Face The Music

I downloaded the latest OpenOffice release today. It clocked in at about 140Mb.

I also downloaded several podcasts. mostly from the BBC and NPR. Then I emailed some high resolution photos, each about 10Mb.

I mention this because Eircom reached a settlement today with the Irish Recorded Music Association.

Big Music doesn’t like the internet, because home taping is killing music.

Sorry, that was another decade’s controversy. Big Music doesn’t like the internet because file sharing is killing music.

The labels want to prevent the rise of music piracy, which they blame for falling music sales.

Under the deal, the companies will ‘use a service called DetecNet which poses as a P2P file sharer to target the offending downloaders and supply Eircom with the IP addresses of suspected copyright thieves.’

Detecnet is a Danish private detective agency.

But ecosystems evolve. Encryption can bypass many barriers, and even if Detecnet scares individuals away from P2P networks, there’s still the ancient and venerable usenet.

The music companies are on a hiding to nothing. So ultimately, will ISPs like Eircom start looking at heavy bandwidth users? And when that happens, how can it tell my legal downloads from a download IRMA disapproves of?