In case you are wondering why you should care: firstly Ireland is the European headquarters and place of incorporation of many large tech firms - Facebook, eBay, Google, Microsoft etc. so Irish law is applicable. This is important for things like Facebook and data protection. Secondly when the matter of this case was discussed in the High Court (from memory I’m afraid) the judge gave the Data Protection Commissioner a serious rap on the knuckles, accepted entirely all record company arguments about economics (I don’t think their nonsense was actually contested in court, this is precisely what the amicus curiea would have done) and even added in some himself in a “everybody knows that…” clause of deeply contestable content. Thirdly the Irish economy is dependent on the employment from these companies so the government simply does what it is told. So we have judges who are fairly hostile to freedom on the internet, a government utterly beholden to large corporations, and what happens here has genuine weight across Europe.
We are beginning to wake up to this, but in general people have other, more immediate, worries - like finding a job, or worrying about how you are going to pay for things etc. - so it may be in your interest, if you can, to support these people.
Man, I’ve been trying to get that pesky <innovation> tag to work for years now!
The music industry has already lobbied successfully in Ireland for Internet blocking to serve their commercial interests. Here’s what you see if you try to visit thepiratebay.com via one of Ireland’s largest ISPs. They are huge and Irish-based rights campaigners are small, so they can get away with affronts to what people in other countries would regard as basic freedoms.
At least the litigation won’t happen as it’s outside the HTML tags.
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