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U2's Manager Calls For Mandatory Disconnects For Music Downloaders
sleeplesseye writes "In a speech at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes, Paul McGuinness, longtime manager of the band U2, has called on Internet service providers to immediately introduce mandatory French-style service disconnections to end music downloading, and has urged governments to force ISPs to adopt such policies. McGuinness criticized Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' pay-what-you-want business model, saying that 'the majority of downloads were through illegal P2P download services like BitTorrent and LimeWire'. He also accused ISPs, telcos, device makers, and numerous specifically named companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo!, Oracle, and Facebook of building 'multi billion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it', and of being 'makers of burglary kits' who have made 'a thieves' charter' to steal money from the music industry. The full text of his speech has been posted on U2's website."
Just to stand up for the Monkees for a moment, they were young and jumpped at the chance to be on TV and all, but they did have enough guts and pride to eventually go on strike unless they were allowed to play their own instruments and material. And they did do some catchy pop songs. Not exactly the Beatles, but at least they wised up and grew some spines. Can't imagine this week's X-Factor/American Idol wank-stain ever doing that.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Am I hallucinating or did this band wilfully advertise (and directly profit from) the device that is supposedly killing them? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiV4jzWitnA
Paul ain't due much respect. U2 has been on the forefront of anti-fair-use since the incident involving Negativland in 1991: The Letter U and the Numeral 2
The track parodies the whole top-40 industry by sampling the backbeat of "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", and punches in bits of Casey Kasem going apeshit!. It's not just hilarious, it's one of the single most important cases in the history of sample-based music. Long story short, after a multiyear legal battle, Negativland won. By this time, most physical copies had been recalled and/or destroyed, but you can download the MP3 from their website.
In 1998, the last few chapters of the legal battle played out, also to Negativland's favor, and RIAA rewrote its rewrote its guidelines on sampling, fair use, and parody.
Which brings us back to our next top-40 hit - it's no surprise that U2 and RIAA are back in bed with each other, working ever diligently against any form of fair use: they still haven't found what they're looking for.
> I've got a huge DVD library, and it keeps growing. I'll happily pay premium prices for Criterion editions, I'm a hardcore movie geek who's always loved going to the cinema, sometimes even repeat fucking viewings for movies I really like.
If we could only find someone like Casey Kasem ranting like that off-mike, the war for fair use would be over, and we geeks would finally have won.
They actively suppressed unions and treated their crews like shit, from what I heard.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Ah, yes. You made me Google it. It looks like their pay is rather low and they don't even pay for all hours worked, plus they seem to fire pro-union workers.
It looks like the unions nailed them to the wall - they don't even seem to exist anymore, do they?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
While the rest of them went to the relatively down market Mount Temple it's a far from working class school.
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
US copyright wasn't extended to life of the author + 50 years until 1976. From 1909 to 1976 it was 28 years and one 28 year renewal. From 1831 to 1909 it was 28 plus one 14 year renewal. The original 1790 terms applied until 1831.
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uh... nope. I'm a mac user, works fine with both safari and FF. The only somewhat disappointing aspect is that you need to download a (free) application in order to purchase full albums. However, it's a lightweight application that works great, and is available for both Windows and Mac users. Sorry Linux users! You can still buy by the track!
US only, Canadians need not apply!
Oh?
http://news.google.ca/news?q=amazon+international+rollout+music&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&hl=en&sa=X&oi=news_result&resnum=1&ct=title
Stuff.