U2's manager is pointing the finger of blame at ISP's, he says the should do more to stop illegal music downloads and start sharing there "enormous" revenues with the music makers.

What are your thoughts?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/u2-get-your-snouts-out-of-our-trough/2008/01/30/1201369193338.html

Yeah and electrical companies should do more to stop people using the power they produce to run the computers that are downloading illegal music. f*** off U2, like you don't make more money than anyone needs regardless of piracy.

They should rewrite that headline to be "MIPI Blames Telstra for Music Piracy in Australia".

Slashdot has comments and the full text of McGuinness' speech is available on the u2 website if you want to read what he ACTUALLY said (I didn't read the full SMH article but I'm sure they just quoted bits that'll make an article).

Edit: some of the slashdot comments point out that:

* U2 was in bed with Apple selling iPods ages ago
* McGuinness is an investor in something called SIMRAN which sounds like a DRM platform (more)

last edited by trog at 15:25:04 30/Jan/08

I agree. every internet connection in australia is at sometime used to listen to music, just like every radio. and just like when listening on the radio it is free to consumers and is not a crime. that's what modern music is about. letting people enjoy your music for free and paying to see you live in person. the internet hasn't changed that, we just get to choose what we listen to ourselves it isn't dictated to us by the try hard c*********s at austereo.

lolz, idiot

Found it odd that they're saying ISP's should stop users downloading music illegally then in the same breath saying that want a cut of the profit from it. Can't have it both ways.

Yeah and electrical companies should do more to stop people using the power they produce to run the computers that are downloading illegal music.

I dunno, the point of view in the smh article seems valid enough to me, and not comparable to that electrical company analogy. They're complaining that ISP's aren't acting on requests where it's completely possible to prove one of their users has broken the law (and in turn their agreement with the ISP's TOS). An electrical company has no way of knowing when their electricity is being used for this purpose, but an ISP can generally correlate ip's used at given times to a login.

The long-time manager of rock band U2 has lashed out at internet providers for resisting calls by the music industry to pull the plug on users who illegally download songs.

At a music industry conference in France, Paul McGuinness said internet service providers (ISPs) and technology companies had "enjoyed a bonanza" in the last few years by accepting fees from illegal downloaders while doing nothing to prevent them from stealing music.

"Their snouts have been at our trough feeding free for too long," said McGuinness, who has managed U2 for 30 years and is a highly respected industry figure.

"It is time for them to share that with artists and content owners."

In Australia, and more recently overseas, ISPs have resisted growing pressure from the music industry to send warning notices to customers who have been identified as illegal downloaders, and disconnect the services of repeat offenders.

That's the opening few paragraphs - I don't find anything there unreasonable, haven't read the rest of the article yet though

I guess the sentence "It is time for them to share that with artists and content owners." seems a bit dumb and out of context, doesn't have anything to do with whether or not ISP's respond to complaints about their ip addresses being found illegaly downloading music.

The internet as a medium is to blame. I also believe that the ISP's should not have to spend money tracking down users who use bit torrent and file sharing programs to exchange illegal content.

If the music industry wants to fight the internet, they should invest in it.

Thats just my opinion.

They're complaining that ISP's aren't acting on requests where it's completely possible to prove one of their users has broken the law (and in turn their agreement with the ISP's TOS).

That's what they're complaining about, but they're being total dicks about it.

What they're doing (they=RIAA) is identifying IP addresses as distributing music "illegally". They they figure out what ISP that IP belongs to, fire off a form letter saying "User X was busted distributing song Y at time Z", expecting the ISP to disclose their details or warn them or whatever.

Some ISPs (including Australian ones) fire off warning letters to the users - but at this point there is ZERO legal obligation for the ISP to do f*** all here.

The correct course of action for the music companies is to take it to a court, get a judge to approve a warrant or whatever is needed to get the ISP to identify the user, and then take them to court. Basically the onus is on the copyright holder to PROVE to a judge (or whatever) that copyright infringement is taking place.

(Disclaimer: the above is my limited legal understanding, I quite possibly got terms or process wrong, but I believe that's the gist of it.)

This guy wants ISPs to bear the cost of policing what their users do. This is a pretty lame way of approaching the problem (and as a side effect further highlights the complete and UTTER uselessness of DRM - if DRM was working, noone would need to do dick).

It's not unreasonable to say "ISPs are profiting off piracy" - but their business is selling BANDWIDTH as common carriers, and what people do with that bandwidth is up to them - and they are solely responsible for.

(This is sort of like the "Network Neutrality" debate which has been happening in the US for ages, and has been hinted at recently with the Apple/iPhone thing - are ISPs just "dumb pipes" or should they be conscious of what data is flowing down?)

Like most record industry shills this guy fails to understand fundamentals of these complimicated INTARWEBS. Worse he does it from the extremely arrogant position of working for a band that probably has more money than some third world countries, and is in the enviable position of owning their own copyrights to most of their songs, something which many bands are not fortunate enough to be able to do.

He goes on to piss on Radiohead for trying something new with their last album and points out that a lot of people pirated it (no s*** sherlock, but how much money did they make out if it? Wikipedia says "Radiohead's profits from the digital download of In Rainbows outstripped combined profits from digital downloads of all of the band's other studio albums").

While blowing over how much money they made in the U2 Ipod deal, he goes on to save of Steve Jobs: "I wish he would bring his remarkable set of skills to bear on the problems of recorded music". Is he kidding? Was he sleeping in the iPod deal? Has he not seen iTunes? Jobs already HAS done that. If it wasn't for Jobs all those people buying songs legitimately from iTunes would still be trying to figure out why Napster doesn't work.

While pissing on ISPs he has the balls to say "The ISP lobbyists who say they should not have to “police the internet” are living in the past - relying on outdated excuses from an earlier technological age." Ha. Hahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHA IS HE f***ING KIDDING? What is the record industry trying to do if not exactly that?!?!

I can't be assed reading any more of that pointless diatribe, but at a glance the guy is a hypocrite of the highest calibre. He has now firmly aligned U2 with Metallica!

The internet as a medium is to blame. I also believe that the ISP's should not have to spend money tracking down users who use bit torrent and file sharing programs to exchange illegal content.

If the music industry wants to fight the internet, they should invest in it.

Thats just my opinion.

I'm not sure if they're demanding ISP's examine packets to find users who are using BT etc - I think they're making case-specific demands where they have evidence that a certain IP address was illegaly downloading music, asking that the ISP then correlate that IP + date/time with a user account, and issue warnings to the user or disconnect them.

I thought this was a reasonable response from the IIA and ultimately, the best way of dealing with it:

The IIA insists the proposal is problematic and unnecessary, saying ISPs should not be required to police the actions of their users or adjudicate on whether or not a person is infringing copyright. It feels there are already adequate procedures and remedies available to copyright holders through the courts and the Copyright Act.

last edited by Jim at 16:04:24 30/Jan/08

An electrical company has no way of knowing when their electricity is being used for this purpose, but an ISP can generally correlate ip's used at given times to a login.

Don't forget VCRs and DVD burners, they are definitely used for pirating. Everyone's a pirate, come on!

put it this way, they've been trying to blame isp's for 10 years now. There's nothing they can do! Hahahahahaha!