High Court Quashes Data Protection Commissioner’s Objection To Graduated Response System

On 27 June 2012, Mr Justice Charleton gave his decision in the judicial review action taken by the Irish recording companies to prevent the graduated response system (GRS) agreed with eircom, the largest ISP in Ireland, being shut down as illegal. The decision quashed the Data Protection Commissioner's (DPC's) objections on administrative grounds, ie, inadequacy of reasons, but for now at least the decision permits the continuation of the GRS as one way of combating online copyright infringements in Ireland.

The DPC issued an Enforcement Notice on 11 January 2012 requiring that eircom discontinue the GRS following a subscriber complaint. The subscriber in question was wrongly notified of a copyright infringement on his account due to an error by eircom in correlating the dynamic IP address used in the copyright infringement with the correct customer account as eircom had failed to change its clocks back one hour for winter time. This led to 391 incorrect copyright