I'm not too savvy on technical computer language, but to me this has the potential to seriously fuck us up in Ireland. There's also civil liberties issues, maybe? I'd appreciate some different perspectives on this.

The Irish subsideries of the major record labels (EMI Ireland, Warners Ireland, Sony/BMG Ireland etc) took Eircom (Ireland's biggest landline phone and broadband provider) to the High Court. They wanted Eircom to be financially/legally responsible for all illegal downloading of music occurring on their lines, including P2P.

Here's the scary part, civil liberties-wise:
The case was settled out of court, so no legal precedent has been set. The agreement is:

The major labels will monitor P2P file sharing services and provide IP addresses that, I guess, 'belong' (is that the right turn of phrase?) to Eircom. The record companies will turn the IP addresses over to Eircom. Eircom will run a 3 strikes and you're out system, which means you get a warning notice to stop downloading/uploading music for each of the first two times you get caught, then on the third time you get your internet cut off completely.

I'm not personally with Eircom, but I rang my provider the other day, pretending to be interested in using their service, and asked them about this issue. They state that every provider in the country will end up following Eircom's lead.

This isn't mandated by the court. How can the record companies find my IP address? Can an IP address be hidden? Are their civil liberties issues here?

You can bet your arse if it happens here, and works, the rest of the world will follow suit.

Who the fuck uses P2P still?

Tryinmorning

But for serious, that sounds like bad news.

That sucks. But it's not the end of the world. Get creative.

We in Ireland might have to start hittin' the trading thing again for PJ DVD's. Torrenting might be fucked for us altogether.

Eircom aren't going to be monitoring what gets uploaded/downloaded-they'll take action on the IP addresses given to them by the record labels. I'm thinking, if we can hide our IP addresses from the labels, they won't know them to give them to Eircom.

Further research is required!

i thought they were thinking of doing something similar here