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In a case decided at the end of 1997, but not yet reported, the Irish High Court said that Telecom Éireann (the state telecommunications body) was unjustified in withdrawing subscribers' telephone numbers. Here the defendant had withdrawn the use of eight of the plaintiff's telephone numbers and refused to allocate any additional numbers, in the belief that the plaintiff was engaged in brokering numbers. Although this could justify the decision to withdraw the numbers, the Court said that the low level of usage of the numbers could not be a basis for such withdrawal. The plaintiffs were engaged...

In a recent case concerning copyright, the Irish Supreme Court examined the issues of "literary work" and "originality". The Court upheld the decision of the High Court that the recording of the plaintiff's voice on tape did not give rise to a literary work, and that the recitation by a child of a story told to her by a teacher was not original. The case concerned a tape recording, by a schoolteacher, of Bible stories recited by the plaintiff and other children when they were pupils in her religious education class many years earlier. The recording had recently been released by EMI Records, with...

On December 1, 1998, telecoms were deregulated in Ireland, one year ahead of schedule. This was done despite a derogation which would have lasted until January 2000. The decision was taken to end Telecom Eireann's monopoly and introduce full competition early because of fears that delay could affect the economy and especially the e-commerce industry. There had already been competition in some sectors, such as the mobile phone sector and services to the business community, but not in the range of services available to residential customers. However, as Telecom Eireann still controls the network...

The purpose of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act, passed a few months ago, is to prohibit trafficking in, or the use of, children for the purposes of their sexual exploitation, and to prohibit the production, dissemination, handling or possession of child pornography. The Act, which is aimed particularly at the Internet, covers film, video, tapes, computer disks, and other forms of audio and visual representation, through any medium, or produced by or from computer graphics or any other electronic or mechanical means. The Internet is not specifically mentioned but the scope of the Act...

In a recent case the Irish High Court decided that a "Power CD" is a record for the purposes of copyright. A "Power CD" is a compact disc which in addition to sound tracks (as in the usual type of compact disc), also contains text, graphics and visual images for playing on a multi-media computer. Although a new Copyright Bill is due to be published at the end of October 1998, this area of law is still largely governed by the Copyright Act 1963. Section 2 of the Act essentially defines a "record" as any device in which sounds are embodied so as to be capable of being automatically reproduced from...