Eircom and other communications service providers such as NTL and O2 came under renewed pressure yesterday as the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) threatened to injunct them over phone users' "consistent and illegal breach of copyright laws".

In a letter to most of Ireland's phone service providers, IRMA, a group representing Ireland's major record companies, claimed that Eircom and others are "guilty of facilitating the flagrant breach of copyright law, by allowing people who are listening to music to make phone calls at the same time, thus rebroadcasting copyrighted material all over the world. These malicious breaches are carried out by people who share music over the phone line while simultaneously carrying out 'conversations'. These 'chats' take place in living rooms, bars, pubs and clubs all over Ireland while our clients' music is being heard as far away as Canada and even the Far East."

Eircom issued a statement in response saying "We respect IRMA's concerns regarding this issue, and from next month our terms of service will change to reflect this new reality. Callers will not be allowed to use the phone while copyrighted music is audible in the background. We will operate a "Three Strikes" policy as suggested by IRMA, and we expect the majority of our clients will not have an issue with these new terms."

Meanwhile, in a phone conversation, an NTL spokesperson stated, "Hold on a sec, I'm in Tesco, and Robbie Williams is on, so I'd better hang up."

The letter from IRMA goes on to mention specific issues where copyright laws are consistently broken. "Many of your users may not be aware of the harm they are doing when for example, they record a voicemail to their friends from a Chris de Burgh concert, or sing Five Little Monkeys over the phone to their 2 year old child at bedtime. These seemingly innocuous acts are in fact, eating away at a lifeline for many of our most cherished composers and musicians such as Phil Coulter, Daniel O'Donnell, and that guy who sings 'Aon Focal, Dhá Focail'."

"We are prepared to go after serial offenders on this issue and expect the full cooperation of the service providers to do this. Just because you don't understand the law doesn't mean you can nonchalantly stroll down Grafton Street rebroadcasting a busker's rendition of 'Babylon' by David Gray to someone in Boston or Beijing without suffering the consequences. This is piracy, and piracy is stealing."

An IRMA spokesperson declined to comment further on the issue by phone, as he couldn't find the mute button on his iTunes.

- Eric Kennord