Record companies requested Eircom, a large ISP, to provide identities of 17 customers who were allegedly infringing copyright. The High Court ordered that customers’ identities should be passed to the ISP, based on the UK tort case of Norwich Pharmacal v Customs & Excise 1973 UKHL 6. The court also relied on the Canadian case of BMG Canada v Doe 2004 FC 488.
This Statutory Instrument implements the E-Commerce Directive (Directive 2000/31/EC) into Irish law. The Regulations include restrictions on liability, subject to certain conditions, regarding mere conduits, caching and hosting (Regs. 15-18). Non-liability is defined to include civil or criminal liability (Reg. 15(b)). The Regulations do not apply to gambling activities (Reg.2).
Self-Regulation/Voluntary Agreement/Code of Conduct
The Code governs the conduct of ISPAI's Members and may be amended from time to time by 75% majority vote of members of ISPAI. The Code mandates the development of acceptable use policies for participating ISPs which clearly set out guidelines for customers/users, including prohibitions on customers using ISP service to create, host, transmit material which is unlawful / libellous / abusive / offensive / vulgar / obscene / calculated to cause unreasonable offence. The Code also sets out procedures for dealing with complaints regarding third party content, illegal material and harmful material.
The main Act dealing with Copyright in Ireland. The Act has been amended a number of times and most of the amendments are available here. Of particular relevance to intermediaries, section 40(3) of the Act states that the provision of facilities for enabling the making available to the public of copies of a work shall not of itself constitute an act of making available to the public of copies of the work. S.40(4) states that where a person who provides facilities referred to in s.40(3) is notified by the owner of the copyright that those facilities are being used to infringe the copyright and the person fails to remove the infringing material as soon as practicable thereafter that person shall also be liable for the infringement. An additional subsection was added to s. 40 in 2012 – see European Union (Copyright and...