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: In 1983, U2 frontman Bono was a scrappy upstart on the world music
: scene, and he sang about how "nothing changes on New Year's
: Day." But the 2010 version of Irish rocker is a
: world-traveling, President-meeting, New York Times op-ed-penning
: factotum - and he's demanding some New Year's changes,
: especially from ISPs. Forget acting like "dumb pipes"
: or even the Post Office; ISPs must now take a lesson from China
: and start proactively filtering copyrighted content.
:
: Bono's NYT column offers up ten big ideas for the next decade.
: It's an entertaining read, especially when he suggests that the
: US government use its current investment in car companies like
: GM to bring in designers like "Steve Jobs and Jonny Ive
: from Apple" to make cars "sexual objects" once
: again. (We'd love to see Ive's take on that quintessential
: non-sexy suburban vehicle, the minivan, for instance.)
:
: But Bono also warns of a coming apocalypse, one that will
: swallow the movie business the way it has already devoured music
: and the newspaper... and this is where some serious questions
: arise. Did you know, for instance, that the big problem
: newspapers have faced in recent years is copyright infringement
: of their tiny text files? We were not aware that this was one of
: the main problems for an industry battered by craigslist
: (classified ads), hammered by sites like Zillow and Realtor.com
: (real estate searches), hampered by easy access to other big
: national newspapers on the Internet, stung by the current
: economics of free ad-supported online access, etc, etc.
:
: Bono's contention is 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." This, a truism from three years ago, certainly has
: a kernel of truth to it - but to call it the "only"
: thing saving movies is ridiculous. File size alone is no long a
: defense against movie file-sharing, and someone willing to pen
: the lyrics "Force quit, and move to trash... Restart and
: reboot yourself... Password: you!" (from the song
: "Unknown Caller") should know this.
:
: What we see, in fact, is box office receipts rising to
: record-setting levels over each of the last three years, even as
: bandwidth exploded and P2P hubs became even simpler to use. This
: isn't a complete picture of the industry, but this one data
: point alone puts the lie to the idea that people simply won't
: pay money for experiences and objects that they value.
:
: When it comes to music, there are other key questions: Why are
: live concert revenues way up? What role has the shift to digital
: singles rather than full album sales played in the major label
: revenue decline? If piracy is such a problem that deputizing
: ISPs is needed, how is it that labels like EMI are actually
: growing their revenues?
:
: It's important to think about the root cause of the change in
: these markets, because knowing the cause leads to proposing the
: solution. In Bono's case, because the issue is simply about
: bandwidth - people will just take whatever they want once it's
: easy enough - the solution is about the bandwidth providers.
:
: "We're the post office, they tell us; who knows what's in
: the brown-paper packages?" he writes. "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. Perhaps movie moguls
: will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so
: far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in
: the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account
: for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product."
:
: The music industry did attempt to "rally America" to
: defend its economic practices, and America wanted nothing to do
: with the mass lawsuits that the industry eventually had to halt.
: Is Bono seriously suggesting that the far more invasive practice
: of turning ISPs into wiretappers would somehow find public
: traction as a great idea necessary to defend Hollywood?
:
: This isn't the current "three strikes" idea, either,
: since it directly charges ISPs with the responsibility to do the
: tracking, or at least to cooperate with it. And ISPs would have
: great difficulty implementing the plan, thanks to encryption.
: (This could be bypassed in some cases by trawling BitTorrent
: swarms for IP addresses, etc., but such a plan would essentially
: turn an ISP into a content identification company. Identifying
: copyright content - and, remember, this would only be
: copyrighted content that wasn't supposed to be transferred -
: passing along its own wires would be quite difficult.
:
: But one of Bono's most appealing qualities is his self-mockery,
: and he calls himself one of the "least sympathetic"
: voices for the cause. "Note to self: Don't get
: over-rewarded rock stars on this bully pulpit, or famous
: actors," he suggests. "Find the next Cole Porter, if
: he/she hasn't already left to write jingles."
:
: It's only a couple of paragraphs, and as such the idea isn't
: fleshed out. But I wonder what got Bono thinking about
: "thieving" ISPs in the first place?
:
:
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