Bono, the lead singer of U2, is well known for “mouthing off”. I normally ignore his tirades, but his most recent one, which was published in the New York Times, has irked me.
While Bono is entitled to his opinion, as is everyone else, there is a danger that someone as well known as him may be listened to. When his opinion piece is interpreted as “gospel” by some then there is a real danger that someone somewhere might mistake Bono’s rambling thoughts for sanity.
Let’s look at some of his “wonderful” thoughts:
The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files.
Huh? That paragraph doesn’t even make any sense.
But it gets better ..
A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.
Two problems with that.
- Who gets the lion’s share of the profits from record sales? It’s not the creator, unless the creator also happens to be the record label …
- “Rich service providers”? Most ISPs aren’t awash with “swollen profits” and Bono’s claims about ISPs is an obvious reflection of his total ignorance.
We’re the post office, they tell us; who knows what’s in the brown-paper packages? But we know from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s perfectly possible to track content.
Again, Bono’s ignorance is simply amazing.
First off, attempting to draw parallels between child porn and file sharing. Is he nuts?
Yes, it is technically possible to track content, but what Bono forgets is that in order for an ISP to do so they have to infringe users’ rights.
Bono’s hypocrisy seems to know no bounds. Doesn’t he spend a lot of his time going on about human rights? So “nasty” countries must be made to behave, but if Bono’s bottomline is potentially impacted we can throw the rulebook out the window?
If he actually had a clue, which he patently doesn’t, he’d realise how drawing parallels between China’s content filtering and oppression makes him look much dumber than normal.
What’s even more amusing (and bemusing) is that Bono doesn’t see any issue in advocating for content filtering to benefit record labels in an article that also goes on to repression.
Maybe Bono needs a dictionary …
You can read his really misinformed and hypocritical article here
i really enjoyed this post 🙂
Maybe Bono refers to China because he knows that if, say, Ireland mirrored their internet filtering, our unemployment problems would be hugely reduced while also obviously also further lining his own pockets?
Currently 60,000 employed in China filtering the internet at latest count?
Totally agree, but being famous atleast guarantees that you are heard, and the reason you are writing this post 🙂
Some people base their opinions on what the rich and famous has to say. Thats the sad part.
Bono has been talking nonsense for a long time now. What particularly irks me is being lectured by a multi-millionaire tax exile on our responsibilities to the Third World economy etc.
Out of anything I read yesterday, nothing made me shake my head more than Bono’s article. I really couldn’t believe what I was reading.
How annoyed was I? Well, a U2 song came on my iPod and I just hit next. Take that Hewson.
I agree with you Bono is a bit bozo. In some cases it seems like he is misinterpreting facts. I think he believes what he is saying. He after all a paid informant of the music and movie industries a.k.a. lobbyist.
When he says as per your above quote that the “only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files”.
What he says can be misconstrued by the public as credible. The facts are that file size is not an issue. The only thing saving these industries is bandwidth. More specifically the lack of it. Technologically underdeveloped regions or places where existing technology is underdeveloped because they lack the bandwidth required to full local economies.
In these bandwidth deprived regions file size is an issue to users. The bigger the file – the better the quality – but the slower the downloads – results in frustrated users.
But bandwidth does not keep them from downloading illegal content. If a users wants it bad enough thell get it irrespective of frustration levels.
In good bandwidth areas that support 100MB these industries have already lost the fight. Places where infrastructures support top speeds. Like Japan and South Korea.
The multimedia marketing model does not work anymore. It’s built to manage a technologically backward society. The model is a product of the dark ages. The music and movie industry has to reinvent itself to survive. It has to rethink new storage and distribution models.
Artists should also be better paid .. but thats another argument.