(01-29-2008) U2 manager 'wants end to piracy' - BBC News*

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
MrBrau1 said:
Do you really think someone steals an album at 192 kbps with no DRM, then goes and buys a copy protected version at 128kbps?
No, which is why I never said that. Perhaps you quoted the wrong post?

And for the record, I also don't think that a 12 year old kid with 2000 mp3s in his collection would have dropped $2000 to buy them all on iTunes either, and he certainly wouldn't have dropped $10k to buy the CDs to get them.

Anyway, I was a bit off in my last post about online sales being up by the same amount that CD sales are down. Online sales are actually up waaaay more than CD sales are down.

CD sales down 9.2%, but online sales are up 45%
 
cydewaze said:

No, which is why I never said that. Perhaps you quoted the wrong post?
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Um, ok.

So, if stolen music doesn't translate into CD sales, and it doesn't translate into online sales, how do you feel about the point that stealing music is an exploratory tool used to guide future purchases?
 
MrBrau1 said:
So, if stolen music doesn't translate into CD sales, and it doesn't translate into online sales, how do you feel about the point that stealing music is an exploratory tool used to guide future purchases?

Ahh, a "what if"! I usually love what ifs, but the problem with this one is that it assumes both "ifs" as fact. Since we have no way of knowing whether stolen music leads to sales or not, your "what if" is nothing more than a trap to either get me to 1) agree with you, or 2) say that I support the thieves.

How about this one: "If banning computers stops all child pornography, then how do you feel about banning computers?"

Fun stuff, eh?

For what it's worth, I don't have a very strong opinion as to whether illegal downloads lead to more sales. For some people they might, and for others they probably won't. I know I recently bought a Coldplay CD as a result of hearing a song from it as background music for a Youtube video (and I'm completely capable of capturing that music in mp3 format, so I could have easily had it for free), so there's an example of sampling leading to purchase.

But I don't believe that the 12 year old kid with the 2000 illegal songs is going to purchase much of that (as I stated in a previous post) because he obviously doesn't have two grand lying around.

My point has never been that piracy leads to sales. Someone else said that. My point is that you can't assume that every stolen song is a lost sale. You also can't assume that just because CD sales are down, the music industry is in trouble. There's just no evidence to support that.

Overall music purchases (counting CDs, downloads, DVDs, etc combined) were up for 2007 over 2006. Overall sales at the end of last year were higher than ever. I don't see how that equals artists or record companies going broke.
 
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MrBrau1 said:


If downloading leads to sales how are CD sales down year, after year.

All this exploring should be leading to an explosion of new cd purchases.


Perhaps not cd purchases, but purchases through iTunes, etc. Either way, the bands profit. CD's will go the way of the cassette tape. It's just the way it is. If someone is interested in U2 and downloads a few songs, say through Limewire, and the songs really get to them, they'll buy. I've tried Limewire, it can be alot of work. If you have the funds to have an album downloaded and backed up through iTunes, that's the way you should go. Paul McG is rich, as is the band. They shouldn't complain about 'free' downloads.
 
Bonoho said:



Perhaps not cd purchases, but purchases through iTunes, etc. Either way, the bands profit. CD's will go the way of the cassette tape. It's just the way it is. If someone is interested in U2 and downloads a few songs, say through Limewire, and the songs really get to them, they'll buy. I've tried Limewire, it can be alot of work. If you have the funds to have an album downloaded and backed up through iTunes, that's the way you should go. Paul McG is rich, as is the band. They shouldn't complain about 'free' downloads.

Hmmm?

Here is an example I noted last nite in another thread.

Mininova currently has a "Complete Beatles" torrent.

360kbps

--Please Please Me
--With the Beatles
--A Hard Day's Night
--Beatles For Sale
--Help!
--Rubber Soul
--Revolver
--Yellow Submarine
--Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
--Abbey Road
--Magical Mystery Tour
--The Beatles (White Album)
--Let It Be
--The Beatles 1962-1965 (Greatest Hits Vol. 1)
--The Beatles 1967-1970 (Greatest Hits Vol. 2)
--Past Masters, Volume One
--Past Masters, Volume Two
--Anthology, Vol. 1
--Anthology, Vol. 2
--Anthology, Vol. 3
--Live at the BBC
--The Early Tapes (With Tony Sheridan)
--The Decca Tapes
--The Beatles 1
--Love Songs
--In The Beginning

444 people are downloading it. 1034 sharing.

How many Beatles albums do you think those 444 people are going to buy?

How many of those 1034 seeders are sharing rips from original copies?

Seem slightly selfish to me. To need the ENTIRE discography of a band to determine if you like them or not.

Whether the rights holder to the Beatles music is rich or not is irrelevant. Stealing from poor people is wrong, as is stealing from rich people.
 
MrBrau1 said:
How do ISP's police Child Pornography?
They don't.


MrBrau1 said:
Whether the rights holder to the Beatles music is rich or not is irrelevant. Stealing from poor people is wrong, as is stealing from rich people.
Ok, so what's next. What in your opinion is the best course of action from here? What should be done about all this?
 
cydewaze said:

They don't.



Ok, so what's next. What in your opinion is the best course of action from here? What should be done about all this?

nothing is going to happen.

This is it.

Downloaders stuffing their faces with as much stolen music as they can get their hands on.

And the RIAA going after people for thousands of $.
 
MrBrau1 said:
why did you avoid this one?
Because moral obligation is not for me to decide. And whether or not ISPs are obligated to police child porn doesn't have anything to do with music, other than they're both illegal things that happen online.

The difference is that when people are convicted of child porn, it's a criminal offense, so they get have the luxury of due process. File sharing cases are not tried in criminal court, so there burden of proof is not the same. If piracy cases were prosecuted like child porn cases, almost no one would ever be sued for piracy, and that says something.


MrBrau1 said:
nothing is going to happen.

This is it.

Downloaders stuffing their faces with as much stolen music as they can get their hands on.

And the RIAA going after people for thousands of $.
Fair enough.
 
Re: U2 3D?

politico said:
HEy guys,

Has anyone seen U2 3D yet??

I haven't seen it yet, but I plan to. There is a lot of discussion in the Everything You Know Is Wrong forum that you'd probably be interested in.

Welcome! :wave:
 
I won't be surprised if this is what it will ultimately come down to, ISP banning people who downloaded music and/or bands leaving major labels and start new deals without the middle man.
And the musicians have a right to have a negative opinion on illegal downloading.
 
U2girl said:
I won't be surprised if this is what it will ultimately come down to, ISP banning people who downloaded music
Then people will just do it at an internet cafe (which they already do) or they'll poach other people's wireless signals and get them banned instead.


U2girl said:
and/or bands leaving major labels and start new deals without the middle man.
That's what's most likely going to happen, and it's what the record companies fear the most.

I have a friend in California who is a musician (BAW met her while we were out there for Vertigo) and she has a website with a bunch of her own music. She was never able to get a record deal in her life for various reasons, so she puts her music on her website where people can buy her CDs.

Unfortunately, a website is like a needle in a haystack because there's just so much other information out there. So she stuck a few of her songs on gnutella, where people using programs like Limewire or Kazaa could find them using searches on genre, or other keywords. They'd download her songs, like them, then do a google search on her name, where her website pops up as the first hit. After one week she sold more albums than she had sold for the previous three years combined.

And the best part is, she got to keep 100% of the money, because there was no record company to eat up her profits and give her 1% or whatever artists get these days.

THIS is why the record companies want to kill file sharing. If artists can produce and market their own music, and get to keep all the money, then they don't need the major labels at all. It's the modern day equivalent of a typewriter company - producing a product that people no longer need because a better way has come along. And despite their best efforts, the writing is already on the wall.


U2girl said:
And the musicians have a right to have a negative opinion on illegal downloading.
Of course. Everyone has a right to an opinion.
 
U2girl said:
I won't be surprised if this is what it will ultimately come down to, ISP banning people who downloaded music and/or bands leaving major labels and start new deals without the middle man.
And the musicians have a right to have a negative opinion on illegal downloading.

that's what they're gonna do in France. Ban people after 3 strikes.
 
cydewaze said:

Then people will just do it at an internet cafe (which they already do) or they'll poach other people's wireless signals and get them banned instead.


You think there is no way for ISPs to know what internet cafe users are looking at/downlading ? :shrug:
 
U2girl said:
You think there is no way for ISPs to know what internet cafe users are looking at/downlading ? :shrug:
Of course there is. What I'm saying is that people will use cafes to download music without risking their own internet connection.

I've never been to a cafe, so I don't know what's required of you before you can use a PC there. If they require a photo ID, then I can see them possibly being able to associate a downloaded file to a specific user, but if you can just go in, plop down cash and hop on a machine, they'll have no idea who's downloading what.

Even still, there are countless ways to hide your real IP address online. Then there's always the people who poach other people's wireless signals, and even their non-wireless signals.

The record industry has been suing people for around 8 years now, and even with all the courts on their side, the law on their side, all the tech people they can afford at their disposal, and courts willing to bend laws into pretzels to help them, they still haven't made a dent in file sharing. There are still millions and millions of people online sharing music.

These lawsuits aren't putting a dime of extra money in the pockets of the artists (the RIAA uses the money won in suits to fund the next round of suits), and they aren't slowing down the file sharing. They are however starting to cause some popular artists to look for ways to sell their music without involving the record companies (which is a good thing) and they're creating a quickly growing market for independent artists (another good thing).

At the rate things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years down the road, most artists sold their own music without involving the record companies at all. Between now and then though, it's going to be a really rough ride, because the laws on how you listen to the music you pay for are going to get increasingly tight.
 
i think the end to piracy is to fully stop patronizing an artist/band. this way, all of us suffer - the artist, the producers, the middle men, and of course, consumers. let's see what Paul M would say next if no single cent comes into their way anymore. (i hate him now.):mad:
 
This is completely stupid.

Read this and be enlightened...

/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html

its hosted at demonbaby dot com
 
bencanes1 said:
This is completely stupid.

Read this and be enlightened...

/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html

its hosted at demonbaby dot com

i've read that before.

Dude comes up with tons of excuses why it's ok to steal, oops, sorry, "copyright infringe."
 
MrBrau1 said:


Do you really think someone steals an album at 192 kbps with no DRM, then goes and buys a copy protected version at 128kbps?

Ha! No, that's part of the problem. Far less would download if they could get the 192 kbps (or preferably, 320 kbps) version for a reasonable price. But, the idiotic record companies have made sure that you can't do that. Transparently, because they want you to 1) buy the 128 kbps version AND then go out and buy the cd. So they can bill you twice for the same good :)

If they weren't so damn greedy, people would likely be more cooperative.
 
MrBrau1 said:


i've read that before.

Dude comes up with tons of excuses why it's ok to steal, oops, sorry, "copyright infringe."

Yea "dude" comes up with so many excuses, you do realize he's a former record company employee yes? His opinion carries far more weight than some corporate apologist U2 fanboy.

Enough of the damn myopia. Your head is so far up your ass it's almost funny. Massive artists dont lose from illegal downloading, they lose a pittance, artists like U2 have so many revenue streams that downloading their CDs only hurt the record company.

The entire "illegal downloading" argument is all on the record companies at this point. It's their choice why CDs have been overpriced for almost 20 years, and it was their choice when downloading became ever so prevalent to form a business model that was completely lacking in any sort of control or quality choice and still keeping the exorbitant costs to fill their own pockets.

The problem is that illegal downloading will NEVER disappear. Even if the ISPs did everything that McGuinness is calling for the pirates would find a way around that. Thats the thing about technology, it adapts to the environment. Unlike the record companies who still live in the stone age.

They don't realize they could be 10x richer by developing a business model to cater to people providing total choice. I have read countless people state how they would gladly pay a subscription fee to get legal access to high quality media, I'd pay 49.95 a month to access a high quality torrent site if that money was going to the artists.

I personally will not be buying U2's next album. I'll be downloading it on a torrent site. I'll support them by going to the shows, where they will get more than the percentage they'd get from me buying the CD . The only way to fight back to force the record companies to get a digital business model that appeals to everyone is to not support them. Eventually when that attitude hits the artists, the artists will be the ones to demand the change. Is it any wonder why CD sales have fallen so dramatically in 5 years?
 
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