Tim Almond

U2 manager ‘wants to end piracy’

The manager of rock band U2 has urged internet service providers (ISPs) to help end illegal music downloads, according to The Hollywood Reporter

OK

Paul McGuinness called for policies on disconnecting those who acquired tracks illegally, using a speech in France to urge governments to take action.

Which is almost impossible.

Let’s say that ISPs start disconnecting people who they notice are sending “New Years Day.mp3″ or “With Or Without You.mp3″ around. That’s technically feasible.

The problem is, that once word get’s around that people are doing that, users will start getting a bit more clever. They’ll subtly change the file name, replacing certain characters with numbers, or zipping files, or encrypting it en route, and the ISPs simply won’t be able to do a thing.

You could try and classify anyone using, say.  the bittorrent protocol as a filthy pirate, except that there are plenty of people using it for legitimate purposes like downloading open source software or patches for games.

McGuinness said ISPs had “been at our trough for too long”, and should share the revenues they made out of music.

So he doesn’t actually want to end illegal downloads, he wants some rent from us all, regardless of whether we download music illegally or not (I don’t).

There’s only one justification for this. That if a bit more money goes Bono’s way, his ego might reach critical mass, and eventually melt down, sparing us all from more of his wisdom.

Tags: Politics, Music //