While most Internet Service Providers (or ISPs) try to walk the thin red line between fighting copyright holding monopolies and providing unbiased quality service to their customers, others go to great lengths to please the copyright overlords.
There are various degrees here. In France, Orange and SFR jumped in the board of the “three strikes” without much of a fight. British Telecom fought a double-sided battle and still pokes at technicalities while strangling peer to peer traffic.
But the Irish flagship Eircom fights a wholly different battle. As Ireland implemented a “three strike” law similar to France in a bid against piracy, Eircom barely put up an opposition and was quick to jump in the RIAA boat following political pressure. At the same time, it was the only one. And, to their surprise, they remained the only one. While Eircom was quick to make a deal with RIAA, all the other Irish ISPs won various legal battles to protect their customer base, with the obvious result that many of them slided over to the competition.
Hilariously (or not), Eircom has taken RIAA’s job of trying to persuade other ISPs to join in on restricting internet access of peer-to-peer users. Even more interestingly, the telco giant UPC was one of the first to say a direct ‘no’ to Eircom and RIAA.
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