Ireland's Largest ISP Settles With Record Industry 222
An anonymous reader writes "In what has been billed as a world first, four music companies and Irish ISP Eircom have agreed to work together to end illegal music downloading. The Irish branches of the record companies (EMI Records Ltd, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Ltd, Universal Music Ltd and Warner Music Ltd.) brought a High Court action against Eircom last March which has resulted in this settlement after eight days of trial. Eircom will be implementing a three-step process — informing a subscriber that their IP address has been detected infringing copyright; warning the subscriber that if they do not stop they will be disconnected; and finally disconnecting the user if they fail to heed the warning. Which technology they will be using to spy on their customers is currently unknown. EMI and the other record companies have recommended US-based Audible Magic, which (among other things) claims to block copyright violating web content from sites like Youtube and MySpace. However, digital surveillance is nothing new in Ireland and Eircom may have already tested and implemented the necessary technologies."
Let' see how fast they will run out of customers (Score:4, Insightful)
Since they probably will go disconnecting people very soon. And that will end up getting another ISP to get connected again.
Re:Let' see how fast they will run out of customer (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you're right. The fact the Eircom rolled-over in just 8 days demonstrates that these companies have no interest in protecting our rights. For them it's all about the money, and they obviously took the cheapest route of not fighting.
Re:Let' see how fast they will run out of customer (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact the Eircom rolled-over in just 8 days demonstrates that these companies have no interest in protecting our rights. For them it's all about the money
Of course it is. It is not a company's job to protect your rights. A company's main purpose is to make money for its shareholders.
Laws are what are supposed to protect your rights, because that company has to operate within the law. If the company's actions are an abuse, then the law should be changed (or enforced) so that this does not happen.
Of course, I'm assuming you were referring to legitimate privacy rights here, not to a non-existent right to download material in breach of copyright.
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Of course, I'm assuming you were referring to legitimate privacy rights here, not to a non-existent right to download material in breach of copyright.
The right to act in any way which does not cause harm to others is far more substantial than any so-called "privacy right", recent attempts to undermine real rights in favor of exclusive copyright privileges notwithstanding.
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Ah I see. so if you pirate all your digital entertainment from now until the end of time, and everyone acts like you, there will be fuck-all impact on the jobs of people working that industry and thus it doesn't affect anyone?
Or do you only care if your actions affect people you know personally?
Nice attitude.
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Really? Keep your word. Swap a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. Look after those you love. Never stop learning. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Be polite. Is it so hard to think of honest, decent behaviour these days? That's very sad.
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Is it so hard to think of honest, decent behaviour these days?
You don't leave the basement much, do you?
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Also the summary is incorrect. Eircom will not be doing any monitoring of users traffic. Record companies will just various means open to them to track illegal downloads over the Internet (the usual shenanigans). They then provide Eircom with IPs that they allege are infringing (I don't think Eircom has to take their word for it - they'll probably just issue warnings/disconnects on the basis of how much downloading is occurring for that IP).
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Actually, it's not the cheapest route, as long as there's competition, or the prospect of competition.
If you completely upset your client, and they have somewhere to go, then they'll go.
If you upset enough people, then even more will go, as they'll anticipate that you'll do bad things and few will take their place (as you're known to be 'bad') from the available market of people looking for your product.
Oh, and you'll also have to pay for the policing action that upsets your clients too.
Net effect, you have
"Eircom rolls over" is not news (Score:2)
Despite being privatised for nearly 10 years, Eircom still has an ethos that is basically semi-state.
They haven't the entrepreneurial balls to stand up for themselves which is why they have been a follower rather than a leader for their entire existence, even though the deck was always stacked in their favour (i.e. owning the infrastructure).
This is just another example of them rolling over for fear of making a stand. This will get interesting when the other ISPs get involved.
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Re:Let' see how fast they will run out of customer (Score:5, Interesting)
Good thing then that their wireless passwords for the routers they give out are easy to crack
http://taint.org/2007/10/01/185837a.html [taint.org]
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So find out who is a user, hook up to their AP, download some songs and watch the ISPs drown in support calls because they disconnect innocent people.
It could serve multiple purposes. First, it teaches ISPs that collaboration with the MAFIAA (or its respective European counterparts) costs money, and while they may not care about customers, they care about money. Second, it costs the ISPs that bend over and ask for one more whack customers. "Good" customers, i.e. customers that don't use a lot of bandwidth.
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It'll be a clusterfuck, just be happy that most other countries will be able to point to "what happened in Ireland" as a precedent.
ie. An ISP which caved in to the RIAAs demands will lose a bunch of paying customers but P2P will continue unabated.
Bottom line: P2P is a Hydra.
A comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how people would react if the postal service were allowed to hold envelopes up to a light, say "theres a CD in there which could have illegally copied copyrighted data on it!" and then after doing that 3 times, stop all mail to your house without having to provide any actual evidence or give you a chance to prove your innocence.
It'd put a pretty big crimp... (Score:2)
It'd put a pretty big crimp in Netflix's business model. I suppose you could say it would be an attempt to close the "snailmail" hole in the law.
Re:A comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A comparison (Score:5, Informative)
Then don't download pirated content and you should be fine.
Oh really? Where exactly does TFA say you have to actually download anything to get disconnected?
But this agreement now denies Eircom's own customers all future access to due process when accused of infringement. All that is needed to terminate an Internet connection is three accusations from a narrow set of third-party companies.
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Not according to the RIAA, which recently argued (unsuccessfully, fortunately) that simply making a file available was an act of copyright infringement, even if no download had actually occurred.
In the current litigation involving MP3tunes [michaelrobertson.com], they're even arguing that simply linking to freely available files on their own sites is copyright infringement.
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"Three strikes" rules have come to Ireland in a sudden and unexpected way, as the country's largest ISP settles a court case brought by the music industry and agrees to take action on file-swappers. Repeat offenders will be disconnected from the 'Net.
To be a file-swapper you have to upload and/or download files.
Like, say, the ubuntu or gentoo live CD installer images? Or, worse, the DVD versions of same? Or how about fixes from Microsoft or IBM or Oracle or whatever (there are some free things out there - DB2 and Oracle both have free versions which some techies would likely play with at home to learn)? There are lots of very large files out there that could cause spikes in usage (say, oh, the 200MB of source code I downloaded so I could install KDE 4.2). The challenge, then, is for the RIAA to actually only c
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Are you just a plain old moron? The RIAA is not targetting someone who is surfing porn sites, they are targetting people who are downloading music they represent. They could careless if you download a song that your cousin created in his garage, they do care if you download Metallica's songs.
Based on this deal, they could just make up some IP numbers, and disconnect people randomly.
As for what they want or what they care about, it really doesn't matter if they have this kind of power over anyone.
Google "RIAA sues dead", and think about it.
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...until someone uses your access point to do it for you.
How many people do you think are actually capable of securing their wifi network?
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Yes, yes, but ISPs want to connect their customers quickly and hassle-free. So those things will be preconfigured. And since they don't want "unnecessary" support calls, and since people don't RTFM, chances are good that there will be no encryption or password, because that way it "works".
Re:A comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
This is where I like to point out there are also loads of false positives. Great example is me, over past few months I have gotten 3 letter saying I have downloaded movies on the eDonkey network, even listing the specific movies. Fine except I am the only one in my house who uses eDonkey and I know for a fact that I did not download that content they specified especially since 10 feet form the computer are at least 2 of the 3 dvds for the content specified. now in Canada they really don't do anything else, Rogers just forwards on the e mails and that's about it.
so with all these 3 strikes and you are out crap, I would not not have net access for actually not only not downloading content but for buying the DVD's. There are so many simple ways of avoiding these things of laying blame on others like spoofing ip's and then there are ways around it liek encription and proxies. so really when will they stop this kind of crap and find better ways to deal with the issues, Like servers set up for blanked non DRM subscriptions where I can download all I want for a monthly fee or some other method that would work. And get over the fact no matter what you do downloading content is not going away, you are just making people come up with new solutions to your issues and there are more people trying to get around the issues then make them. O and ya don't forget we still see record sales of dvd's/movies and music is growing online downloading in leaps and bounds so you can't tell me you are not making cash.
SCO is finely dyeing off why cant the RIAA and equivalent news
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I think that might get a little attention.
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A letter in your mailbox saying "we know that you
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It is funny you say that. Because currently there are laws in Ireland that mean as long as the ISP is not analyzing the data passing through the system then they could not be held liable for it. It was a big hullabaloo around the time of alt.sex.binaries with IOL it got mentioned.
Once they start searching data they will become liable for anything that goes through their system.
Eircom might also be one of the biggest but they are not the best ISP. They also do packet shaping so that if you try to watch a you
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[b]FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 3, 2001
Release No. 01-036
[/b]
please cvsup before posting news again, m'kay?
or buy a new battery for your CMOS.
Well there's always dialup (Score:2)
They don't censor stuff, and you have a few hundred different companies to choose from.
There's also satellite internet.
It won't work (Score:2)
But it will probably be annoying for a while, for a lot of people.
And then, every other country will have the response ready in case it happens.
does anyone still use them? (Score:2)
€ir$cum? i told their sales people where to stick it many years ago, UPC 20mbit cable with no caps is much faster and reliable and none of this nonsense
botnet (Score:2)
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It's a good thing that Irish computers never get infected with spyware, worms, or viruses, or such that could relay a music download.
Maybe I haven't kept up, but I'm not aware of malware in the wild that would cause your computer to download the latest Backstreet Boys CD.
The concept, however, does raise an interesting question. If "aiding and abetting" merits a "graduated response" on the part of the ISP, then why aren't those users participating in botnets subject to a similar response?
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If they're aiding and abetting the distribution of child pornography. I say put them in jail.
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authors of the malware do have SOME sense of morals
You are an idiot if you believe that.
bar of sope (Score:2)
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The people of Ireland are easy to push around. Apart from following a Deity on Earth religion the population are predominantly young people. A lot of "progressive" legislation that would face resistance in the rest of Europe is tried out on them. Its one of the most oppressive countries in Europe.
Botnets (Score:2)
Fun, fun, happy fun if a botnet decides to move a file around that triggers the filter.
How to disconnect 1/8th of a country.
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It's all a red herring (Score:4, Insightful)
As they already are when it comes to any encrypted connection to any number of swarms or usenet servers.
Re:It's all a red herring (Score:5, Interesting)
Watch how fast https becomes ubiquitous. When everyone is encrypting everything, the RIAA will be utterly powerless.
Wait until people go back to swapping data on disks.
Uploading a music collection onto a 16 Flash drive and downloading it at a friends house doesn't take very long, and transfers many thousands of tracks. I doubt the record industry is ever going to stop that.
It is all moot anyway, as in 20 years time, the people who grew up pirating music will be in Government.
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Watch how fast https becomes ubiquitous. When everyone is encrypting everything, the RIAA will be utterly powerless.
Wait until people go back to swapping data on disks.
Uploading a music collection onto a 16 Flash drive and downloading it at a friends house doesn't take very long, and transfers many thousands of tracks. I doubt the record industry is ever going to stop that.
Indeed. Never underestimate the power of the sneakernet, especially with tech savvy broke people. I already have a bandwidth of 2000 albums per visit.
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It is all moot anyway, as in 20 years time, the people who grew up pirating music will be in Government.
This line of reasoning is utter nonsense. The vast majority of people who download copyrighted materials (songs, movies, etc) do so because they are free. That is, they receive a direct benefit from doing so (no capital expenditure). When they are in government, they will receive a direct benefit for legislating against. That is, they will receive bribes and kickbacks for doing so.
This has nothing to do with a change in the morality of the culture. This is about simple self-interest.
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Plus they won't care beacause by then they'll have already downloaded everything worth having, twice over.
# Oh da-ray domma-doo domma-da, whackfol de daddy-oh...
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This line of reasoning is utter nonsense. [...]
I disagree, the parent poster has a point. The vast majority of top-level politicians today is out of touch with the Internet and its phenomenons and the information-sharing mindset it created - they're simply too old! To most of them a computer is a fancy typewriter with an included telefax machine and that thing where they can enter a word, click "Search" and get a list of other things which mention the word in question.
To them issues like net censorship, surveillance, digital downloads, net neutrality, o
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and the people currently making music will be stacking shelves and working as plumbers.
You better buy a guitar if you want to hear new music with this "teh music is teh freeee!!!!11111" business model.
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Not really. They join existing torrents and simply log all the IPs attempting to download from their seeders. The transport may be encrypted but youre talking to them asking them "Hello there sir, can I have piece 5949 of 'Metallica-Discography.rar.'" Blammo your ISP sends you a letter.
I doubt everyone will move to private trackers. In fact, I doubt they mind private trackers very much. Its impossible to stop the motivated and technically informed, but the harder it is for Joe Average to get music the bette
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Cue onion routing.
Why sure, it increases traffic. Why sure, ISPs won't like that. Let's see what's worse for them, tripled traffic or disagreeing with the IFPI.
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Of course the opposition (in my case, the RIAA) will try to find ways to outsmart thieves, but by the thieves' very existence it seems to me that they're smarter. So the next move might be that trackers get smarter and don't advertise IP addresses, instead converting them through some sort of encryption technology that would of course have to have modules for every TCP stack there is (rot 13 would probably w
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Watch how fast https becomes ubiquitous. When everyone is encrypting everything, the RIAA will be utterly powerless.
This will also create more motivation to move toward IPsec and IPv6 and increase use of Freenet, Tor, and other darknet technologies. All our communications should be encrypted anyway as a matter of privacy and confidentiality.
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Just as long as they don't start using self-signed certificates [slashdot.org] we'll be fine :)
Seriously though - the IRMA (Ireland's RIAA) will not need to examine the data between you and the sites you visit. They'll just need the fact that you visited a suspicious sounding url itself and then make a pretty big assumption. From that they contact Eircom with an accusation and (as Eircom do not actually requ
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That's never going to happen now [blacknight.com].
Doesn't matter (Score:2)
The thing with the RIAA, MPAA, and others, is that they are always behind the curve with technology, business models and ethics. (ha ha) I wonder what will happen to my internet connection when it's all encrypted, will they make that illegal too? Who does the Internet belong to? Us or Them.
At some point, if we let them, the Internet will be price tiered, monitored, and filtered to the point of uselessness.
I'm gonna laugh... (Score:2)
I'm gonna laugh when they go out of business from disconnecting a large share of their customers. I suppose they deserve it though.
But ... (Score:2)
It doesn't take that long to download Enya's entire catalogue!!!
In a recent statement from the RIAA (Score:2)
In a recent statement from the RIAA public relations VP, ....On behalf of our member companies, and associated groups across the globe, we would like to say to the people of the world:
We're sorry, we accidentally the whole Internet.
We would particularly like to apologize to people who live in those parts of the world where it is likely easy to shoot at our executives and not be caught. Sweden, we're still not happy with you.
Moving forward, we promise to only prosecute those individuals who admit to download
This is awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about it. The ISP is saying they are responsible for the content on their network. Now you can sue your ISP for wasting your resources on SPAM (especially all the illegal stuff).
Or anything else like if your underage kid views porn. Oops, ISP you should have blocked that!
Or somebody posts untrue comments about you in a forum from one of these ISP's. Forget about trying to find the person doing it, that's expensive and hard. Just sue the ISP into the ground!
(same goes for Comcast and all those other companies that signed up to monitor their network; they can kiss their neutrality goodbye because now they are liable!)
I've just cancelled my Eircom order (Score:3, Interesting)
RIAA vs IRA (Score:5, Funny)
Q: What's the difference between the RIAA and the IRA?
A: One of them used to be a bunch of terrorists.
I've said it before (Score:2)
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Good luck Ireland, time to call the ACLU in U.S. (Score:3, Insightful)
If this mode of operation were to come to the U.S.A. we should hope the ACLU and EFF challenge it. Here is why:
More and more, the internet is being used as an access gateway to the government in order to participate as citizens. Removing this access without due process would certainly be actionable.
Corporations MUST NOT be allowed to be judge/jury/executioner for citizens. There must be due process and a jury of peers for any such action.
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I suspect you are correct as I suspect the real push for this all engulfing state surveillance apparatus is coming also from the US. You see in the interests of protecting the Core [thomaspmbarnett.com], our little democracy will have to be sacrificed.
the innocent have nothing to fear .. (Score:2)
Why do the government need to spy on us to protect us from the terr'ists? Clicking here [indymedia.org.uk] may adversly affect your employment prospects, as well making any kind of public protest [wikipedia.org]
--
"Without privacy, there cannot be freedom, and without freedom, there cannot be personal or soci
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Darn those thieving IP addresses *shakes fist*
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A few weeks ago one of the record industry representatives was involved in a chat with newspaper readers. A journalist asked a question along the lines of "Suppose my neighbour hacks into my wireless network, and starts sharing files. Who wo
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Are you seriously suggesting that my coffee shop down the road that offers wireless for patrons is responsible for what their patrons do while online? If so, I do not want to live in your world. I leave my wireless wide open for others to use, personally. Giving something away is not a crime, nor should it be. I do not want to live in a world where I get convicted of a crime if I give firewood away for free, and someone burns a house down with it. You might though, it seems.
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Using that stick sounds equally messy for them and their competitors.
Re:What about fair use? (Score:5, Funny)
It wasn't profitable.
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It wasn't profitable.
New Sig Time!
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Yeah cos everyone knows all the music you can download can be bought on CD...
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Now, please explain to me where I can buy the Alundra [wikipedia.org] soundtrack? Because not every piece of music people want is available for sale at any price.
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Simple solution...go buy the CD.
Doesn't address the issue of false positives, due process, and abuses of the system (it becomes trivial to harm someone by implicating them if there isn't a robust due process).
1. If you're downloading music for free because it's not worth the money being asked for it, then you're either listening to the crappy music and/or not hunting down the best prices for your CDs.
The interesting thing is that people have to put so much effort into finding the music they want at a price they consider reasonable in a format that works for them. Because it takes so much effort ("hunting down" and so forth), people opt for the path of lesser resistance: torrents provide the most immediate access, the best catalog
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If you've been buying music for 30+ years, then you and are are probably of a comparable age. Also, just to be clear here, I buy my music--I've been buying records and CDs (and cassettes, and even a few 8-tracks!) for decades, and have built a modest collection of about a thousand albums in one form or another. All but a dozen of them or so get regularly played.
I also download music. For that matter, I also listen to the radio. Both of them are ways to find music that I want to buy. Artists who I like get m
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"So why the hell do I care about how bloated the music industry is or how much musicians get paid?"
Straight answer: Because the music industry is harming musicians more than it's helping them--especially the smaller and less commercial musicians. Because if it weren't for this industry, you would be able to find MORE artists that you like, and existing artists would be able to make a (better?) living from their art--which leads to more and better music.
Yes, there's far too much brilliant music out there tha
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Hell, what should I do? I don't even download anything because frankly, the crap that's produced today ain't even worth the bandwidth to copy it (and my bandwidth isn't metered, still it's a waste of a precious resource). Yet I have to endure having my connections being probed and monitored.
Just for the interest of the music biz? They can go to hell if they wanna, should someone land a plane in their headquarters I'll dance around it.
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I don't download music illegally at all, but I still think it's ridiculous to be disconnected because of it. It's an extremely trivial thing, whether it happens or not seems to have no effect on anything substantial; CD sales have gone down but online sales have gone up dramatically. Industry profits go up
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I already bought most things I've downloaded, and the things I haven't bought I wouldn't have if I hadn't downloaded them anyway. If I've paid for a bunch of CDs, and they've been destroyed, I believe I should be able to grab them online as replacements. Not all copyright infringers do so just because it's cheap. I refuse to purchase the same music over and over again, purely because the physical medium gets lost/stolen/damaged. You may think that's immoral in some way, I beg to differ.
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One Checkbox (Score:3, Interesting)
Forget Freenet. Most Bittorrent clients have a checkbox in the options somewhere that routes traffic through the Tor Network. This measure is going nowhere.
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Re:Freedom (Score:4, Funny)
Ireland: we put the "no" in "technology".
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I thought it was derived from Greek? The "ology" suffix is common and means something like words or discourse. Biology, psychology, etc. The "techn" prefix means something like "the way things are advanced".
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