MidemNet 2008: U2 manager wants illegal downloaders banned, and for Steve Jobs to help
U2 manager Paul McGuinness has called for illegal file-sharers to have their service cut off by their ISPs if they don’t change their naughty habits of downloading music without paying for it. After all, it’d be a shame if Bono loses out on his next one hundred and seventy nine billion kazillion dollars. McGuinness also said ISPs should face prosecution if they don’t participate in the crackdown.
“A simple three strikes and you are out enforcement process will see all serial illegal uploaders who resist the law face a stark choice: change or lose your ISP subscription”, he went on, describing a similar plan of action which has already been seen in France.
McGuinness has called upon U2’s good friend Steve Jobs to help with the situation, no doubt thinking he ‘owes’ them a favour after allowing Apple to release a U2 branded iPod.
“I wish he would bring his remarkable set of skills to bear on the problems of recorded music. He’s a technologist, a financial genius, a marketer and a music lover. He probably doesn’t realise it, but the collapse of the old financial model for recorded music will also mean the end of the songwriter.”
However much Jobs claims downloading illegally is ‘bad karma’, I can’t see him joining forces with Bono, or even pondering whether he’d suit some red-tinted shades.
Maybe we’ll be seeing a musical collaboration between U2, Metallica and Prince before the year is out. Raspberry Beret-Sandman on New Year’s Day, anyway?
(via Times Online)
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4 comments
What Paul McGuinness really is saying is a voice for all of the artists out there, not a greedy money grubber.
As a professional composer and performer who isnt in the top 1% of success and MTV rock monsters I am THRILLED that someone with clout is making these issues be vocalized. Its not the U2s and the Mettalicas that suffer, its the indie artists, score composers, and working musicians that are being destroyed by the wide open not even attempted at regulating illegal downloading of all kinds of media, including music, song & albums, films, art, scores, etc
Thank you Mr. McGuinness for bothering to talk about the issues that are a nuisance to you but are life threatening to thousands of us!
I also was a dot com boom programmer and I was an original pre-IPO member of InfoSpace and I understand the tech side very much. I will say that what happened is a natural evolution of technology and human nature. Clicking on files and getting that intellectual property of another person was SO EASY and since it was just digital it felt to have to real value. But we all listened to those MP3s and watched those quicktime movies. And we LOVED the fact that we could stuff a 200 gig firewire drive to the brim with all the music we ever wanted to listen to and not pay a dime. If you didnt do it on some level you are probably either a priest or someone without internet
And so Mr McGuinness is saying lets not blame individuals and human nature, but something MUST be done about this and soon before we lose many facets of modern art and culture to the destabilizing and deflation of its economy.
Its no joke and its not like yea yea whatever, its like EMERGENCY *DINGDINGDING* EMERGENCY. Right now the AFM (musicians union) performance fund (which is the fun for retirement and emergency funding for professional musicians) is about to die, because it is based on CD sales. There are *countless* programs similar to this that are dead or dying quickly because of illegal downloads.
Certainly non-“mainstream pop” art forms like non-synthesizer orchestral film music, among many others are going to become extinct and then fade away completely the farther this goes without being checked.
There absolutely needs to be legislation that forces ISPs and tech companies to create technology to stop non-paid-for illegal downloading of music, film and art. This would be relatively very easy to create. All it needs is ubiquitous agreement and cooperation from all sources that host and transmit data.
Without it our world is going to become a shallow grey world without culture and professional art. That is a place I don’t want to live in.
Hi Nigel, how’s Lick My Love Pump going, eh?
This is a blog, therefore we employ a comedic license in each post, and a light yet humorous writing style. If you’d prefer some proper ‘journalism’ then maybe you should read the Times Online, hmmm? If you take a look at the link above, you’ll see they have a rather ‘humorous’ typo in their title.
I’d suggest you recheck your sense of humour, or stick with print ‘journalism’ in future.
OK, I wasn’t exactly sure what ‘Tech Digest’ was, although I think I’ve reached it in the past via Macsurfer.com. Just had to read “billion kazillion” once to realize I’d made a mistake and cost myself a few precious moments of lost-life time, squandered away on lazy ‘journalism’, and trite stances. Like the one that says we shouldn’t care about the livelihoods of people like U2’s Bono because he’s doing exceedingly well financially. Another rich rock star; boo hoo! Yes, or also, another human being who probably deserves to be compensated for the work he’s put into his..work. I’m no fan of the record industry, so I partially understand the whole ‘stick it to the man’ crowd, but at some point, that knee-jerk reaction becomes pretty suspect.
And to think, the music industry was just getting back on its feet after it was killed by home taping in the 80s. Thank god Bono’s here to save all the poor little songwriters.
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