The largest Irish provider will disable users for downloading pirated content

The largest Irish provider Eircom, as a result of pressure from the Irish Recorded Music Association, agreed to start disabling users for downloading pirated content. This will be done not immediately, but after the user is caught in piracy three times: after the third warning there will be a shutdown for a week, and after the fourth warning - for a year.

The decision to implement a three-warning system by the country's largest provider automatically commits smaller companies to do the same. Eircom itself notes that to launch the system, a new special software and hardware complex is needed, which the company does not yet have. During the development and testing phase of the system, the provider will disconnect 50 IP addresses of offenders per week from the Network.

In addition, the Supreme Court of Ireland ruled that the IP addresses of users are not private data and the provider has the right to disclose them, as well as use them for content analysis systems. Thus, organizations like IRMA, if disconnecting a user from the Network is not enough for them, will be able to go directly to him and file a lawsuit in his own name.

If Eircom in the coming months introduces such a system, then Ireland will be the first country with a functioning system of forced blocking for downloading pirated content. At present, the same systems at the legislative level have been approved in South Korea and France, but here they have not yet been implemented in practice.