Sir, – I wish to congratulate Noel Whelan on his article about the proposed statutory instrument to be signed by Minister of State Seán Sherlock, and the media furore surrounding it (Opinion, January 28th). It is the first informed and balanced piece I have read on the subject in recent weeks.
I would like the people who are opposing it and accusing big studios and record companies of trying to police the internet to look a bit closer to home. There are almost 18,000 people involved in the audio-visual industry in Ireland and these are the people whose livelihoods are threatened by illegal downloading. In many cases the forecasted income from home entertainment dictates whether a film or TV project is viable or not.
There is hardly a single music or film retailer in Ireland who is not under severe threat of closure due to a combination of economic weakness, high overheads and piracy. A large number of them have gone under already and more are likely to follow. Expecting them to work in an environment where content is illegally downloaded without any recourse allowed to the content owner in the Irish courts is ridiculous. Every other EU member state has recognised this fact, but for some reason there is a vociferous argument going on in Ireland that we shouldn’t. – Yours, etc,