David Higgins

Yesterday Ireland’s largest ISP Eircom announced that they would start blocking the website The Pirate Bay from September.

Pirate Bay, the file sharing site is to be restricted on Eircom only and UPC (my faster and more reliable ISP) is defiantly opposing attempts by Music organizations to restrict the site on its network.

In a statement UPC said that there was no obligation on them under Irish law to restrict access to any website and that they would fight in court to protect their position. UPC and BT are due before the courts soon to adopt a 3 strikes rule on peer 2 peer downloads.

This move by Eircom surprises me as The Pirate Bay is due to become a legitimate content site in the coming weeks. I understand that this may not go ahead however what if it does, will Eircom lift its ban?

Also what about other sites.

Mininova is another prominent file-sharing site and to only ban The Pirate Bay would just move users to alternate sites such as this one. Thousands of torrent tracker sites exist and if one is shut down or blocked, another one will just take its place.

Then there’s the general file sites. Places such as Rapidshare and Megaupload are used for illegal file-sharing however more than half of its use is for legitimate and legal files such as free software and documents. Sites like these would be used regularly by businesses and law abiding citizens. Will these sites be blocked too???

And then there’s YouTube! The world’s largest video sharing site also contains millions of songs. Whether in music video format or just the song with a slideshow or album cover the selection is just as wide as on Pirate Bay or Limewire. Simple websites and desktop software can take the YouTube video, extract the audio and then convert it to MP3 format. This is just as effective, if a little more complex however it just shows that file-sharing is unstoppable and to challenge it is a waste of time.

Will the ban on Pirate Bay stop illegal file-sharing? NO!

Today should have been the governments day. Big Announcement, invite the press and attach Eamonn Ryan’s grin to his face. The story was big, 50 Technology Jobs and 300 from a new upcoming tech firm. All went to plan however it’s place in the headlines was soon to be lost later in the day.

By the evening news nearly 300 jobs had been shed at Intel, Ireland’s largest multinational. Previous redundancies were to be mandatory however a drop in demand for their services has been blamed for this mandatory cut of posts.

300 jobs created, 300 jobs lost all in one day.

I find it hard to believe that Intel has seen a drop in sales. On this same day Apple has announced another record profit!

The American tech giant shipped 2.5 million Macs in its 3rd quarter and they all contain Intel chips.

5 million Iphones and 10 million iPods also helped Apple see it’s best non holiday quarter in history. Apple really is a company that knows how to ride out the recession.

It makes me wonder whether Apple will lower its prices anytime soon. I forked out €1200 for this MacBook that I’m writing on and their phone would set me back half of that!

I bought my laptop during the boom however I can’t even envisage myself getting a new iPod in these times and there are many other people who are even more strapped for cash. How then does Apple produce an $8 billion profit?

The answer, I don’t know!