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So, the Republic Of Ireland is leading the global with news just out that , specifically peer-to-peer (P2P) sites, making it the first ISP in Europe, if not the world, to do so. So from now on, if you live down south you're going to have to pay for your music, movies and games just like God intended. That's that solved then, sure it was great while it lasted.

At this stage, Eircom's decision is still only a pledge but it's exactly how they will begin to implement their policy which will prove most interesting. We do know however, it's neither going to be cheap nor straightforward. It's easy enough to restrict access to certain sites, but there are ways that anyone with average computer skills can circumvent these blocks and, as they block-off one leak, another springs open. How are they going to stop people downloading from legitimate sites such as or for example? How are they going to stop people using and to swap music on a one-to-one level? It's just not possible, is it? I'd imagine the software needed to cover most of these methods of sharing is similar to that which ISPs use to prevent access to child pornography, software which is reportedly so expensive and difficult to deploy that amazingly, . So if the ISPs won't 100% prevent access to this kind of stuff, what hope have the record labels in getting them to prevent the illegal sharing of music?

have reportedly buckled out pressure from the who were threatening court action over illegal file-sharing on their network. The size of the market we're talking about here is so small it's almost laughable. , half of Ireland's 4m plus inhabitants have internet access, with Eircom providing services to 57% of them, so we're talking a little over 1m users' services here. Subtract from that figure the number of users who don't actually illegally fileshare and we're left with a couple of hundred thousand users. The cynical among us will look upon it as Ireland being used as a testing-ground for other larger countries with much bigger ISPs to assess the implications of such a strategy, i.e. the bottom line. The record companies will do everything they can to protect their bottom line, but so will the ISPs. Looking at it from the other side of the fence, what if ISPs were suddenly to turn round and start asking the record companies for money because it's their product hogging all the bandwidth? with with the extra demand being placed on them as a result of the huge amounts of data-rich content being streamed.

though it remains to be seen how many of them will meet their demands. They are also reportedly adopting a 'three-strike' policy which cuts off services to individual offenders who download from illegal sites. This is a policy which last year was implemented by a number of UK ISPs in a deal with the before eventually, and perhaps inevitably,Ìý.

The whole thing is such a mess, it's difficult to see a viable solution and with services such as and more recently popping up all the time it may soon reach the stage where we'll have access to all the music we want for free, legally. These are sites which give you unrestricted access to millions of songs for free, that you can also share with your friends and you won't get a criminal record for using. The difference being that , although in Last.Fm's case .

While it's easy to criticise, coming up with solutions to the problem is a more difficult proposition. One of the most forward-thinking solutions brought to the table however, is . Under their proposals, people who live on the Island would be able to download unlimited amounts of music in return for a 'broadband tax' of around £1 per month with revenues eventually filtering down to the copyright owners. These are the kind of initiatives we need to be seeing more of as opposed to the draconian blanket approach currently favoured by the record companies.

The fight against internet piracy has been running for over 10 years now with no sign of the record companies defeating the pirates. Every approach so far has failed and will continue to fail until they realise that it's not a fight that can be won by carpet-bombing the perpetrators, by prosecuting children or by forcing companies to disconnect their customers. The longer the record companies adopt these strategies the worse it's going to get and the less important their increasingly tenuous role in the distribution of music will become.