout Ireland will run from Black Thursday (5th of March) for one whole week. If you are taking part, please use one of the three “official” Blackout Ireland avatars I posted in my previous post, or grab one of one of your twitter friends. (The avatars are of course not just for Twitter. Myspace, Facebook, MSN, whatever!)

Now, what I am really here to talk to you about.

After my previous blog post, I got a fair few emails. Most of these were from awesome readers like you, wanting to know more information. Hopefully Ben can sort that out for you. One or two, however, were from some very interesting people. Those who follow me on twitter may have noticed mesplurging about a member of a company deeply involved in internet service providing sending me an email of support. This was cool, but not the coolest email I got.

I got an email from a source who wishes to remain anonymous. I trust this source though, and did some rummaging. He is legit.

This guy is somebody VERY high in one of ISPs. And he is on our side. We have been having a good old conversation, and he sent me the following warning:

FYI please encourage people to write/email their ISP asking them to stand up to this. Contacting Eammon Ryan is great but that’s about long-term action. In the short term, ISPs are deciding this week what to do and taking legal advice, so if they hear from their users it will make a difference. In general, people can write/email for the attention of “Regulatory Affairs Manager”.

ISPs are deciding NOW what to do. If we want to put a stop to this madness sooner rather then later, we need to act NOW.

What can you do right now is head on down to the ISPAI member’s page and find the contact details for your ISP. Send them a polite email stating how worried you are about this new development. Learn about what is going on, why we are protesting it and what harm it can bring to the whole Irish internet system.

Notify your local media. Soon I shall be posting a blogpost about some ways of doing this, but just ring up your local news station and talk to them about the Blackout. Write letters to your local free newspaper.Wave your arms around. Jump up and down. Do whatever it takes to get this news into the mouth of the public.

- Cian Mac Mahon