U2
U2's manager has called on ISPs to stop illegal music downloads

U2 manager calls for P2P crackdown

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Ban Me

Iain Thomson

The manager of rock band U2 has called on ISPs to crack down on illegal music downloads in order to keep bands in business.

Paul McGuinness told the Midem conference in Cannes that illegal file sharers are profiting at the expense of artists.

Advertisement

"If you were a magazine advertising stolen cars, handling the money for stolen cars and seeing to the delivery of stolen cars, the police would soon be at your door," he told Reuters.

"That is no different to an ISP, but they say they cannot do anything about it. If you steal a laptop from a store or don't pay for your broadband service, you will soon be cut off and nicked."

McGuinness also railed against music companies that had missed the opportunity to sort out a downloading strategy, and condemned media player manufacturers that "do not think of themselves as makers of burglary kits".

McGuinness is a majority shareholder in U2's management company, which reported profits of €7.7m last year.

He believes that musicians are being short changed. "There is a lot of money in the music business, but it has stopped coming to the artists," he said.

McGuinness insisted that ISPs must share revenues with musicians. "I call on ISPs to do two things: protect the music and make a genuine effort to share the enormous revenues," he said.

"They should share their ingenuity as well as the money. We must shame them. Their snouts have been at our trough for too long."

  • Have your say
  • Send to a friend
  • Print
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • Share

Tags:

Do you agree?

Related whitepapers

Related jobs

Most watched

Social networking

Summit: How businesses should manage their brands online

In part one of V3.co.uk's interview with Dirk Singer, he dicusses social media monitoring strategies

RIM discusses new developer tools

Blackberry exec on the latest offerings for programmers

Analysis and Reports

Remote access - Three steps to getting connected

3.4 million UK professionals now work from home – is your company equipped?

Cost benefits of a global collaboration network

This white paper is a must read for organisations looking for evidence of the bottom-line benefits of high-definition video and voice communications

Poll

Impact of Information Overload poll

Impact of Information Overload poll

What is the biggest problem your firm faces as a result of the data explosion?

View poll results

Advertisement

White paper library

Keep up to date with the latest products, services and technologies from the world's leading IT companies; IThound.com brings you over 6,000 white papers, case studies and analyst reports.

Advertisement

Newsletter signup

Sign up for our range of FREE newsletters:

Existing User

Newsletter user login:

Enter email address to edit your newsletter preferences

Job of the week

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Hiring now on ComputingCareers:

Related IT jobs

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Advertisement

Spotlight

Alcatel-Lucent logo

Summit: Networks swamped by information overload

Alcatel-Lucent's Neal Tilley talks about how enterprises and carriers can...

EU flag

Breach notification laws get green light

Privacy rights strengthened in Europe

Richard Thomas

Summit: Richard Thomas advises on handling the data deluge

Former Information Commissioner speaks out on government databases and data...

oracle sun

War of words escalates between EU and Oracle

Commission comes out fighting after criticism from Oracle and Washington

Primary Navigation