U2 manager wants Apple to help with illegal file-sharing problems
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jan 29, 2008 at 1:00pm
Music fans who indulge in widespread illegal file-sharing should have their web connections cut off by Internet service providers, Paul McGuinness, the manager of U2, said at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes, reports the Times Online. And he wants Apple to get involved.
McGuinness says that sites such as Yahoo! and AOL should be prosecuted if they fail to prevent illegal file-sharing. “In the UK, the Gowers report made it clear that legislation should be considered if voluntary talks with ISPs failed to produce a commitment to disconnect file-sharers. I’d like to see the UK Government act promptly on this recommendation.”
In 2004, U2 signed a deal with Apple to release a branded iPod in exchange for a percentage of each device sold, but McGuinness feels that even CEO Steve Jobs hasn’t fully grasped the scale of the challenge to his own businesses, including the Walt Disney studio, presented by illegal downloading.
“I wish he would bring his remarkable set of skills to bear on the problems of recorded music,” he adds. “He’s a technologist, a financial genius, a marketer and a music lover. He probably doesn’t realize it, but the collapse of the old financial model for recorded music will also mean the end of the songwriter.”
McGuinness also predicted that Apple would reveal a wireless iPod that connects to an iTunes “all of the music, wherever you are” subscription service. “I would like it to succeed, if the content is fairly paid for,” he said. You can read the complete article here.
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David Says:
Paul, Apple has already done more to combat illegal downloading than any other company. They almost single handedly created the paid digital download market. Before the iTunes store virtually no one paid for music online.
The law you propose is at once both too draconian and ineffective. It would require ISPs to examine every packet looking for “illegal” content and presumably, once that’s in place, to also filter out “inappropriate” content. Are you really Irish because the Chinese government could learn a lot from you about censorship and restricting the free flow of information.
As I stated, it wouldn’t work anyway. File sharing will always take place using one technology or another and the content of the files can be hidden using encryption.
Posted on January 29, 2008
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Rob Says:
I think Jobs wants to be seen as the guy who says “let there be no DRM on music”. Not the guy who says “lock’em up and throw away the key”. I doubt he will want to be apart of this kind of discussion.
Posted on January 29, 2008