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Eircom admits its three-strikes hasn’t reached strike three
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 17 March 2014
Irish internet service provider Eircom, which unusually instigated a three-strikes anti-piracy system voluntarily (albeit as part of a legal settlement with Ireland’s record industry), has admitted that it is yet to disconnect a customer for file-sharing.
Eircom has been operating a so called ‘graduated response’ system for combating piracy for four years now. Under its system any customer who refuses to stop accessing illegal sources of content after receiving warning letters from the net firm could find their internet connection disabled for up to a year. Though, of course, because the system is only operated by Eircom, they could just switch to another ISP if that happened.
It emerged last week that Eircom is yet to use the sanction part of its three-strikes system, with a spokesman quoted by the Irish Independent as saying: “We are continuing to implement the graduated response process. We haven’t, as yet, disconnected anyone. We don’t share details on the number of letters issued”.
Of course we can’t tell whether the lack of any strike three action is because the net firm is nervous of going through with the disconnection threat – meaning, as it does, they’d likely just lose the customer – or because the warning letters asking users to cease and desist from accessing file-sharing sites are working. Or maybe Irish file-sharers all switched to an Eircom competitor as soon as three-strikes was introduced.
