Some three million music tracks are downloaded from the Internet every day. This figure includes samples offered legitimately by record companies and also material from other sites which allow pirated copies of songs to be downloaded in breach of copyright. This illegal downloading is going to become more common following a decision of the US Federal courts in The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) -v- Diamond Multimedia to refuse to ban the sale of an "MPMan" device called the Rio. The Rio allows users to download music from the Internet in digital form (known as MP3 files) and listen to it as they move around - in the same fashion as a Walkman, hence the name MPMan.
These devices had been available on the Internet for some time, but the Rio was the first to go on sale in shops. Although the US music industry has indicated that it will appeal this decision to the Supreme Court, its prospects are not good. This litigation is similar to failed attempts to ban the sale of video recorders back in the 1980s (in Sony-v-Universal).
Using such a device in Ireland to download and play pirated music would be illegal, as in the US. However, enforcing copyright laws against millions of individual consumers is not practical, so the music industry has tried to limit the distribution of pirated music.
An attempt to stop the sale of devices such as the Rio in Ireland might well fail. In CBS -v- Amstrad the UK House of Lords refused to ban the sale of twin recording tape decks marketed by Amstrad. The reasoning was that although they might be used to pirate some music, there were other, legitimate uses to which the tape recorder could be put - such as recording music to which the user owned the copyright. If this decision were to be applied by the Irish Courts (as is likely), then it would seem that the sale of devices such as the Rio could not be prevented here. The European Union might legislate on this issue, but it is unlikely that the European position would diverge much from the American.
Although the Irish Copyright Act 1963 does offer some protection to copyrighted works distributed over the Internet, it is now obsolete. It is possible that an unscrupulous trader could find a loophole in the law and use Ireland as a base to distribute pirated music over the Internet. If this were to happen, it would be extremely embarrassing for Ireland and could be very costly economically.
Ireland has promised to reform its copyright laws. A new bill on copyright law has yet to be published and until such legislation is enacted, Ireland is in danger of becoming a haven for digital pirates.
Denis Kelleher: dkeleher@indigo.ie