IN THE PAPERS
In the Papers 9 December
09-12-2010
by Sylvia Leatham
Eircom to continue 'three strikes' policy | BoI backtracks on ATM fault charges
The Irish Times reports that Eircom is to continue its 'three strikes' policy in relation to illegal downloading by customers, despite a rival company's recent court case victory against the music industry. Eircom is currently processing around 1,000 notifications a week about detected copyright infringement but has yet to actually disconnect a customer's broadband. Despite UPC's High Court victory over several record companies -- which ruled that internet providers were not liable for a customer's illegal downloading -- Eircom will continue with the policy it formed following an out-of-court settlement with the same companies last year. Separately, Eircom launched an online music streaming service on Wednesday called MusicHub.
The paper also says that Bank of Ireland will not penalise customers who overdrew their accounts during a major computer fault this week. The bank said it would refund fees and allow an interest-free period for repayment of the overdrawn amount to customers who "inadvertently" withdrew more money than was in their accounts. "A small minority" of the bank's 1.2 million customers took advantage of the malfunction of ATMs on Tuesday evening by overdrawing their accounts, it said. The bank said its ATMs were working normally again on Wednesday after serious technical difficulties the previous day. However, problems were still being experienced with online banking, where only intermittent service was available.
The Irish Examiner reports that European mobile operators say they want Google, Apple and Facebook to help pay for the billions of dollars of network investments needed for their bandwidth-hogging services. European operators including France Telecom, Telecom Italia and Vodafone want a new deal that would require content providers to pay fees linked to usage. "Service providers are flooding networks with no incentive" to cut costs, France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard said. "It's necessary to put in place a system of payments by service providers as a function of their use." Richard was addressing the Le Web conference in Paris.
In more news about mobile operators, the Financial Times says that European travellers using their mobile phones within the EU could be allowed to choose a different network than the one they subscribe to at home, under plans that would disrupt roaming rules. In a consultation paper, the European Commission outlined the option of moving to a new roaming framework. This could be teamed with an overhaul of how operators negotiate the rates at which they carry each other's calls, by disallowing bilateral deals between operators in favour of a "spot exchange" open to all. The new model, if adopted, would allow customers attached to a single network in their home country to pick from a range of operators as they travelled to other European countries.
The paper also says that Youku, China's largest online video company, has raised USD203 million in an initial public offering (IPO). The company's shares surged more than 100 percent in early New York trading on Wednesday. Many investors appear to have bought into the view that such sites, which have seen soaring revenues, have huge potential in China's booming economy. However, some analysts have highlighted the risks that Chinese online video companies face, such as fierce competition in the market, users who are averse to paying for content, and rampant copyright violations.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is to revive a powerful privacy feature in Internet Explorer, similar to one it dropped from an earlier version of the web browser because of concerns about alienating advertisers. The software giant said the next version of its browser, Internet Explorer 9, will allow users to stop certain websites and tracking companies from gathering information about them. Users will be able to subscribe to "tracking protection lists", lists of the web addresses used by tracking companies. IE would then automatically block those companies from the user's computer.
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