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U2 Manager Wants ISPs To Be Content Babysitters
Applauds France's new three strikes anti-piracy law...

U2's long-time manager Paul McGuinness has long blamed "hippy values" for the collapse of the music industry, likened ISPs to shoplifters, and frequently blames everyone except the music industry for the decline of the music industry. He's back this week with an editorial in the UK's Guardian newspaper, applauding France's new "three strikes" piracy law, which terminates the connections of users who are repeatedly accused of transmitting pirated P2P content. McGuinness would like to see similar models adopted the world over:

quote:
There are clearly people who oppose the new law, but I have not heard of any viable economic alternative to the system now being introduced, committing ISPs to helping protect copyright. The only other proposals offered look like solutions produced for the laboratory, not for the market place.
Techdirt's Mike Masnick, who's been writing a lot about working, alternative music business models for artists large and small in the age of broadband, has a few choice words for Mr. McGuinness:
quote:
(McGuinness) seems to jump to the conclusion that kicking people off the internet will suddenly make people buy music again -- as if he can suddenly turn back the clock. Kicking people off the internet doesn't make them feel better about your product. It doesn't make people more comfortable giving money to the recording industry -- it makes them pissed off and eager to spend their money elsewhere.

It's the exact opposite of a business model. It's a "piss your customers off" model.
Masnick notes there are new business models that work, they just involve reaching out to your customers, listening to what they're saying and treating them well -- something unfamiliar to many major music labels. The music industry's dream scenario is instead all about maintaining control by force: a future where ISPs are forced by government to play content cop, while imposing a monthly piracy tax on your broadband bill.

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Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ

3 recommendations

Kearnstd

Premium Member

im sure he thinks CDs should be 20+ dollars too....

along with some form of system that activates it to a single CD player, to use in any other CD player one has to rebuy the CD license.

Utopia for the music and movie industries would be one where they fully control your experience and all you get is a license to consume the content and where the act of playing it in an "Unapproved Device"(read anything that can record) would be illegal. and that even your kid's birthday party would be considered public performance and that by showing Finding Nemo you just broke the law.