U2's turn for Internet thrashing
U2
(Credit: U2.com)Looks like it's U2's turn to take a pounding from the bloggerati.
A speech on Monday by Paul McGuinness, manager of the band U2, was a call to arms against piracy. He wants to fight file sharing by forcing Internet service providers to ban people who pirate music. He suggested that Apple and other makers of digital music players were wrongly profiting from their "burglary kits."
McGuinness told a gathering of music insiders at the Midem music conference in Cannes, France, that music is making lots of people lots of money. Unfortunately, that money isn't finding its way to artists. He placed much of the blame on tech companies, but also pointed a finger at record labels that "through lack of foresight and planning allowed a range of industries to arise that let people steal music."
Not surprisingly, U2, one of the world's most beloved bands for more than two decades, is under attack in the blogosphere.
"U2's manager tells us why we are bad," "U2's crazy manager wants to go after tech firms," and "U2 McGu's ISP rant" are just a few of the headlines coming from outraged bloggers.
The band has not commented one way or the other on McGuinness' speech, but one would have to think they were apprised before he said it. A copy of the speech is posted on U2's Web site. Either way, like Prince, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and (the granddaddy of all musicians who spoke out against file sharing) Metallica's Lars Ulrich before them, Bono & Co. are getting worked over.
Here's some of the wittier and more brutal comments...
"McGuiness is whining about this at the same time that U2 is pulling in incredible profits, making $355 million on its last tour," wrote Mike Masnick at the blog Techdirt.
Wired.com's Ryan Singel offered this: "Threat Level agrees that ISPs shouldn't get away consequence-free for transporting evil bits. But we counter-propose that ISPs use any nascent filtering technology they have developed to blackhole U2 and its frontman who goes by the ludicrous moniker Bono."
Privacy advocate Lauren Weinstein takes the manager to task for his comment about the tech sector's "hippy values."
"Paul has homed in on well-known hippie freaks like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates," Weinstein quipped. "You do remember when Steve and Bill used to hang out with Timothy Leary, right? No? You don't recall Switch On, Log In, and Buzz?"
The struggle for economic control of music is looking more and more like war between corporations and consumers. On one side, the record industry has an army of lawyers ready to sue. On the other, consumers have an army of bloggers ready to ridicule.
Choose the wrong side, and prepare to take a public whipping. At this point, no musician who takes up the pro-copyright banner should be shocked when he or she is branded a traitor and longtime fans swear they'll never buy their music again.
But if file-sharing really is hitting these musicians in their wallets, maybe they don't care.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
thing.
spoke publicly, in conjunction with Apple Inc. released limited
series players. So this does not sound to be the direction the band
is going. This PR guy needs to talk with the band before putting his
head on the cutting block.
by making online downloading legal and reasonable for everyone.
And now that bozo wants to spit on them and pretend that they
don't already make more money than anyone at those tech
companies? What a dope.
and movies, etc via p2p sites, bit torrent, and newsgroups.
Maybe if some of these bloggers actually created something
worth selling that cost them money to produce they would
understand the issue. The vastness of the information available
has created a false sense of entitlement. Yes people post music,
movies, etc., and stop supporting the original art forms cause
well, why should they pay for it when they can get it for free
online.
Being anti drm is just another way of saying i endorse theft.
cassettes that "home taping was sharing music" rather than the
then industry maxim that "home taping was killing music" ?
spreading music" (even better)
If ISPs were to police all users or heavy downloaders... this could also affect the BW utilization of people who download music legally.
I may not support the speech but I think the intention is to get the ball rolling on how to limit online piracy because yes he will be looking out for his clients' interests. Thrashing u2 makes no sense. We all look after our work, why shouldn't musicians no matter how rich they may be. Also, this particular solution suggested may not be the answer but at least its food for thought.
May they all rot in h*ll.
If something like that happened, all one would have to do is use a wrapper to transfer files and ISPs "monitoring software" would be non the wiser.
Anyway I hate it when people whom have little or no knowledge of the tech industry talk as though they know what they're talking about.
As I mentioned previously all one would have to do is to use
PGP/GPG and the ISP would have no way of checking what is being
transferred. If the RIAA wants to ensure they will no longer be able
to ID illegal downloads they couldn't come up with a better way of
doing it. :-)
They make all their money on the tour. And unless you've lived under a rock you know U2 is one of the hottest touring bands ever. A couple off-cuff comments arent going to stop people from going to see them live or listening to them.
http://www.devtopics.com/should-all-software-be-free/
In all fairness, let's remember that at least part of the "working over" that happened after your Trent Reznor interview, was because you (or your editors) picked a headline that implied he was definitively endorsing a $5 ISP tax, when it's clear from his actual words that he wasn't doing anything of the sort. Of course, some of the blame also goes to people who are too lazy to read past headlines.
Trent Reznor has actually been much more sensible than most about the ways the music industry is changing. You certainly can't put him on the "wrong side" of the piracy debate, and lumping him in with Lars Ulrich is just ridiculous.
Not to beat a dead horse; but you did bring it back up.
Just to be fair. Though they did react in completely the wrong way, it's nice to know they eventually realized it.
for a solution, but g legitimizing the ISP's drive for the laws to help
them police the internet is not healthy.
the music industry. As a music industry professional I understand
him looking/driving for a solution, but legitimizing the ISP's drive
for laws to help them police the internet in any way shape or from
is a big mistake, and certainly NOT a solution. I do agree however
with his position of taxing IPS's digital hardware creators who have
built their entire business on artists content.
- by cube3 September 13, 2009 2:32 PM PDT
- "The struggle for economic control of music is looking more and more like war between corporations and consumers"
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(25 Comments)this is a nonsence quote.
the fake battle is with old corporations who invested in the IP, and new VC funded. corporations who want to make money off it.
the consumer is nowhere in VIacoms or YOUTUBES/ex. boardroom/invenstors interests.