sleeplesseye's Journal: U2's manager calls for ISPs to pull plug on downloaders.

In a speech at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes today, Paul McGuinness, longtime manager of the band U2, has called on Internet service providers to immediately introduce mandatory French-style service disconnections to end music downloading, and has urged governments to force ISPs to adopt such policies. McGuinness criticized Radiohead's "In Rainbows" pay-what-you-want business model, saying that "the majority of downloads were through illegal P2P download services like BitTorrent and LimeWire". and accused ISPs, telcos, device makers, and numerous specifically named companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo!, Oracle, and Facebook of building "multi billion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it", and of being "makers of burglary kits" who have made "a thieve's charter" to steal money from the music industry. The full text of his speech has been posted on U2's website.

Hey Idiot

[dreamchaser]

Burglary kits? You mean software to burn my CD's that I've collected for over a decade? You're a twit, and you just guaranteed that I'll be handing copies of my U2 CD's to all of my friends. You know, like in the old days when nobody cared if you made a casette tape copy of a vinyl LP and gave it to a friend?

Go ahead, come after me. Please. Bring the RIAA. My lawyer and I would welcome it.

Paul McGuinness, you sir are not just a Dickhead, you are also a clueless idiot. I guess I can understand your an

He hits it on the money!

[TheAlps]

What Paul McGuinness really is saying is a voice for all of the artists out there, not a greedy money grubber. As a professional composer and performer who isnt in the top 1% of success and MTV rock monsters I am THRILLED that someone with clout is making these issues be vocalized. Its not the U2s and the Mettalicas that suffer, its the indie artists, score composers, and working musicians that are being destroyed by the wide open not even attempted at regulating illegal downloading of all kinds of media,