It seems the U2 manager wants illegal downloaders ‘blacklisted’ and reckons that downloading is ‘destroying the recorded music industry’:

McGuinness targeted makers of devices that have been used to play copyrighted content [... saying] “Hardware makers should share with the content owners whose assets are exploited by the buyers of their machines”.

As Techdirt noted — ‘The oil industry’s success is built on the backs of the automobile industry, but does the automobile industry demand that oil companies have a moral obligation to pay them? Computer makers have built a multibillion dollar industry on the backs of the internet and software companies — yet, no one says they have a moral obligation to pay those companies anything. Travel guides have built huge business based on hotels and restaurants around the globe, but does anyone think that those travel guides owe the hotels and restaurants money for doing so?’

He argued that the recent Radiohead release of a download priced on the honesty box principle had backfired. He said: “It seems that the majority of downloads were through illegal P2P download services like BitTorrent and LimeWire even though the album was available for nothing through the official band site.”

The majority were through torrents? That’s not what Forbes.com says: ‘more than 500,000 total illegal downloads [... is] less than the 1.2 million legitimate online sales of the album reported by the British Web site Gigwise.com.’ Also, going by these comments, it looks like a fair few of the torrent downloaders were doing so because the main site was so hammered they couldn’t get through that way — even though they wanted to.

“Notwithstanding the promotional noise, even Radiohead’s honesty box principle showed that if not constrained, the customer will steal music.”

Yeah! Fucking customers! I’m sure the world would be better off without them, allowing U2 to get on with the job of making $355 million per tour, without these thieving scum getting in the way. ….oh, wait…

This isn’t the first time McGuinness has foisted consumer-hating crap on us. Check right for a photo of himself and Bonio grinning in support of the extension of copyright in the UK — presumably he’s worried that Bonio’s great-grandchildren won’t be kept in the style they’re accustomed to in 95 years time.

All I can say is, read the Techdirt article. It scuppers his greedy ranting much better than I can:

More money is being made on concert revenue than ever before. More artists are making music than ever before. More music is being heard than ever before. Even more musical instruments are being sold than ever before in the past. Yet, because one segment of the market (the one selling plastic discs) is unwilling to take some simple steps to change its business model, everyone else has to pay up?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 12:19 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.