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Bono Hopes Content Tracking Will Help Media Moguls
Khalid Baheyeldin writes "In his New York Times op-ed column, Irish singer Bono, otherwise noted for his humanitarian efforts expressed dismay at losses music artists incur from internet downloads. He notes that 'we know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content.' He then goes on to wonder 'perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product.'"
From an Irish Slashdotter, I think it's only fair to say. I apologise most unreservedly to the world for not flushing this floater when we had the chance.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
such kind of people harm society in multitudes of ways than they support it with their charities. imagine - this guy practically wants everyone to be tracked. totally oblivious to the danger that any and all governments or private interests can use tracking technology to suppress online dissent, any kind of dissent, even himself, expressing opinion that would conflict with the government in future. put this risk on the other side of the counter opposite of his charity ... a huge imbalance.
no sir. we are better off without such 'charitable' people. go fucking die in a corner, bono. you are little different than a charitable frenchmen advocating absolute monarchy in 1789.
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This came after Bono spent hours searching for his music on torrent sites. Apparently he still hasn't found what he's looking for.
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
"Bono lives in Killiney in south County Dublin, Ireland, with his family and shares a villa in Èze in the Alpes-Maritimes in the south of France with The Edge, as well as an apartment at The San Remo in Manhattan and a small house in the quiet village of Middleton Cheney, England."
Yep. He's really hurting.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Bono is an idiot to put it quite plainly. Does he not see that these treaties signed with underdeveloped nations to help them "defend" American businesses against "piracy" and patent infringement is exactly what is keeping them behind? If Bono would stop being such an egotistical asshole and actually look at the facts, he would see that eternal copyright and copyright treaties keep valuable medical information locked up from developing nations, valuable educational supplies from developing nations. Yeah, he seems willing enough to donate a few millions to "fight" AIDS but can't give up a bit of copyright in order to help the world as a whole? That isn't selfless, that is as selfish as you can get.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I think independent artists and creativity have flourished in recent years. The overproduced and overhyped "chosen" artists by the "Moguls" are mainly what's suffering. Madonna and Bono can kiss my ass if they think they are being "hurt" by downloads. They have made many times over the money they deserve for their media machines.
If you are a good artist, people will pay to see you live.
Let's go with a great band like Pink Floyd. I have bought about 10+ albums from them over the past 20 years. Millions of other people have as well. I work my ass off for $50K/year. They work their ass off too, and I would say that I am happy to give them a salary of $150K/year per band member. How much money would we as fans have to spend to make that happen. I can assure you it would be a FRACTION of what we have paid out of our pockets... and where does all that money go? Lining the pokets of those who had nothing to do with the art or us listening to it.
Bono has lost touh with reality and his fans... as he gets older I don't expect him to get more clue.
... who doesn't yet think that Bono is a sanctimonious hypocritical, posturing, corporate shill who is always willing to suck up to any big businessman or politician he can grab a photo opportunity with, no matter how venal?
Just askin'
Seriously. I wouldn't even waste my neighbors free bandwidth to download anything U2 has put out in over a decade...
If you steal music, these gentlemen couldn't afford to be charitable because they couldn't buy the fifth plane or sports car.
So, next time you steal music or movie, think of the children you take the food away.
Sure Bono, and for the alternative perspective, how about Janis Ian's? "The Internet, and downloading, are here to stay... Anyone who thinks otherwise should prepare themselves to end up on the slagheap of history." ~ http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
Personally, I wonder how much music has been lost and locked up bu the music industry? Or how many musicians don't own their own songs? Or how many CDs were never cut, remain unreleased or are locked up in out of print limbo land? How many fat cat executives live it up while new talent can't pay the rent? and so on and so...
Words to men, as air to birds.
Note to Bono: EAT A DICK.
The process of doing so will further require that you remove your head from your ass, so that should improve your ability to perceive reality at the same time.
The biggest problem facing most "small independent artists" is not people downloading their songs - it's NOBODY downloading the songs. Most (95%) of the 100k+ albums released every year sell less than a hundred copies; the problem for most of these artists is that many of the traditional ways of discovering new music (radio, CD stores) have been bought up and monopolized by the majors. While the new media channels are available to everybody, getting "eyeballs" (OK, "ears") is still the hardest part.
Put another way: most "small independent artists" would love it if enough people were interested in their music to upload a torrent to TPB - at least then, *somebody* is listening.
Artists are actually doing much better since the dawn of the Internet because of increased ticket sales from live performances, and box office sales are better now than ever. I highly doubt illegal downloading contributes very much to lost revenue since a very small percentage of the people who download illegal media would actually buy the product.
He managed to choose two analogies. One poor, the other extremely sinister.
Kiddie porn: A terrible analogy for online copyright infringement. Child pornography, possession or production, is always illegal. No "fair use", no parodies, no commentaries, no educational purposes, etc. Plus, it isn't all that popular. Online violation of copyright law is probably about as popular as ordinary pornography, not some obscure niche thing. In terms of police resources per unit kiddie porn, the porn is vastly more heavily policed(and, given the number of times that a computer search of somebody suspected for other reasons will discover some kiddie porn, it looks like our "content tracking" efforts aren't actually doing so well).
Great Firewall of China: Chinese "content tracking" is a huge(and probably fairly expensive) initiative, encompassing a substantial state censorship apparatus, a large amount of technical infrastructure, huge market distortions(notably, the enthusiasm for self-censorship among web companies that is created by the state's ability to just eliminate access to any of them, at any time, without comment or justification), and substantial support from private-citizen snitches.
Either Bono is just a fucktard, and hasn't really though this through, or he is willing to go to some very unpleasant places to protect his precious "content".
why are we waiting for a lackey of the copyright industry to make a shitty comment or release a dubious 'research' in order to take any action ? Why arent eff and similar organizations taking the initiative and producing research, education and publicity in regard to new ways of the digital age ?
its just stupid. we are just waiting. some idiot lays an egg, and we all go after to cleanse the resulting shit. instead we should be moving forward.
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Tell him to go skiing, really fast.
Table-ized A.I.
It's hard to argue against control of the internet without appearing pro-piracy, and worst, pro-child pornography.
And that is just what governments want, because the internet is our best tool so far, for keeping government in check.
Once the mechanisms of control are in place, everything is screwed. I just wish the internet had had a few less single points of failure, and a lot more encryption built it; but then who could see that far ahead.
Your indignation would be a lot more interesting to me if it wasn't so covered in crap.
Everytime U2 are on the verge of releasing an album, they leak it online so they can have a story about their album being 'stolen' before its released and get a brick load of free publicity from the subsequent news stories. Its amazing how they're able to use the internet to their advantage while still being able to call it a disgrace!
There is no -1 disagree
So, Bono would like to turn the US and Europe into totalitarian states in order to make sure people like himself can keep making millions with unreasonable copyright terms and restrictions.
Some humanitarian!
...then I guess we should let music die. Music and other entertainment is not important enough by far to trade away privacy and freedom. I don't care for piracy, but I recognize that only by having complete control of what people communicate and hence their freedom of expression would it be possible to quell piracy. I hope most thinking humans would agree that this is too high a price to preserve the profitability of music.
I really wish that newspapers would cite their information so we could understand what they're basing their claims on.
Looking at the US government's Bureau of Economic Analysis Numbers, they seem to paint a very different picture than what he suggests:
http://www.bea.gov/industry/gpotables/gpo_action.cfm?anon=343982&table_id=24753&format_type=0 [bea.gov]
The line for Motion picture and sound recording industries has been constant from 2003-2007 (with information from 2008 still not entered) at 0.3%.
Bono claims, "music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product". Assuming no tectonic shift in profits, that would suggest that video games are producing nearly 3.7% of GDP, but the line for all Publishing industries (includes software) floats at around 1% of GDP. So even including "real" software like Windows as well as books, we're not even close to 4%.
Another factor which he neglects to consider is the scale of damage that would be done, both in terms of freedoms as well as innovation. Even if America and all of its best buddies were to enact this type of draconian censorship regime he advocates, I doubt that America's enemies would be as eager to join in. That would suggest a net effect of simply forcing innovation to move abroad to places that don't sign on or enforce. One of the few areas where America is truly a global leader still seems to be in Internet services. If foreign Internet services provide more to consumers that they want than American services, I don't doubt that American services on the Internet would be abandoned in a flash. While I don't discount the importance of the export of America's pop culture abroad, the price to protect outdated business models seems like a weighty one. Bono talks a lot, but I wonder how much depth he really puts into his thinking.
Why do people expect singers and guitar players to have a unique view on life for all of us to share?
Imagine that a football player gave his view on copyright and innovation. You'd laugh. But a guy sings a song on the radio, and all the sudden his utterances appear in the NY Times?
Crazy.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
And that is just what governments want
That is wrong. The enemy is not the government but industry think thanks and public relations organizations.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'm not sure the short-sightedness was political in this case. Rather who knew what the internet would become, or that 640k was not enough for everyone.
You could argue that the problem is political/social vs technical, but there are some interesting overlay network topographies that I wish were standard.
Imagine if, due to encryption and cryptographic addressing, the internet was all or nothing for any given nation. All that ever passed your ISP was an encrypted data stream.
Oh how those in power would squirm.
Bono is thinking about the future artist.
Bono wants that future artist to be able to turn a profit by selling the rights to their artistic creations to a large corporation which will have absolute control of those rights indefinitely.
And the only cost will be the "outing" of every political dissident anywhere in the world.
Fuck you, Bono.
Don't forget that he is equating downloading and listening to a U2 album with child pornography. One is a horrible abuse that I wouldn't wish on any child, and the other is child pornography. (sorry. poor taste). Bono is despicable, greedy douchebag for invoking child porn in order to fatten his wallet.
blog
If he was seriously talking about future artists or the small time artists that are trying to break into the musical big leagues, he would look far more seriously at why competitions like "American Idol" or "Pop Idol" have to be created in order to find the talent for tomorrow's music.
There is something seriously broken in the music industry, and it isn't the "illegal music pirates" on the internet that is the problem. There really isn't a reasonable farm system any more for getting young and promising talent to move up without going outside of the system. Recording contracts are absolutely hideous and filled with clauses that keep any aspiring musician from being able to become a genuinely professional musician.
Furthermore, there is a problem with groups like the RIAA, ASCAP, and other groups who supposedly are accepting licensing fees on behalf of these small time artists to actually pay up and get some money, any money, to this new and rising generation of musicians. The current royalty collection system only works for artists like Bono who are at the top of the game, and it is the little guys that get squeezed out in the process.
I'll also want to respond to this statement:
Last time I checked, a typical op-ed column or even an entire newspaper edition is an order of magnitude smaller than a MP3 file. If you add pictures and put it in a PDF file, it might be of comparable size.... to a single music file. I don't see the comparison here either. There is copyrighted on-line content that has subscribers, and those models work... as does advertising-based publications as well.
The problem with the music industry isn't the freeloaders, but rather with venues for new musicians where the up and coming artists will actually get paid at all in the first place. Even if you "unmake" the internet, these new musicians won't be paid by the major record labels no matter how hard the new musicians work or try to find customers/listeners.
No, those who it hurts the most are the recording studio executives who no longer have a gravy train ride to profits, and somehow have to work to earn a living now. The old business models are broken and no longer work... because the world has changed. If you are creative, people will pay for music. They want to pay for good music, and there are many people who are actively looking for new musicians to support. The days that a recording executive in Hollywood might be able to cherry pick some random slob from an inner city ghetto and bring them to stardom through payola and graft with radio stations is over. They want to make their money off of vinyl or optical discs, and the world has moved on to other media.
I'd much rather support some new and aspiring artist than folks like Bono. Unfortunately, when the government gets into the act, it is the old dinosaurs that get all of the money and they keep it from going to the new and upcoming musicians.
Actually "once the mechanisms of control are in place" we'll just work around them.
All the internet has done for piracy is to make "content" accessible to more people, more convenient to use and easier to detect and monitor. Imagine for a second a world where all content was tightly controlled and their was no internet piracy, what do you think would happen? Would piracy stop? Would illicit information/data cease to flow? Nope, sorry, it would just move to higher bandwidth channel such as post and courier ("never underestimate the bandwidth of an envelope of microSD cards") and still move around the "user communities" in the same way it did 10-20 years ago.
And even then, new technologies would spring up bringing us an "undernet", but one with lessons learned. Consider for a second just what the rather silent "wireless revolution" would mean if someone dropped something into the stack to attempt to route data via wireless networks only, and queue transmission in a similar manner to UUCP of years past...
As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, perhaps the 21st centuries problem is going to be that we will *need* for so little but want so much...
And that's bad, because...? Fuck it, people, stop being scaredy-cats. Say it out loud: I do support piracy! I do support unbridled copying! In the deal of copyrights, we the people have been screwed real bad. It was supposed to be an incentive, to enrich the public domain. But nothing goes to the public domain anymore. Why play the game clean when they have the dice loaded against you?
Circumcision is child abuse.
Now, now... if Bono wants to compare the music industry with Child Pornographers and the RIAA with a tyrannical Government, who are we to argue with him?
Regardless, google/youtube flagged the audio and the dispute has been open for a month. In the dispute filing, I pasted the relevant text from the license and linked to it.
The video itself clearly has a link to the artists site at magnatune (as required). So if any person were to intelligently go to the site and read the license or just read the dispute data I filed, the problem would cleary seen to be valid and legal.
But I'm still waiting to hear back from WMG. The point I have is that Bono's technical suggestion to track everything will not work. In a very closed and controlled environment like youtube, the false positives are so numerous that legal content cannot be cleared and shared.
Here's the license from magnatune (from link above).
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Not only does dumping free food depress the prices the farmers can get for what they do grow, thus making it not worth their while to try and feed themselves, but it doesn't address the problem they have without free food of getting what they do grow to market and storing it for bad times.
We not only do harm by discouraging them from growing anything by undercutting their prices, what little good we otherwise do does not help them distribute what they would grow if we weren't discouraging them.
It's a double whammy, the ultimate do-gooder example of the law of unintended consequences.
Infuriate left and right
South Park gave us one of the more plausible representations of Bono (a floater and maker of floaters). The creators of South Park also let you download the shows for free, providing an illuminating contrast with Bono and his ilk.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I don't recall you having any basis in study for your uttering. Just because you got rich hopping around on a stage wailing into a microphone doesn't make you an expert in everything.
No, all you have done now is discredited the good work you *did* manage to do.
I do not steal music, but I am just as likely to be dragged into court as anyone else because the detection methods used by the RIAA are (a) flawed and (b) irrelevant - they are not interested in the conviction per se, but the chilling effect. Well, they have chilled two things: (1) my respect for the legal system, as I have seen it abused in many ways over the last 8 years and (2) my enthusiasm for buying music - I switched to web radio instead. In the last 5 years I have bought ONE (1) CD, and I know I'm far from the only one.
You see, the RIAA idiots forget two things. Firstly, those they sue now would have been their future customers. Instead, by manipulating the amount of fines they will be denied a future. So, no future sales. Secondly, we age, which means what we like now is old tomorrow but we'll hang on to those records. Again, no new sales.
Last but not least, there is another chilling effect. For someone who is so-called "creative" you appear to have a short memory, or maybe that has been bought by the RIAA as well? Any creativity has roots, has examples. I have seen fantastic new ways in which music has developed based on examples people grew up with and experimented with.
What the RIAA is doing is chilling the experimental, the new growth. That leaves only the manufactured bands, with a few exceptions (when the singers accidentally have talent too) - and that is on the decline because it's unoriginal crap which requires (costly) marketing to sell. You could get a computer to make that stuff, and most sounds like it too.
So it's not just a child that dies every time you clap your hands (did you stop clapping?) - it's also the market that gave you the money to change from a moderately interesting singer to an idiot used by politicians and sales droids, and I haven't failed to notice that quite a few things you have been promoted involved making more money for the parties involved (like "RED" - buy our stuff and we'll give a -small- percentage to the cause). Yes, money ruins a lot - U2, it seems..
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