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Ireland could be the first country to be brought to its knees by the music industry. The Irish arm of EMI has launched a High Court action, suing the Irish State over its perceived dragging-of-feet on the issue of ISP blockade of piracy sites.
Ireland doesn’t currently have a system implemented that lets copyright holders like EMI take out court orders to force ISPs to block sites linked to piracy. In the UK and across the rest of Europe, this kind of forced blockade is happening left right and centre, and the music industry wants Ireland to follow suit.
A High Court case was levied against one of Irelands ISPs by the music industry in 2010, which found a blockade-style court order system lacking in Irish law. This prompted a “statutory instrument“ to be drawn up by the Irish government bringing it in-line with the EU. The new rule will do something akin to what the music industry is after, but Ireland hasn’t acted quick enough for EMI it seems.
Frankly, it seems a bit absurd that any creative industry could sue a government over something like this. If EMI were to win, with Ireland in such a dodgy financial state, they could take the entire country down — that’s just plain ludicrous if you think about it. Considering the EU, including little old us, has sunk quite a lot of money into trying to keep Ireland afloat, for EMI to take it out now would be nuts. Take Ireland out and you might take out the Euro too. Wow, a lot of people would be pissed. [Irish Times]
Image credit: Gavel from Shutterstock
‘Sues Ireland For Every Euro It’s Got Left’ – All seven of them? Greedy bastards.
Seven Euro’s !! Isn’t that the cost for a pint of Guinness in Dublin?
It’s Ok, The Irish Government just need to start taxing all those money grabbing Leprechauns. They all keep a spare stash of gold at the end of a rainbow. Nasty, greedy, little green pipe smoking oiks.
If they manage to somehow, you know, actually win this suit, it could spell real trouble for other countries. I don’t want to live in a world where the music industry, or any other creative body for that matter, can dictate a country’s policy through the threat of legal action and bankruptcy.
Only those countries that refuse to tow the line or blatently break rules.
I think Ireland has much bigger fish to fry than worrying about a has-been recpord company, that’s desperately wondering how it’s going to find the cash to pay for Robbie William’s UFO obsession therapy.
Do legal precedents apply from one country to another? Anyone here a lawyer?
I agree. The music industry needs to grow some balls and take the downloaders on, but if they did that with legal action on-line hate would grow and people would stop buying altogether in protest.
I also question if revenue is down for the music industry:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/02/uk-music-sales-decline-2011
“According to the latest figures from the BPI, combined sales of digital and physical albums fell overall by 5.6% to 113.2m last year. At the industry peak in 2004, 163.4m albums were sold.”
Read that, it is a false information given out by the BPI, and the fuckers know it is false. I agree that album sales are down but the increase of digital downloads means more people just buy the single track they want rather than an album.
Look here:
http://livinglifeonashoestring.com/2011/12/21/sales-figures-for-uk-singles-in-2011/
Overall music sales are dramatically increasing year on year. 32 million in 2004, 164 million in 2011 – I think that stark increase will cover a 5.6% dip in album sales. And this is before we reason revenue from streaming music channels, and other new methods of making money, like adverts regarding online video play – they are raking it in.
And I can find figures regarding film sales going up year on year – I just don’t understand why they bitch all the time when each year they are selling more and more. They make it sound like Simon Cowell doesn’t have a pot to piss in.
(I know this is UK figures relating to Irish story, but I use them as an example, I am fairly sure the Irish trend of sales is similar)
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/25316-record-giants-sue-irish/
Legal blogger TJ McIntyre says it is likely the music industry will be relying upon a well-known principle in Francovich v. Italy under which damages are possible against a state for failure to transpose a directive if three conditions are met:
First, that the result prescribed by the directive should entail the grant of rights to individuals; secondly, that it should be possible to identify the content of those rights on the basis of the provisions of the directive; and thirdly, that there should be a causal link between the breach of the State’s obligation and the loss and damage suffered by the injured parties.
“While I’m not aware of any other action of this sort being brought against a country for failure to implement copyright law, the third element would seem to be problematic for the music industry – establishing a causal link between Irish law and file sharing will be difficult, particularly given the evidence from elsewhere that blocking is ineffective,” McIntyre said.
I have a feeling Germany and France might take a view on this…
All the Irish government has to do is slap a 100% windfall tax on the music industry on any income from the pursuit of copyright infringements. They get their own money back and hopefully stop EMI et al from future prosecutions against the public that are soley designed to prop up an out-moded and failing business model
If Ireland can’t pay the fine will they have to hand over Dana, Johnny Logan, The Dubliners and U2 to EMI?
Aren’t Jedward Irish? Couldn’t the Irish government offer them up as a sacrifi… Uhhh I mean in exchange?
Jedward are Frankenlego – they were constructed by a twisted sick child and had life zapped into them by a thunderbolt that Zeus dropped on Ireland by accident. They are worthless and can be eradicated by using a box of Swan Vesta and a can of WD40. EMI would not be happy.
Good Point, I suggest we have a whip round. I will personally pay a large part of any fine for the Irish Government to live in a Jedward free world.
Finally the music companies are suing Ireland for failure to have any implementable copyright legislation;
http://entertainment.ie/music/news/EMI-launches-lawsuit-against-Irish-state/97275.htm
Even the most “cynical/daring” comments on this topic really don’t get it. Ireland has not been run as a normal state since 1998 or so, and there was every indication from back then that the music industry – in the mid 90′s perhaps the biggest in the world pro capita – began to be used for the creation of huge scams
We can start with the admittedly labyrinthine narrative on
http://seanonuallain.com/id2.html
To summarize; musicians start to notice that their song copyright registrations are altered when they attempt to repatriate them from Britain and the USA to the nascent Irish music “rights” organization (IMRO). Companies close to the government suddenly “own” part of the songs. The musicians check further, and notice that they are credited with writing songs that don’t exist, often spelled in Gaelic with a letter missing.
They get the police involved; one of the police is made a job offer he can’t refuse, but parliamentary questions keep the investigation going. It is possible that the government simply wanted to find out what we knew.
Then someone in IMRO’s London counterpart panics and – lo and behold! – it is revealed that Shay Hennessy, chair of IMRO, HAD STOLEN HUNDREDS OF COPYRIGHTS AND WAS USING IMRO TO PERPETUATE THE THEFT. Quis cutodies cutodiet? AS it happens, the police investigation was aborted with a leak to the papers
http://www.politics.ie/forum/current-affairs/36672-corruption-dpps-office.html
Hennessy was the main advisor on the copyright act that has caused this snafu;
http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4602230-1.html
It is important to remember that, when referring to Ireland 1997-2011, we are not talking about a modern democracy; it is a third world country, with the prime minister paying a fortune of taxpayers’ money to promote the musical and other “artistic” careers of his daughters and their partners, including the horrible “PS I love you”.
U2, among many others, took advantage of the artists destroyers’ exemption, which allowed them trade with dissolved companies and steal at will from far better musicians than them.
I stand by what I said before ie, Bigger Fish and Frying.
I like MR’s comment about “Bigger fish”. Please be open to the idea that Ireland was positioning itself to be a zone where copyright laws did NOT apply, and where the “financial services center” was to be a magnet for every scumbag in the world
However, the 2000 copyright act in Ireland should have anticipated all these problems. In 2000, the Internet was a reality and frims like MP3.com had already had their day;
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2000/en/act/pub/0028/index.html
The problem is that the act was drafted by criminals. In a rather famous incident, while the act was being drafted, the member of Parliament piloting the Copyright and Related rights Bill 2000 got a record contract for his son David Kitt through Warner Bros;
“Kitt has a charmed life and he escaped public opprobrium before when it emerged that in 2000 he had given a demo tape of his son, singer David Kitt, to Dennis Woods, head of Warner Studios and chairman of Phonographic Performance Ireland. This would have been an exchange hardly worth mentioning were it not for the fact that Kitt was then piloting the Copyright and Related rights Bill 2000 through the Dáil; that this legislation benefited PPI members and that the PPI, one of the organisations most affected beneficially by the act, lobbied the Government strongly.”
See also
http://davemarsh.us/?p=951
You all would do us Irish people a favour if you boycotted us while we sort out our country. No more bailouts, please