This cannot be passed, it will be the end of a free internet as we know it.

The music industry wants the Irish taxpayer to pay for lost sales??
Does this include Crystal Swing?

Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live… at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin’ to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!

This will not only affect net neutrality but all intellectual property rights, think pharma, plant breeding rights, etc … Gradualism… The slippery slope.. Undemocratic EU… one step closer to Irish revolt hopefully !!

Here is an excerpt from EMI v UPC regarding the Eircom v Pirate Bay decision:
“137. Having fully considered the issue of blocking a site as variant as The Pirate Bay, I regret that my previous judgment in the matter was wrong. The legislative basis enabling me to act in that way does not exist in Irish law as it exists in other European jurisdictions. The parties to that case may wish to reapply, or they may be content that The Pirate Bay should be blocked through the channels of Eircom. No order as to costswas made in that case, as the application was uncontested and costs werenot sought as a matter of consent.”

Basically, from what I have gathered, which hasn’t been a lot, is the government is exploring other avenues of piracy protection. Hopefully this doesn’t include ‘blocking’ sites from Irish ISP access as that has to be one of the laziest ‘fixes’ going.

I remember I used to worry about the climate or the project I was working on.
There’s no project any more and I’m too scared about how quickly we are losing our freedoms, financial and speech, to worry about climate.

The record industry (NOT the music industry, important distinction) are really some of the most despicable human beings. I’m not having my rights infringed upon because the biggest technological revolution since the printing press doesn’t suit you’re rip-off business model.

There are f*ckall costs to producing a record these days, and those costs are fixed costs alone. Costs nothing to make a copy of a file and very few people are buying actual physical media – just look at how well Virgin Megastores, Zavvi and HMV have done in recent years… Even Waterstone’s is giving way to the rise of the electronic media.

Their pricing is unjustifiable. And their refusal to enter into a more advertising-based revenue set-up is indefensible. Their attempts to exert an undue influence on the lawmakers in this country is inexcusable. God there is so much wrong with this concerted attempt to introduce SOPA/PIPA-style laws around the world…

I think this is a very good article on SOPA. http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html

Their the biggest shower of morons, stupid stupid government! Get your grubby hands OFF OUR INTERNET !

Sign the petition people – its at 19,996 (since 9.30pm last night) and counting!

well, it wont protect bono’s interests here. he has his business in holland

Think of all those CD’s that were bought a few years ago for around 16-20 euros now consigned to a box.

IMRO, IRMA, Eircom and all the others can suck on my Chupa chup sized balls.

I’m with Eircom (currently the only decent (speed-wise) ISP available to me, and use one of two basic proxy sites to access the pirate bay (daveproxy.co.uk and proxyuk.org).

When (not if) they decide to block other sites, I’ll continue to use proxies.

I suggest that any bit torrent users install Peerguardian 2 which is available here: http://www.filehippo.com/download_peerguardian/
Note: It is not compatible with Windows 7 x64, but there are other options.

For every stupid law they pass, someone will find away around it, and for every site they shut down, another will take its place.

All we need now is for the Americans to stand up to their elected officials on what is obviously bribery by large corporations: http://torrentfreak.com/white-house-petitioned-to-investigate-mpaa-bribery-120122/

This same law was just defeated here in the United States. I people at home stand up to the government and SOPA will fail in Ireland too. There were huge protest here against SOPA and PIPA in the last few weeks. People and websites stood together in protest and defeated SOPA.

I can not pretend to understand this article ,but I am wondering if you tube will still be available ?

Excellent. Another reason for me an IT graduate to leave this country…keep em coming lads…-_-

If you think SOPA is bad, check out ACTA. m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=p_bERAf5KAg

If it goes through, I will be terminating my ISP contract. Now that would be a interesting poll.

When I began studying for my IT exams… a long time ago, it was always driven home that the beauty of the internet was that nobody owened it, it was free. Obviously If you uploaded certain things you could find youself in hot water – but the emphasis was on the uploader, not the downloader.
It was something similar to an author writing a book that libels someone, millions may read the book but the courts wouldn’t be foolish enough to go after every reader, instead they go to the source, and take the author to court for libel. We now find that if someone uploads a song, CD or movie and millions even just VISIT the site its hosted on, well thats good enough to have it blocked from access here under this new law, nevermind that it may also have legitimate purposes.
If this law is passed, in this way, the internet in this country will become like a library with very few books, just those that an aged spinster librarian says are good for us, dusty old Agatha Christie and Enid Blyton type books. We may as well acccess the internet from a country like China or Saudi Arabia, it won’t be the internet we knew but a restricted corner of what it once was. Big Brother will tell us what’s good for us I suppose.

Why, oh why, are laws always worded so vaguely?

This looks like fun… http://pastebin.com/AvrKwQ3h
Also, sean.sherlock@oireachtas.ie <– Guy responsible. Email him personally.
I am sending him minimum 3 email a day until I get a PERSONAL reply (not some automailer).
Lets make our elected officials remember WHO they work for.

And lets make sure they dont pass this – no-one f*%ks with our internets!

So an Irish court is telling us that we have to introduce this blocking law wheras a European Court is saying that we might not have to do so. Maybe we might be in favour of Europe after all!

On a more serious note I don’t understand this sentence in the article: “In a 2010 decision the High Court held that European law required Ireland to introduce blocking into domestic law, and that Ireland was in breach by failing to provide for court ordered blocking.”

Surely the later paragraphs say that the ECJ ruling indicates that European law doesn’t require blocking so it could be argued that the 2010 decision is incorrect in its assesment of European law requirements.

I also don’t understand that if European law is so strict why hasn’t this action been taken in other European countries? Or if it has and their laws have been changed has there been any specific instances of blocking being done.

Before you lambaste me, here me out (I don’t post on TheJournal very often unless I feel I can contribute something).

As an author, I can see the logic behind wanting to help artists and other copyright holders protect their rights and earn the money they/we deserve on each download (yes, this includes digital books).

In publishing, industry standard royalty on traditional (ie print) books average 8% of the NET cost of the book, not the cover price. If you buy a book at Easons for €10, know that Easons has market it up 55% from wholesale (industry standard is 40% . . . and you wondered why books were so expensive there). That makes the wholesale cost of the book €4.50. The publisher takes off expenses from that figure and in the end, the author is making about 50 cent PER €10 sale. The author does the hard work of writing the book, only to have it torn apart by a publisher then sold onto a bookstore who’s making more money off the book than the author who wrote it.

It’s the same in the music business.

Knowing that our hard work is being downloaded and shared for free is a bit heartbreaking. We have bills to pay too. Especially as we keep getting heaped upon my more taxes and levies. Seems like a new one every day. And they want to start taxing artists too? On our 50 cent per sale?

** However, SOPA is not the way to go about it. Springing this legislation upon us and WITHOUT time to debate it or put it though proper channels is ludicrous. This law could pass with ONE MAN’S signature? No less, by the man who will be in charge of enforcing the law! There has to be another way to protect artist rights without infringing upon the rights of the people of Ireland. We don’t need more laws. And we don’t need to lose the freedom of the internet.

We also need more education and more respect for the artist. Why not pay artists for their hard work? Writing and making music are jobs just as much as an office worker or the guy who cleans the streets. We all have bills to pay. We have rents and mortgages. We have families to feed. And more and more taxes and levies to pay every day. Taking 50 cent out of my hand may not seem like a lot to you, but if 1000 people are doing it, that’s €500 . . . enough to pay a month’s rent . . . and just about what the average worker has lost over the years due to tax cuts. That €500 could make or break an artist. Could mean the difference between being able to have a roof over their head this month or living on Grafton Street.

Let’s not kid ourselves. These days, we’re all one step away from the Dole queues.

So you may not support HMV or Golden Discs, but support the artist. Buy their books or music from their own websites. Buy from sites like Napster who take a fee so they can pay artists their deserved royalties.

And let me ask you this — Would it deter you from using a torrent site if they charged a nominal fee per download so the artist could making something for entertaining you? And if so, why?

One last question . . . have any of us considered the amount of money being wasted in government over this? Is this whole SOPA thing just a way for Enda and Co to get our attention away from more important issues? Like our huge debt, huge loans and the b@st@rds who put us in this financial situation in the first place? How much our our taxes is going toward trying to push SOPA through so quickly? More money wasted on frivolous nonsense.

I think the sections could be qualified to say the injunction will only be granted where the third party has been been given an opportunity to remove the infringing content within a reasonable time and has failed to do so.

When music publishers and distributors owned the sole means of production and distribution of copied music they charged well for it. Now they want to charge people well for doing it themselves? If I work hard for six months to produce a piece of work , it’s not going to keep paying back for the next twenty years . Unlike patents, it’s not as if a musician needs to spend years on r&d . It looks like we’re heading towards a system of one off payments to artists (same as any other worker) and a distribution chanel owned by the people. It looks like ‘ rich’ will no longer accompany ‘famous’. Why should it?

I feel bad when I illegally download movies and music,
Then I watch cribs and I don’t feel so bad

Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live… at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin’ to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!

bagpipes i know, wrong island, but i come from…i don’t know it’s sunday…i’m not important…just wanted to be funny…hopefully i was funny

That is great – finally google will move the headquarters out of Ireland.

bring her back

http://tg4.ie/en/tg4-player.html