Broadband provider Eir have apologised to the owner of a well-loved cafe in Cork city – after mistakenly sending him a warning letter about music being downloaded on his premises.
Paul Walsh – owner of the 3 Little Piggies cafe on Union Quay – was shocked yesterday to receive the letter, which alleged that somebody had used his cafe’s WiFi to torrent the album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power by American singer Halsey. Today Eir apologised to Mr Walsh and explained that the copyright piracy warning he received actually only applies to residential customers – rather than business customers like himself.
A spokesperson from Eir said: “eir in conjunction with the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) has a longstanding “graduated response” system in place aimed at addressing music copyright piracy, where customers receive three warnings before any action is taken. This process was designed to prevent music copyright piracy and a similar process is now applied by IRMA and all of the major Irish internet service providers.
“eir’s “graduated response” process applies exclusively to eir’s residential customers and unfortunately, due to an error, a letter was mistakenly sent to an eir business customer. We have been in contact with the customer to apologise directly and are implementing changes to ensure this does not happen again. We encourage all users to be aware of copyright laws in both residential and business settings.”
The letter mistakenly delivered to Mr Walsh alleged that a copy of the Halsey album had been downloaded at precisely 4:45pm on December 12, 2024.
Mr Walsh said yesterday: “People are in here using the WiFi all the time. People with laptops in here, phones. A lot of our regulars would be signed into our network so they automatically reconnect. We get a lot of students and a lot of business people in here.
“It’s just part and parcel of cafe and hotel culture now.”