So after pressure from record companies such as EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warners (no doubt K-Tel and Ronco are in there too), Eircom will block access to the Pirate Bay from September 1st.

However, other ISPs are not following suit. BT say “there is no legal basis for such a request” while UPC say “UPC has informed the rightsholders that there is no basis under Irish law requiring an ISP to block access to certain websites and that it will not agree to a request that goes beyond what is currently provided for under Irish law”

So why are Eircom buckling under the pressure? It’s because they are fucking pussies, that’s why.

And fuck EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warners for continuing to miss the point completely. Perhaps if they worked as hard at providing a ‘cure’ for the problem of illegal downloading instead of misguidedly trying to prevent it they’d be better off, consumers would be better off and the artists would be better off. When music is easy to buy online, as iTunes Music Store has shown, then people will buy online.

It’s unbelievable how short-sighted they are. They killed off Napster, up came AudioGalaxy, they killed off that, up popped Torrents and sites dedicated to music Torrents and while one of them, Oink, famously got busted many others thrive. I doubt there’s an album released (or some unreleased) that isn’t available within a few seconds of searching if you know where to look. Yet the record companies are still trying to shut the stable door long after the horse has bolted.

And Eircom – they have decided that pressure from lobby groups is enough for them to dictate what people can and cannot look at on their network. What’s to stop someone pressure group, we’ll call them CRAP (Christians Rail Against Pornography), bullying Eircom into blocking access to sites with boobs on them? Will Eircom stop access to sites like Rapidshare or YouSendIt which are used to share music, films, programs and much more – but which also have very many legitimate uses? Where does it stop and who decides what’s acceptable? It seems that if you shout loudly enough at them they’ll do what you want if it makes you go away.

Eircom have set a dangerous precedent here. They’ve shown they’re essentially spineless, there’s no basis in Irish law for what they’ve done but they’ve done it anyway. If I were an Eircom broadband customer I’d be cancelling this morning and signing up somewhere else.

Eircom last night confirmed that a ‘catastrophic loss of internet’ was suffered by a large group of users due to what it called ’some shit or other’.

“We don’t really have the first fucking clue”, said a spokesman this morning. “All we know is that turning our super-router off, waiting 10 seconds and then plugging it back in didn’t seem to work. We even gave it a few slaps on the side like you used to do with an old telly but that didn’t fix it either. I’m not sure what else people expect us to do”.

Industry experts think the problem may be that the piece of string between the two broadband tin cans has become frayed but with a bit of luck they can fudge a solution which will see the mega-high speeds of up to 2mb restored to affected users.

This is not the first time Eircom has suffered connection problems. Last week a suspected DOS (Dragons on Switches) attack directed people looking for Facebook and MySpace to sites featuring ladyboys and members of B*Witched engaged in over-18s material, while in early January a hard drive failure saw the whole internet restored from a 1999 back-up.

“I never want to see another Times NewRoman blue link which goes purple when you click it again”, said one irate customer.