January 28, 2008

 

U2 boss urges web companies to cut off illegal downloaders

Adam Sherwin, Media Correspondent of The Times

Music fans who indulge in widespread illegal file-sharing should have their web connections cut off by internet service providers, the manager of U2 said today.

 

Paul McGuinness, who has guided the Irish group to 150 million album sales during their 30-year career, said companies such as Yahoo! and AOL should be prosecuted if they fail to prevent illegal file-sharing.

 

Speaking at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes, Mr McGuinness said: “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.

 

“In the UK, the Gowers report made it clear that legislation should be considered if voluntary talks with ISPs failed to produce a commitment to disconnect file-sharers. I'd like to see the UK Government act promptly on this recommendation.”

 

The UK Music trade body the BPI backed the call. Geoff Taylor, its chief executive, said: “We have tried to persuade ISPs to implement solutions that could avoid the need to take action against broadband customers who use illegal peer-to-peer filesharing.

 

“For more than a year, we have been negotiating with them to enforce their own terms and conditions about abuse of the account, but UK ISPs refuse to do even that on any meaningful scale. The time has come for ISPs to stop dragging their feet and start showing some responsibility, by taking reasonable steps to counter illegal music freeloading.”

 

In France, President Sarkozy has backed the Olivennes initiative, by which ISPs will start disconnecting repeat infringers this year. This was a “brilliant precedent which other governments should follow”, Mr McGuiness said.

 

He argued that the recent Radiohead release of a download priced on the honesty box principle had backfired. He said: “It seems that the majority of downloads were through illegal P2P download services like BitTorrent and LimeWire even though the album was available for nothing through the official band site. Notwithstanding the promotional noise, even Radiohead's honesty box principle showed that if not constrained, the customer will steal music.”

 

In 2004, U2 signed a deal with Apple to release a branded iPod in exchange for a percentage of each device sold, but even Steve Jobs, the Apple boss, had not grasped the scale of the challenge to his own businesses, including the Walt Disney studio, presented by illegal downloading.

 

Mr McGuinness said: “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.

 

“We've been used to bands who wrote their own material since the Beatles, but the mechanical royalties that sustain songwriters are drying up. Labels and artists, songwriters and publishers, producers and musicians, everyone's a victim.”

 

The manager predicted that Apple would reveal a wireless iPod that connects to an iTunes “all of the music, wherever you are” subscription service. “I would like it to succeed, if the content is fairly paid for,” he said.

 

U2 will release a new album in October, Mr McGuinness said, which would be a collaboration with the producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Unlike Radiohead, they are not seeking to leave their record company. Mr McGuinness said that the band had a positive relationship with Universal which would continue indefinitely.

 

Described as the “fifth member” of U2, Mr McGuinness negotiated a valuable deal in the late Eighties that guaranteed the group ownership of the master recordings of their albums.

 

Do you agree or disagree with Mr McGuinness' viewpoint?

 

 

Fine Mr McGuinness.

 

...and just how are you going to differentiate between 'illegal' downloads and files which have been made available to fans through HTTP e.g. on band websites and not through some $h!tty majors-backed service like iTunes?

 

You seem to think the ISPs can instantly know when a bad packet is being transmitted? We shall see.

Fine Mr McGuinness.

 

...and just how are you going to differentiate between 'illegal' downloads and files which have been made available to fans through HTTP e.g. on band websites and not through some $h!tty majors-backed service like iTunes?

 

You seem to think the ISPs can instantly know when a bad packet is being transmitted? We shall see.

with a strong encryption, those ISPs will search forever for "illegal" data... :lol:

we'll see if they can stop the piracy

 

Lmfao. I doubt internet service providers would do that. They'd be losing a $h!tload of customers. So many people do it these days; it's completely impossible to stop. They should really just give up imo.

Fine Mr McGuinness.

 

...and just how are you going to differentiate between 'illegal' downloads and files which have been made available to fans through HTTP e.g. on band websites and not through some $h!tty majors-backed service like iTunes?

 

You seem to think the ISPs can instantly know when a bad packet is being transmitted? We shall see.

 

Spot on Richie

 

I would say that even the vast majority of those who do download from Torrent sites are still buying legit hard CD copies in any case.. Isn't it the case that CD album sales have actually risen in the past few years, not fallen...? A lot of people download to "try before they buy"....

 

As far as the Radiohead thing goes, well, wasn't it the case that the servers actually crashed on more than one occasion, and many were experiencing slow download speeds because of the demand put on the official channels...?

 

Indeed, but it's not just Radiohead / The Charlatans and all the big bands giving away albums. These days giving away mp3s on your website is really important to bands, ditto getting yourself on blogs. People think the likes of Fluxblog etc. are harming sales when they stick a single up on there but they're actually getting the name of the band out to people. Quite often the single is out on 7" only anyway, so people who like the low bit rate mp3 will head out and get a good copy.

 

You also can't outlaw bit torrent, say, because it is used for legal transmissions all the time.

 

And as Mr McGuinness has cast the first stone, I'd like to think he has NEVER taped an album off a mate's vinyl during his younger days nor recorded a film off the TV. If he had then he'd be a right c**t.

And as Mr McGuinness has cast the first stone, I'd like to think he has NEVER taped an album off a mate's vinyl during his younger days nor recorded a film off the TV. If he had then he'd be a right c**t.

 

Exactly! I pretty much think everyone has done that, god knows I've taped enough albums for people and vice versa... Me and my mates used to have a deal when we were kids, if there were three or four albums we wanted, we'd each get at least one of them and tape copies for the others, we didn't have that much money to spare on albums... I seriously doubt that there's anyone who hasn't done that....

Exactly! I pretty much think everyone has done that, god knows I've taped enough albums for people and vice versa... Me and my mates used to have a deal when we were kids, if there were three or four albums we wanted, we'd each get at least one of them and tape copies for the others, we didn't have that much money to spare on albums... I seriously doubt that there's anyone who hasn't done that....

 

I did exactly the same thing when I was at college with a few friends. It was like an unofficial music club :lol: - where one would go out and buy 1970s Bowie albums, another would buy Pink Floyd albums, another bought classic Rolling Stones albums and I bought Led Zeppelin albums and then we'd tape copies for the others, etc.

 

As for Paul McGuinness's comments it is one thing if a person only ever downloads illegal music and never then goes out and buys CD's for these are the people who are ripping off the music industry, but I suspect like back in the 1980s most people are coping music or tracks before deciding to go out and buy albums. Personally, if it was not for sites like YouTube then I would fall into that category.

 

But I think the whole scenario of illegally downloading music for free is best summed up by this:

 

South Park - Do you think Downloading Music for free is not a big deal?