U2 Manager Agrees with French Anti-Piracy Solution

by Jordan Yerman | April 9, 2009 at 09:24 am

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U2's manager, seems to think that cutting off his band's fans' Internet connection for falling under suspicion of copyright infringement is actually a good idea. Evidently, McGuinness thinks that, once U2 fans have had their Internet access cut off, they'll gleefully run down to the record store and, what, buy tapes. This idea probably sounded better inside his head than it does when actually typed out and read.

I believe the idea of cutting off a citizen's utility over a unilateral and unsubstantiated claim of wrongdoing is nothing short of idiocy, and that's the generous version.

I have followed this debate closely over the last two years, as a number of governments have woken up to the need to tackle the deep crisis facing their creative industries. The proposals tabled by President Sarkozy and Denis Olivennes in November 2007 gave France moral leadership in the debate, a position the country retains today. The creation and internet law is the right solution to an enormous problem. It is a fair and balanced solution, and I believe it will work in practice.

For someone who claims to have "followed this debate closely", McGuinness shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how his own industry works.

It's not the album sales, it's the concert tickets. It's the t-shirts. It's the soundtracks. The songs themselves are calling cards, inviting fans to engage with the band in deeper ways. Don't just take my word for it: online distribution has worked time and time again for acts ranging from Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails to lesser known artists such as Saul Williams and even disbanded groups like Ghotti. It's clearly not an exception, but the rule itself.

McGuinness is operating under the mistaken impression that instantaneous distribution of a band's material makes that material valueless.

Nope. Free isn't necessarily bad, and this isn't just theorizing. Artists around the world are making it work even as we speak.

Writer, teacher and blogger Cory Doctorow spends a lot of time and keystrokes on this issue, and has the response down to a science, so I'll turn it over to him:

This trivial bit of kit is so unimportant that it's only natural that we equip the companies that brought us Police Academy 11, Windows Vista, Milli Vanilli and Celebrity Dancing With the Stars with wire-cutters that allow them to disconnect anyone in the country on their own say-so, without proving a solitary act of wrongdoing.

But if that magic wire is indeed so trivial, they won't mind if we hold them to the same standard, right? The sloppy, trigger-happy litigants who sue dead people and children, who accused a laser printer of downloading the new Indiana Jones movie, who say that proof of wrongdoing is too much to ask for – if these firms believe that being disconnected from the internet is such a trivial annoyance, they should be willing to put up with the same minor irritation at corporate HQ and the satellite offices, right?