billyworld99
Proud Member
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2011
- Messages
- 2,021
- Points
- 0
Source: New York times
September 22, 2010
As far as solving the music industry’s financial woes, U2 manager Paul McGuinness still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. But he's not about to stop beating the drum.
The new issue of Rolling Stone has an abridged version of a piece McGuinness wrote for the UK edition of GQ addressing the file-sharing and piracy issues that he believes are largely the source of the meltdown of the music business in recent years.
It’s an update and expansion on ideas he put forth at the international MIDEM music conference in Cannes two years ago, an event at which I spoke with him at length about some very specific recommendations on how to address those issues.
Now, as then, he holds Internet service providers — and the giant telecommunications corporations that control the vast majority of ISPs — responsible, arguing that they’ve built their industry to a large extent by providing free content, often irrespective of the intellectual property rights of musicians and other creative types responsible for that content.
When I sat down with him in Cannes, he noted that ISPs have no qualms about promptly shutting down the accounts of users who don’t pay their ISP bills; they should do the same for those who illegally share copyrighted Web content like music.
More than two years later, he writes that little has changed in that regard.
“For the world’s Internet Service Providers, bloated by years of broadband growth, ‘free music’ has been a multi-billion dollar bonanza,” McGuinness writes.
"Unfortunately, the main problem is still just as bad as it ever was.
“Artists cannot get record deals. Revenues are plummeting. Efforts to provide legal and viable ways of making money from muse are being stymied by piracy. The latest industry figures, from IFPI [the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry], show that 95% of all the music downloaded is illegally obtained and unpaid for….A study endorsed by trade unions says Europe’s creative industries could lose more than a million jobs in the next five years.
“Finally,” he adds, “maybe the message is getting through that this isn’t just about fewer limos for rich rock stars.”
Many of those rock stars have been reluctant to go on the offensive, because the problem is often cast in precisely those terms: millionaire musicians whining that they aren’t making even more money.
McGuinness still thinks, as he did back in early 2008, that music subscription services should be the way of the future and that ISPs should be sharing their windfall profits with the artists and labels that have helped them pull in that money. If they don’t do so voluntarily, government intervention should be the next step.
He points to laws passed in France, England, South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand aimed at tipping the scales back toward equity for musicians. But that still leaves much of the world without any such protections.
Senate Bill Targets Online Piracy
September 22, 2010
A bill introduced in the US Senate on Monday would give US law enforcement authorities more tools to crack down on websites engaged in piracy of movies, television shows and music.
The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act has received support from both parties and was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah.
The bill will give the Justice Department the "tools to track and shut down websites devoted to providing access to unauthorized downloads, streaming or sale of copyrighted content and counterfeit goods," Leahy's office said.
The illegal products offered by websites, many of which are based outside of the United States, range from movies, television shows and music to pharmaceuticals and consumer products, it said in a statement.
"Each year, online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods cost American businesses billions of dollars, and result in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs," Leahy said.
"In today's global economy the Internet has become the glue of international commerce -- connecting consumers with a wide-array of products and services worldwide," Hatch said. "But it's also become a tool for online thieves to sell counterfeit and pirated goods, making hundreds of millions of dollars off of stolen American intellectual property.
"This legislation is critical to our continued fight against online piracy and counterfeiting," Hatch said.
The bill gives the Justice Department an expedited process for cracking down on websites engaged in piracy including having a court issue an order against a domain name that makes pirated goods available.
In May, the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus condemned Canada, China, Mexico, Russia and Spain for failing to crack down on Web piracy and said theft of intellectual property in those countries was at "alarming levels."
The bipartisan caucus also released what it called a "list of notorious offenders" -- websites involved in making available unauthorized copies of the works of US creators.
The websites singled out by the caucus, made up of 70 members of the Senate and House of Representatives, were China's Baidu, Canada's isoHunt, Ukraine's MP3fiesta, Sweden's Pirate Bay, Germany's Rapidshare and Luxembourg's RMX4U.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jidSIVw4aOV5AjcClGtLAtgDLuIw
September 22, 2010
As far as solving the music industry’s financial woes, U2 manager Paul McGuinness still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. But he's not about to stop beating the drum.
The new issue of Rolling Stone has an abridged version of a piece McGuinness wrote for the UK edition of GQ addressing the file-sharing and piracy issues that he believes are largely the source of the meltdown of the music business in recent years.
It’s an update and expansion on ideas he put forth at the international MIDEM music conference in Cannes two years ago, an event at which I spoke with him at length about some very specific recommendations on how to address those issues.
Now, as then, he holds Internet service providers — and the giant telecommunications corporations that control the vast majority of ISPs — responsible, arguing that they’ve built their industry to a large extent by providing free content, often irrespective of the intellectual property rights of musicians and other creative types responsible for that content.
When I sat down with him in Cannes, he noted that ISPs have no qualms about promptly shutting down the accounts of users who don’t pay their ISP bills; they should do the same for those who illegally share copyrighted Web content like music.
More than two years later, he writes that little has changed in that regard.
“For the world’s Internet Service Providers, bloated by years of broadband growth, ‘free music’ has been a multi-billion dollar bonanza,” McGuinness writes.
"Unfortunately, the main problem is still just as bad as it ever was.
“Artists cannot get record deals. Revenues are plummeting. Efforts to provide legal and viable ways of making money from muse are being stymied by piracy. The latest industry figures, from IFPI [the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry], show that 95% of all the music downloaded is illegally obtained and unpaid for….A study endorsed by trade unions says Europe’s creative industries could lose more than a million jobs in the next five years.
“Finally,” he adds, “maybe the message is getting through that this isn’t just about fewer limos for rich rock stars.”
Many of those rock stars have been reluctant to go on the offensive, because the problem is often cast in precisely those terms: millionaire musicians whining that they aren’t making even more money.
McGuinness still thinks, as he did back in early 2008, that music subscription services should be the way of the future and that ISPs should be sharing their windfall profits with the artists and labels that have helped them pull in that money. If they don’t do so voluntarily, government intervention should be the next step.
He points to laws passed in France, England, South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand aimed at tipping the scales back toward equity for musicians. But that still leaves much of the world without any such protections.
Senate Bill Targets Online Piracy
September 22, 2010
A bill introduced in the US Senate on Monday would give US law enforcement authorities more tools to crack down on websites engaged in piracy of movies, television shows and music.
The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act has received support from both parties and was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah.
The bill will give the Justice Department the "tools to track and shut down websites devoted to providing access to unauthorized downloads, streaming or sale of copyrighted content and counterfeit goods," Leahy's office said.
The illegal products offered by websites, many of which are based outside of the United States, range from movies, television shows and music to pharmaceuticals and consumer products, it said in a statement.
"Each year, online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods cost American businesses billions of dollars, and result in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs," Leahy said.
"In today's global economy the Internet has become the glue of international commerce -- connecting consumers with a wide-array of products and services worldwide," Hatch said. "But it's also become a tool for online thieves to sell counterfeit and pirated goods, making hundreds of millions of dollars off of stolen American intellectual property.
"This legislation is critical to our continued fight against online piracy and counterfeiting," Hatch said.
The bill gives the Justice Department an expedited process for cracking down on websites engaged in piracy including having a court issue an order against a domain name that makes pirated goods available.
In May, the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus condemned Canada, China, Mexico, Russia and Spain for failing to crack down on Web piracy and said theft of intellectual property in those countries was at "alarming levels."
The bipartisan caucus also released what it called a "list of notorious offenders" -- websites involved in making available unauthorized copies of the works of US creators.
The websites singled out by the caucus, made up of 70 members of the Senate and House of Representatives, were China's Baidu, Canada's isoHunt, Ukraine's MP3fiesta, Sweden's Pirate Bay, Germany's Rapidshare and Luxembourg's RMX4U.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jidSIVw4aOV5AjcClGtLAtgDLuIw