A friend of mine, Charles Julienne, just sent me the email he sent to a fair few important people in the Irish ISP world ( Sent to ispai@eircom.net, and CCed to irma_piracy@irma.ie, irma_copyright@irma.ie, eamon.ryan@oireachtas.ie, minister@dcenr.gov.ie, board@edri.org, information@eff.org). I really liked it, and thought that I would post it up here, slightly edited, as a draft for your letter to your ISP. It is also a great idea to CC all the other email addresses listed here as well, just to get your point across.

Of course, read through the entire thing, edit bits which don’t apply to you, add bits which do. Also check out the bit in bold. This is some really interesting information there.

Please click Read More to get the draft of the letter.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am a long-time loyal customer of yours. I am writing because I am concerned about recent news regarding IRMA’s relationship with your company.

It would seem that they are seeking to become self-appointed censors of Irish Internet communications. I do not think that a third-party company should be permitted to arbitrarily decide which Internet sites Eircom users are allowed to visit. Will IRMA want to block sites that merely link to copyrightable material, proxy sites that circumvent the block, blogs that criticize its actions? This is a very slippery slope and should be nipped in the bud.

I understand IRMA’s concern about Internet piracy. Artists need to be paid for their hard work. It is an important issue in this day and age, and it must be addressed correctly. Censorship is not the answer. It is avoiding the issue. As has always happened in these cases, pirates will be able to circumvent bans and it will be the legitimate, paying customers who are inconvenienced and have their free speech restricted the most. We need solutions that work, not knee-jerk reactions that are doomed to fail. I would recommend you read the EFF’s whitepaper on a better way forward for online music. http://www.eff.org/wp/better-way-forward-voluntary-collective-licensing-music-file-sharing

There are opportunities here that are being missed. I think it would be for the benefit of both artists and music fans if a solution could be found that combines the technologies developed by the pirates with a fair system for paying artists.

There was a very similar case in Italy where ISPs were forced to block The Pirate Bay’s website after pressure from the music industry (the result was that Italian traffic to the site increased by 5%) . The ban was judged illegal in court under European Directive, 2000/31 CE which is also applicable in Ireland.

If this ban goes ahead, Eircom and indeed Ireland will have a tarnished image on the world stage as a place where misguided efforts to protect revenue supercede freedom of communication. I would also be strongly considering abandoning my Eircom subscription, and I imagine many other people will too.

Please, make the right choice. The world is watching. Your decision will have an important impact on the future of the Internet in Ireland.

Yours faithfully,

*Insert name here*

Tags: blackout, eircom, Facebook, twitter