Flour Power

One of Ireland’s biggest ISP’s, Eircom, signed an agreement with the four major record labels in which it agreed to disconnect customers if they illegally download music. This came as a result of a lawsuit initiated by EMI Ltd., Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music and Warner Music Group Inc. (via the Irish Recorded Music Association – IRMA) in which the labels wanted Eircom to install network monitoring equipment. The offenders will be given two warnings before being shut down.

So now, instead of having to go to court to get an order asking the ISP to shut off a subscriber’s connection, the music labels will directly to the ISP, making the whole process much faster. And the record companies have agreed that they will take all necessary steps to put similar agreements with other ISPs in Ireland, although there are no signs of that for now.

Now let’s be realistic. Illegal downloads will not stop. Ever! So why do they even bother? I think it’s quite easy to understand that music sales will not rise because of this. People who download illegal music wouldn’t buy it anyway, and there’s the even the chance that music downloads increase record sales. That’s what far smarter people than me have been saying for a while.

Anyway, the existence of quite a large number of alternatives might eventually make Eircom change their mind, or at least place some effort in trying to avoid shutdowns by being especially strict about the evidence presented by the labels. I guess they don’t want their customers running away to their competitors.

So much hype about this being a big thing, but I don’t think it will really make any difference.

Yesterday was the end of my first week here in Galway, and I think a brief summary is in order. I’ll jump to the fun part in a moment because I don’t want to bore you with the work details. I just want to mention that I’ve been very well received by my boss and all the co-workers, and that the work is running smoothly.

Now for the fun part, some numbers:

• 10+ street musicians, including: a saxophone player, a guy playing acoustic guitar under a shop’s door frame, a guy playing Green Day’s “Basket Case” on an electric guitar (with some kind of portable amplifier), and some blokes with a drumset!
• 6 pints of Guinness (I plan on keeping a counter on these);
• 6 pubs visited;
• 0 zebra crossings spoted;
• 100+ girls with short skirts spoted, even though it’s always about 5ºC and raining most of the time;
• 5 minutes of sun exposure;
• (X – 5) * 0,9 minutes of rain exposure (approximately), where X is the total number of minutes I spent on the street;
• 0 square centimeters of dry asphalt seen;
• 6 Portuguese people met;
• 6 trips to the supermarket (that’s what happens when you don’t have a car to carry everything in one go).

And since I like statistics, I started using Buxfer to register all the money I spend and get reports that will help me understand where all the money is going, because otherwise I may go bankrupt from all the money spent on vegetables and fruit… I’ll post some results of this experiment when I have some more data.

I’m also promising to share some of the hundreds of short skirts with you all, as a special “gift” to those living in countries much warmer than Ireland and still the girls have more clothes on than an Eskimo (yes, Portugal is in that group).

Over and out!