Ireland’s largest internet service provider (ISP), Eircom, will today be introducing what’s been called a “three strikes” approach to filesharing that will see repeat offenders cut off.

Hard to tell what they're trying to signify, but it's a great shot.

The ‘three strikes’ rule was first discussed during the legal battle between Eircom and a number of publishers including Sony, EMI, universal and Warner, with labels pushing for a graduated response from Eircom. The case came just after Eircom advertisements appeared on the Pirate Bay’s homepage. In September of last year, Eircom agreed to block its users from visiting the Pirate Bay, and eventually drew up the graduated response system that’s come to be known as the three strikes rule.

According to the Irish Times, the scheme will run as a pilot for the next three months, during which Eircom has said that it will ‘process about 50 IP addresses a week.’ Those addresses are to be passed on to Eircom by IRMA, which is to employ the services of third party Dtecnet to find users who are actively sharing content.

One of the biggest questions for the moment has been to just to what extent this scheme will effect, if at all, those who are found to be downloading, but not passing on, copyrighted material… though given that so much filesharing is conducted via bittorrent, that question could well be something of a moot point.

The idea for the moment is that users who are found to be sharing copyrighted material will be notified by Eircom that there is filesharing being conducted through their network. If they continue, then on the third time they’re found to be sharing copyrighted material they’ll be disconnected for one week. If they continue beyond that, they’ll be disconnected for a full year.

It’ll be interesting to see whether or not the first round of warning precipitates customers moving their connections to other ISPs, if so then we wouldn’t be too surprised to see copyright groups go to those other ISPs and request that they take similar action.

A similar system has also been discussed for use in France across multiple internet service providers, though there’s been widespread opposition to the move.