Irish paper folds, but it's no O'Rigami ...

In "'Mail' sued over 'Tribune' cover" the Irish Times reports that the Irish Mail on Sunday is being sued for passing off over its alleged “brazen and outrageous” publication last month of a fake copy of the Sunday Tribune, only days after the latter went into receivership.  Lawyers for the receiver say the newspaper is to seek damages, including “exemplary damages” over this “direct attack” on the goodwill of the Sunday Tribune.

The Irish Mail on Sunday however described the Sunday Tribune as “a dead man walking, if it was even walking” at the time of the disputed publication in early February, claiming that the goodwill of the Sunday Tribune was not even worth the €40,000 cost of the libel insurance which would have been necessary to publish it.

Mr Justice Peter Kelly has said that he would transfer the proceedings to the Commercial Court since the action was admissible within the rules relating to passing off cases, there no longer being a monetary threshold for passing off actions.  The trial has been listed for 21 March.

tytoc collie, aided by legions of amicable Irish IP enthusiasts, of which Gemma O'Farrell is not the least to be reckoned with, suspects that he will have more to report to readers of this weblog in due course.

Origami here
Irish origami, or what to do with your newspaper when it folds, here

"Anything you can do, we can do better?" Ireland joins the copyright review queue

St Columba started the trend, daringly copying a restricted-
access public domain work.  If he lived today, would he be
the patron saint of Google Book and Wikileaks?

It's not just the Brits who have decided to reassess their IP rules in the not-quite-so-new-any-more internet age: the Irish are doing it too. In "Firms hampered by failure to keep law up to date with internet age", eminent scholar and lawyer TJ McIntyre argues in the Irish Times that much of the Irish law governing the internet is archaic, restrictive and hampers growth, which explains why the Taoiseach (Irish for 'prime minister' or, the Kat understands, an old Erse term for 'man who graciously accepts the credit when things work out but gets first choice at blaming someone else when things don't') has announced his support for a review of European and Irish copyright law, stating [and does this sound familiar, anyone?] “it is time to review our copyright legislation, and examine the balance between the rights holder and the consumer, to ensure that our innovative companies operating in the digital environment are not disadvantaged against competitors”. The article continues:

"This is a welcome development for the Irish internet industry, which has argued for some time that copyright reform would be desirable. It follows a seminar last month, hosted by Digital Rights Ireland, Google and the Institute of International and European Affairs, where speakers from businesses such as Boards.ie, UPC and Google pointed out the practical problems copyright laws can create.

In particular, one of the reasons why the US has been so successful at encouraging internet innovation is that US copyright law includes a doctrine known as fair use. This permits the use of portions of a copyrighted work so long as the normal economic exploitation of the work is not undermined.

Irish law, by comparison, has no equivalent to the flexible doctrine of fair use. Instead, there is a finite and restrictive list of exceptions to copyright, hampering the ability of Irish businesses to develop new forms of internet services.

Reform of the law – if it addresses this and similar issues – will help promote the growth of new businesses in this area and avoid the loss of jobs to more internet-friendly jurisdictions, such as the US.

However, this is not a uniquely Irish development. It follows action at European Union level and in other countries such as Britain. Last month, David Cameron said UK copyright laws were out of date and needed to be reviewed to “make them fit for the internet age”.

The Irish Government will have to move quickly to avoid falling behind Britain and other European bodies that have taken the initiative in this area.... [the article then discusses the need to reexamine online rules for defamation]".

tytoc collie thinks that the timing of this review is brilliant.  Since Ireland's copyright laws so closely resemble those of the UK, both pro- and anti-copyright lobbyists can use the same submissions twice over, so long as they remember to get the name of the right country at the top.  Merpel says, I'm just trying to imagine where Google would be today if it hadn't been restricted by all these tiresomely old-fashioned copyright laws in countries like the UK and Ireland; it would probably be quite a big business now, not just a little hole-in-the-corner search engine ...

Irish Patents Office web page -- which at the time of posting of this item has no details of the review -- here

Thanks to Deirdre Kilroy (LK Shields) for the link!

Why be creative if you can be a mere conduit?

"Music labels lose downloads case" is the title of an article in today's Irish Times which has been thoughtfully sent to tytoc collie by his Irish friend Gemma O'Farrell.  The story is a sequel to the efforts made in Ireland to get a "three strikes" policy up and running in the Emerald Isle in respect of unauthorised copying and file-sharing by internet users. Big-name recording companies Warner Music, Universal Music, Sony BMG and EMI Records brought an action in which they sought to have unauthorised internet copyists identified and then cut off, but in today's High Court judgment Mr Justice Peter Charleton held that there was no legal basis for such relief in Ireland.

According to the press report, the judge agreed that online infringement not only undermined the recording companies' business but "ruins the ability of a generation of creative people in Ireland, and elsewhere, to establish a viable living. It is destructive of an important native industry". However, there were no laws in place in Ireland to enforce disconnections over illegal downloads despite the record companies’ complaints being merited. He also said this gap in legislation meant Ireland was not complying with European law.

Meanwhile defendant internet service provider UPC predictably said it would work to identify and address the main areas of concern in the file-sharing debate, doing everything it could, short of actually being helpful:

"UPC has repeatedly stressed that it does not condone piracy and has always taken a strong stance against illegal activity on its network. It takes all steps required by the law to combat specific infringements which are brought to its attention and will continue to co-operate with rights holders where they have obtained the necessary court orders for alleged copyright infringements. Our whole premise and defence focused on the mere conduit principle which provides that an internet service provider cannot be held liable for content transmitted across its network and today’s decision supports the principle that ISPs are not liable for the actions of internet subscribers".

It is not yet known what effect this decision will have on ISP Eircom's agreement with record labels, which it settled on out of court last year. Meanwhile the recording companies have consoled themselves with the small solace that for once they are characterised as occupying the moral high ground.

tytoc collie can't help feeling sorry for the recording companies and for those whose employment and well-being depends on them, but the technology that facilitates illicit downloads and file-sharing is now available and isn't going to disappear.  New business models for investing in and promoting recordings aren't going to magic themselves into existence, and a public that has become addicted to free access to whatever it wants on the internet isn't willingly going to pay. The old order is dead, but the shape of the new order has yet to crystallise.  Meanwhile, it looks as if it's better to be a conduit than a creator.

Merpel wonders why the full text of this decision is not yet available on BAILII, and indeed why there have been no Irish High Court cases posted on BAILII since August.