The four major record companies EMI records, Sony BMG, Universal Music and Warner Music have brought a High Court action to try forcing Ireland's leading broadband service and telecom provider, Eircom, to prevent the illegal downloading and sharing of music over its network.  This also marks the first case where the music industry targets an Internet Service Provider rather than individual downloader’s like the RIAA consistently go after.

Going by the report, 20 billion music files have been illegally downloaded last year, with a ratio of 20 illegal downloads to 1 legal download.  As a result, the managing director of EMI Ireland and the chairman of the Irish Recorded Music Association claim that the music industry is experiencing a dramatic and accelerating decline in income as a result.  In the Irish market alone, there was a decline of 30% between 2001 and 2007, with this expected to get worse with the growing availability of broadband.

Not that long ago, Eircom refused to monitor traffic over its network, claiming that it would be a breach of privacy.  As a result, the record companies are now challenging Eircom's refusal to take on any measures, such as making use of Audible Magic, to voluntarily block or filter copyright infringing music transfers. 

Eircom's solicitors on the other hand claim that it was not notified of any specific copyright infringing activity, let alone had any legal obligation to monitor its network traffic.  However, the EMI managing director Mr Kavanagh said Eircom was well aware of such activity happening on a grand scale.

If the record companies succeed in getting Eircom to start filtering copyright infringing music, from what I can see, there will be many other issues that will arise besides privacy concerns.  To start with, other ISPs including in other countries throughout the EU may need to take on similar measures to avoid legal action and those who insist on downloading illegally will quickly move over to encrypted networks, which make it difficult, if not impossible for software filters to monitor, thus making such filtering measures ineffective and a waste of time, money, resources, etc. for the ISP.

Further info can be read in this source RTÉ news report.