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Ireland is set to become one of the first EU countries to lose access to a democratic Internet as Eircom is about to start filtering the packets of data that are carried by its network and begin blocking access to certain sites based on the claims of Sony-BMG, Universal and Warner and EMI. These four mega corps have banded together under the Irish sounding moniker of IRMA (the Irish Recorded Music Association). IRMA plan to use the civil law technique of court orders to filter out websites it does not want Irish Internet customers to be able to access. Court orders are much easier to obtain than pressing a case via criminal law and require significantly less proof. Eircom have recently agreed that they will not oppose any such court order from IRMA, no matter how baseless the claim is. This means that there is little to stop the Big Four from picking off websites it would like to have blocked and effecting a censorship of the Internet by a group of companies, the like of which has never been seen before within Europe. Criminal law has been used by countries in order to protect against genuinely criminal activity such as child pornography. However, Eircom's pact with the Big Four sets a precedent - it allows commercial entities, and not criminal law, to decide what we can and cannot access online.

The first site to be blocked is the infamous Pirate Bay, a Swedish based website, which provides a list of sites where Internet users can visit to swap files - a site which the music and movie industries claim is causing them to lose money. This is to be the first of many censorships against Ireland initiated by the IRMA, who say that this "will be the first website targeted under its new censorship regime before it moves unto 'similar websites.'" They did not say exactly how much of the Internet they ultimately wish to censor.

IRMA proposes to potentially spy on everyone's Internet activity and compile a secret list of IP addresses belonging to people who 'they say' are infringing their copyright. They will then give this list to Eircom who later cross-match it with their customer records and start issuing warnings to any customers that the record companies have accused. The way the music industry compiles this secret list is by actually putting up files for sharing and then tracking people that come into contact with those files - in civilised parts of the world this is known as entrapment. Entrapment - not by the police or criminal laws of the country - rather entrapment by a commercially motivated group using court orders to advance its agenda. Let us consider an example of where court orders are used in an offline domain - for example a court order that bans one person from coming within a certain distance of another person, such as in a stalking civil law case. What IRMA are doing is the equilavent of the stalkee, if there is such a word, obtaining the court order and then going out of their way to ensure that they are always within a few metres of the person they took an injunction out against.

The EU's position on this kind of activity is that it can be a violation of your rights, as the record companies are recording and exchanging your IP address, which is 'personally identifiable information'. It is only legal to collect and use such information if IRMA inform the person they wish to surveil and say exactly what information is being recorded and how that recorded information is to be used. IRMA are not complying with this. The Italian government views this as an illegal activity. Swiss, German and other European countries all had similar findings. The problem is that this kind of activity goes far beyond the remit of anti-piracy measures. This sets a precendent to have citizens continuously monitored and controlled in terms of what they can access on the Internet. And because of its pact with the Big Four, Eircom will be one of the first big European ISPs to betray the end user's ability to move freely about the Internet.

But there is hope. A campaign is being launched tomorrow called Blackout Ireland. This is a grassroots campaign by concerned Irish Internet users to highlight awareness of the grave threat of Internet censorship at the whim of individual companies. A similar campaign had success in New Zealand when their citizens were faced with such a threat. We have all seen the catastrophic consequences that occur when a lack of transparency leads to corruption in our banking sector, our politics and our economy. We need a strong vibrant I.T. sector in Ireland to help the economy recover and bring a return to growth. The Internet is central to this and we need our Internet to be transparent. Act now to save it and support the Blackout Ireland campaign. At a minimum you can change your Facebook and Twitter avatars to the Blackout Ireland avatar. You can also contact your politicians and Internet Service Providers and register your concern. For more information checkout BlackoutIreland.com and defend yourself against coporate censorship in Ireland.

• OpinionPiece
• Eircom
• Censorship
• Blackout
• Ireland