Slashdot Mirror
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.
Read radical news here
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.
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.
Read radical news here
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.
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
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
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).
.