ISPs should pay for the music U2 made!!

Popular Rock band U2's manager says they must share revenues in a way that reflects what music is doing for them, and that Silicon Valley's "liberal hippy values" is to blame for its inability to figure out how to create a system for paying for music.

Paul McGuinness, U2's longtime band manager, gave a speech at a Music Matters confab in Hong Kong a few days ago criticizing ISPs around the globe for not doing more to combat the flow of copyrighted material on their networks.

He argues that they and others have been rewarded handsomely over the years at the music industry's expense.


"Where has all the money gone?" he asks.

"The answer is that it has gone to corporations – cable operators, ISPs, device manufacturers, P2P software companies - companies that have used music to drive vast revenues from broadband subscriptions and from advertising. They would argue they have been neutral bystanders to the spectacular devaluation of music and the consequent turmoil in the music business; I don’t believe that is true – they turned their heads the other way, watched their subscriptions grow, and profited handsomely," he adds.

McGuiness claims that 80% of all Internet traffic is P2P-related, an amazingly bloated figure that is more likely around 37% thanks to the exponential rise in video streaming services like YouTube and others. He uses this erroneous figure to then argue that a large amount of an ISP's profits is thereby earned on the backs of the music industry whose profits have diminished as theirs have soared.

It stands to reason, in his mind, that ISPs should have a "...real commercial partnership with the music business in which they fairly share their revenues."

"One way or another, ISPs and mobile operators are the business partners of the future for the recorded music business – but they are going to have to share the money in a way that reflects what music is doing for their business," later says.

The "one way" is willingly, the other is legislatively.

Could anything be more disgusting? If each of the various types of copyright holders forged "commercial partnerships" with ISPs the Internet would be utterly recognizable. Rather than an "information superhighway" it'd be Main St, USA where billboards are plastered everywhere and overzealous beat cops watch your every move for signs of illegal behavior.

Probably the most boldest charge of all is leveled against the "...internet freethinking culture of California and Silicon Valley." The very people and companies who have put the power of knowledge back into the hands of the people are singled out for their egalitarian ways.

"They are fantastic entrepreneurs, wonderful engineers," he says. "Their passion for innovation and liberal hippy values in one sense sit very well with the creativity of the music business. But at a deeper level, there is a bigger problem and it’s one those brilliant minds never resolved: I’m talking about the problem of paying for music."

Talk about blaming the wrong people. Is it really the job of some of the brightest minds on the world to figure out how the record biz could survive and turn a profit? I mean it shouldn't take a Stanford MBA to realize: a) don't sue your customers, b) 2008 is the year to finally fully embrace digital distribution since customers have been embracing it since 1999, c) albums are overpriced, d) that the focus should be on making good albums not good profits.