Adrian Weckler has published a copy of the intended notification to be issued by eircom to its customers when accused of unlawful filesharing by the Irish recording industry (represented by IRMA). It is, as warning letters go, extremely polite.

I mentioned last month that this “three strikes” system agreed between IRMA and eircom was approved by the High Court (for data protection purposes) on the basis that IRMA would not know “that the infringer is a particular person living in a particular place in Ireland”. In fact, Charleton J. said that all IRMA will “know is that a particular IP address has been involved in the downloading.” However, it appears that DtecNet, who will collect IP addresses for IRMA, has the capability to collect more information than just IP addresses. Whether such capabilites are to be used as part of the IRMA/eircom system is not known.

My suspicions were raised by eircom’s statement on their website that IRMA will send notifications to eircom “containing among other things the IP addresses of individuals”. Such suspicions could be unfounded; for example, IRMA might be sending eircom a list of shared files along with the IP addresses and that information might not be personal data.

However, the template letter reproduced by Adrian says:

Some of the details of the notification supplied by IRMA are set out below …

Is it not strange that eircom repeatedly notes that IRMA will be supplying them with more details than are apparently necessary for the purposes of the three strikes system.

What are those details?