Promusicae, the Spanish version of IFPI, has filed a claim in a Madrid court against the file-sharing website Blubster. The claim alleges that the site showed "parasitic behaviour" and that it had "commercial intent" with customers paying "from $10,000 per month" in advertising fees.

According to a report in the LA Times , Blubster added a "layer of anonymity" to its file-sharing service, so that it is harder for content companies to track what its users  are doing - and that may well be the real reason why they are prosecuting.  The LA Times article also points out that the case raises similar issues to the Grokster case in the US and the Kazaa case, which was pursued in the US and in Australia. 

 And as anyone in the media industry knows, $10,000 isn't much in terms of  advertising rates - on or off-line.

The IFPI press release concerning the case is available here.  

Four Irish music companies are  taking legal action against Eircom, the Irish telecommunciations operator, on the basis that it has not installed technology to filter and block content which they allege is infringing copyright and illegal. According to a report in the Irish Independent , the companies had asked Eircom to install filtering software made by the US vendor Audible Magic, and it has told them that it is not in a position to do so. The report states that the legal action consists of a request for a restraining order, which would prevent Eircom from making available copies of allegedly infringing material without the copyright owner's consent. 

It's interesting that they have chosen this route. Filtering of Internet content at the network level  is rife with legal difficulties, not least of which is the potential to infringe people's fundamental rights to access information, and to privacy. 

The companies are the Irish subsidiaries of the four music majors - Warner, EMI, Sony BMG and Universal. They are also member of the Irish Recorded Music Association, a member of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries or IFPI, which is dominated by the four majors.