Eircom To Block Users From Connecting To The Pirate Bay

Yourtechstuff.com is reporting that Eircom plan to block the pirate bay affective from 1st September.

One wonders how they'll do this at the very least I'd speculate that they will likely be a restriction on their DNS servers, in which case simply changing your routers/computers DNS servers to another DNS provider like opendns.com should resolve this easily.

Users on the popular Irish message boards boards.ie are already posting about this new decision by eircom.

Read the Yourtechstuff.com story below or Irish Times story by clicking here.

So apparently, Eircom is to block The Pirate Bay to its customers, starting September 1st. Or so claims the solicitors for the major music labels, who have sent a legal letter to rival ISPs asking them to do likewise.

At least one of those ISPs, Chorus NTL, is to "firmly resist" the request by the record labels to block The Pirate Bay, according to people in there. Not sure of BT Ireland's reaction yet.

Update (15.45pm): Eircom will indeed put the block on, a spokeswoman for the operator has just told me. She said that the company intend to hold a "briefing" on the matter on August 31st. I reckon that might change now.

Update: here's a requested UPC (Chorus NTL) statement on the matter:

UPC can confirm it has received a request from solicitors acting on behalf of the Irish divisions of EMI, Warner, Universal and Sony music companies that UPC blocks access to the Pirate Bay website.

This request is separate to ongoing court proceedings between these same companies and UPC with respect to their demand that UPC take certain actions in relation to subscribers allegedly involved in illegal music downloads.

This latest request is apparently further to an unopposed court action between these companies and eircom whereby eircom was ordered to block access to Pirate Bay as of September 1, 2009.

UPC has informed the rightsholders that there is no basis under Irish law requiring an ISP to block access to certain websites and that it will not agree to a request that goes beyond what is currently provided for under Irish law.

UPC has always taken a strong stance against illegal activity and continues to work with rightsholders where there is a legal basis to do so. It takes all steps required by the law to combat specific infringements which are brought to its attention.

Should the rightsholders proceed with their threat of legal action if UPC fails to block access to Pirate Bay, UPC has every intention of vigorously defending its position in Court.

Eircom Pole removal fees

So I was browsing boards.ie the other day and I came across this interesting thread about a land owner looking for eircom to move a pole but eircom are looking for crazy money. (350e for plant survey and removal fees on top of this)

Well it reminded me of this story Today FM covered back at the start of July 2009...

Hi Ray and Gang,
I thought I should forward you on this picture as possibly the worst location yet for a telecom pole, the pole is placed just in front of the window and door of my parents' new house, and was put in place after planning permission was granted but before houses were built, the best bit... Eircom are now asking for €16,000 to remove the pole. And my parents are unable to connect to water and sewage with the pole in place. The house is in Strand Street in Wicklow town.

Love the show ,
Jillian.



So basically eircom erected a pole infront of this property on the basis that a house was going to be build and eircom failed to check where this house would have its windows.

Clearly no eircom employee actually came to look at the house after it was built to see what a stupid mistake they had made.

Eircom receive Denial of Service (DoS) attack

So Eircom are reporting that "hackers" have attacked their network, rte.ie reports

A number of Eircom customers had no internet access or experienced delays in browsing due to a suspected attack by hackers last night.

It is the second time recently that Eircom services have been affected by an 'unusual and irregular volume' of traffic directed at the site.

Eircom acknowledged many of its customers have recently experienced significant congestion while trying to log onto the internet.

Service was down for some customers from yesterday afternoon, but the company said it was fully restored by 11.15pm.

Eircom said it is too early to confirm an attack by hackers, but it believes that an unprecedented volume of traffic was deliberately directed at its network in recent days.

In the US, the Department of the Treasury and the Secret Service experienced similar problems when high volumes of traffic were directed towards its sites on 4 July - in what is believed to have been a coordinated cyber attack.

Eircom said its technical specialists have and are continuing to work to restore service and determine the source of the problem.

Eircom sees profit plunge

Eircom's third quarter results show an operating profit of EUR69 million, down 27 percent from last year's EUR95 million.

Meanwhile, revenue fell 5 percent to EUR488 million. The company lost 22,000 telephone customers in the quarter, but garnered an extra 19,000 broadband subscribers.

On the plus side, profits at Eircom subsidiary Meteor jumped 17 percent to EUR35 million; however revenue at the mobile operator slipped 2 percent to EUR117 million.

In line with the experiences of rival mobile operators Vodafone and O2, Meteor's average monthly revenue per user fell 6 percent to EUR37.52 over a year.

Given that Three have been effectively handed the Governments Broadband Rollout contract this may hit Eircom hard in both the fixed line ADSL market and "Mobile Broadband" ala Midband market with Meteor's "Broadband" packages.

Once Three begin rolling out their Midband packages across all of Ireland and they pump up advertising on it it will be interesting to see how this will hit Eircom's profit margins even further.

We all think eircom sucks but compared to Three I'd rather see the people of Ireland receive a ADSL Broadband service instead of a Three Midband (Mobile Broadband) service which is frankly not suitable for on-line gaming, VoIP etc.

Some content Taken from enn.ie

Ireland drops in OECD Broadband rankings

As discussed in the Ireland Off-Line forum on boards, Ireland has slipped in the OECD Broadband rankings PDF Available here.

This is not a good thing for anyone and should be a major concern for the government, of course its hard for the general public to get the facts when journalists report everything arse ways!

Will things improve in the short term....I very much doubt it!