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You have to wonder if IRMA have thought through their high profile court case against Eircom to shut down access to Sweden’s Pirate Bay torrent site. Apart from further alienating their potential customers they have just really given a massive amount of free press to the methods and concepts of downloading via torrents, exposing it to people who would never have experienced it otherwise.

Less than three days after Eircom has closed the virtual door on the soon-to-be-legalised Pirate Bay than we can already find a home grown alternative in PirateBay.ie

What’s happened? It seems I’ve woken up in Cold War-era China! No, it’s actually Ireland in 2009 where large corporations are now seeking to control what citizens can view and access on the internet. Where is the law in all of this? Well, absent actually.

The original case has now been well discussed and reported across Irish and international media. Eircom in a world-first has come to an agreement with four major record labels represented by IRMA to suspend the internet access of any customer suspected of accessing copyrighted material ie music via Eircom’s network.

Full article here:

Internet users face shutdown over illegal music downloads

Unsurprisingly there has been a huge reaction from internet users:

Eircom to cut off Music File Sharers

Now that the dust is settling there is a growing movement to take action and protest against the government, Eircom, IRMA and of course the record labels behind this profit-motivated attack on personal freedom. Anybody who uses the internet in Ireland really needs to voice their opposition to these moves by Eircom and IRMA. Irish bloggers have been vocal, and other sites have been created especially to draw attention to the problem.

Music industry pushing for internet filtering as well as “three strikes” – what can you do about it?

As well as making your opinions known to all of the parties involved it would also be useful to contact each and every publicly listed member of IRMA by phone, post or email and let them know what we think of their organisation’s actions.

A list of members is available on the IRMA site here:

IRMA Members

More information is available at the following links:

Eircom Filtering the Internet

IRMA Threatens Irish ISPs

Blackout Ireland

A sample Blackout Ireland letter to the ISPs

An interesting story here suggests that due to competition laws in Belgium mobile networks are not allowed to tie phones to contracts. According to this site, this means that the new iPhone 3G must be unlocked by default. If this is true (and it seems to be) then there will be a lot of European customers rushing to Belgium either physically or online to grab an iPhone if they have difficulty forking over huge amounts of cash for restrictive plans in their own countries. i.e. o2 Ireland!

Belgium’s Mobistar doesn’t waffle over iPhone 3G plans:
Belgium carrier Mobistar has offered details on its suggested iPhone 3G plans.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iphone, Mobistar, Belgium, unlocked iphone 3G

The future will be widgetized! Your widgets will have widgets! Here’s another one.

Unlocked iPhone for Belgium in June?:

Clamour continues as Apple preps wider iPhone launch plans, no exclusivity

Have Apple finally seen sense and given up on the idea of network exclusivity which resulted in rip-off pricing by O2 Ireland? Time will tell but seeing as O2 Ireland haven’t followed their UK counterparts by dropping the handset price by £100 it may be a long time before we see reasonably-priced iPhone plans here.

Pat Phelan, the Cork based telecoms guru has taken a stance reminiscent of the “Michael O’ Leary School of PR” with his promise to drive potential iphone customers to Northern ireland in a bus to avoid o2 Ireland’s rip-off pricing. He makes a good point.

http://patphelan.net/irish-taken-as-fools-as-o2-ireland-iphone-package-comes-with-attached-paddy-tax/

However, much of the o2 tariff woes may now recede somewhat with the release of the “definitive” iphone cracking software, PWNage Tool.

http://www.iphone-dev.org/

In complete contrast to the market gouging being performed by o2 on Irish customers, T-Mobile in Germany has reduced the entry level iPhone to a mere 99 europes!

T-Mobile iPhone Pricing

Many people will be able to get past the queasy feeling as they stump up 400 or 500 quid for a shiny new iphone. What is less palatable is the insane tariffs that O2 want to impose on Irish suckers customers!

The Irish blogging community were quickly on the case, using all kinds of colourful words to describe 02 and their pricing policy – and rightly so!

Blog Reaction to iphone pricing in Ireland