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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."
Aside from that, Paul continues to show his disconnection from reality by using Radiohead's example. Radiohead made far more money distributing it this way than they ever did with a record label. His entire speech was nothing more than a "oh noes! Please help me save our dying business model."
Talk about profitting off the backs of other's work- he's using U2's name (and website) to push his agenda!
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Why should ISPs lose profits to protect another industry's profits?
...are always the one who scream loudest.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
U2's good stuff would be public domain by now if we had reasonable copyright lengths, like we used to.
With all due respect, Paul, Fuck you.
I've bought U2's albums, t-shirts, concert tickets and other crap. Over the years, I've easily spent several hundred dollars on your band's products. Same goes for hundreds of other artists: Concerts, posters, tshirts, albums, box sets, fan club-only items. Hell, some albums I've bought multiple times in multiple formats over the years.
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.
So when you come out with this ignorant, self-serving tripe and try to pass it off as a moral issue, I look at you and get sick to my fucking stomach. I'm terribly fucking sorry I downloaded your band's last album just so I could get my hands on that lame "quatorze" single. Fuck, I can't even remember the last time I listened to that song (I sure as shit didn't bother with the rest of the album).
Hell, if it makes you feel better, I'll delete it when I get home tonight. Not really any skin off my nose. I've got my $120 Led Zep Box set to keep me warm at night. I've got the Joshua Tree and Rattle & Hum, 2 albums I've paid full retail for more than once.
Big big fan of U2, at least until Pop, anyway. Shame they're on the decline. Shame you're a douchebag.
One last thing. Facebook? Apple? Get some meds, man. Even the worst **AA shill isn't that shrill.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Make CD prices reasonable.
Make CD last more, invest in the technology that promotes your sound.
Make Copyright time frames reasonable.
And don't forget if we didn't listen to your crap you'd be a broke begging musician.
Shush you greedy F...s.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
There's more exciting music being made and more listened to than at any time in history. Cheap technology has made it easy to start a band and make music. This is a gathering of managers; our talented clients deserve better than the shoddy, careless and downright dishonest way they have been treated in the digital age. Yes, they deserve the shoddy, careless and downright dishonest way they have always been historically treated by their record labels and managers.
I haven't heard any artists speaking out about their royalties drying up. Maybe because they made 10 cents on the dollar before and now they make 10 cents on the quarter now since it's all digital?
Funny how he starts with "We've been used to bands who wrote their own material since the Beatles
Is he complaining that Steve Jobs pulled the $1 per song price out of his ass? No, he's pointing the finger at file sharers. This guy is losing his income and his bands are probably curious as to how they can get that $1 per song from iTunes without having to pay their manager 40 cents for
Earth to U2's Manager: take your cut of the work you actually do like arranging concerts and press coverage and then shut the hell up and let the artists do their thing and make money.
My work here is dung.
SCO et al. found this out the hard way. AT&T does not seem to be picking up on this either.
Calls for reform will only be taken seriously when they are financially feasible.
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Yeah Paul, just like all those ingrate thieving pirate bastards were stealing those $250+ concert tickets over the past few tours!! And on a side note - for a band who's very carefully crafted their public perception as being a band for social justice and sticking it to the man, do you really want to draw more attention to the fact that U2 are extremely rich and wealthy individuals who really are even more "the man" than some of "the man" they like to point their preachy fingers at from time to time? Do you really think whining about the fact that your giant pile of money used to be a lot bigger is going to endear U2 to it's fanbase?
...but I'm paying less than $0.27USD per song on eMusic. I could pay less per song if I chose to. Now, if that business model starts to eat into this guy's house payments, is he going to campaign for eMusic to increase it prices? Or would he just advocate for a surtax? He's skipping over this whole 'free market' thing that we're supposed to be operating under, so what would stop him from taking the next logical step?
It's about time we recognize that what it going on here is _not_ an attempt to reform capitalism. It is an attempt to replace capitalism with _mercantilism_. Remember that minor North American rebellion in 1776? It had in part to do with British plans for how the colonies would buy imported crap ad infinitum, regardless of how they felt about the matter.
My fellow conservatives, allow to me scream 'wake up!' in your general direction. When an industry owns a market, it's no longer a _free_ market! Duh!
(sigh).... Rant over. Thanks for your patience.
U2 started using Stage Crew Services, a non union shop, back in the '90s. Seeing as how they were born working class and still tout their so-called activism, that smells of hypocrisy to me. I haven't bought a U2 album since. Funny thing, everyone is so up in U2's ass, you can't find much about it on the web. I was part of a protest against them, we got a chance to talk to them, and Bono was the biggest piece of shit ever. Basically said, "Do you know who I am, and what I've done? I'm the biggest activist in the world, who are you peons to criticize me? I'll hire whoever I like."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
I cant believe the news today
Oh, I cant close my eyes and make it go away
How long...
How long must they steal our songs?
How long? how long...
cause tonight...no sales of our song "One"
tonight... they're all downloading "One"
Tonight...
Broken models of our business bleat
Record execs thrown out on the street
And we won't make our earnings call
It puts my back up
Puts my back up against the wall
Pirate bay, bloody pirate bay
Pirate bay, bloody pirate bay...
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
Unions as they exist today are a mixed bag, neither the saviors of the working poor nor the blight you make them out to be. Reform is needed, but that's been true of unions for over 100 years. I volunteered with the Industrial Workers of the World, otherwise known as the Wobblies. Most people don't know about us outside of history class, but the IWW still exists. Here's how the IWW is different: no mandatory union dues taken out of your paycheck, complete and total democracy, and only one paid (and democratically elected) position. Also, instead of seperate unions, everyone is in the same union, but a different branch. That way, when the janitors at a plant strike, the electricians do too.
I uphold that anyone should be able to hire whoever they like. But I and my friends should be able to bargain collectively, and we will point out, quite vociferously, when you as a business owner are trying to screw us over. That's free speech, and the Wobs used to read from the Constitution in town squares across the US just to make that point. That's one reason the IWW was suppressed so hard. Even to the point of being literally massacred.
We are NOT like other unions.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton