I respect Bono of U2 fame (or is it the other way around?) for many things, but his ramblings on file-sharing in this last Sunday’s New York Times column are just plain dumb. So, dear Bono, as much as I love you, this time you deserve a royal spanking.
Disclaimer: This image has been edited using special effects.
Let’s start by pulling this beauty of a quote out of Bono’s text:
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.
First off Bono, modern distribution technology does not hurt the creators, it hurts those clinging desperately to an old business model. These are by definition non-creators.
Second, the “reverse Robin Hooding” that you’re talking about is just plain wrong. Service providers are going flat rate all over the place and bandwidth cost is dropping faster than a diamond in a penthouse jacuzzi (to use your rock star lingo).
One could hope here that Bono would go back to writing excellent songs instead of rambling about things he obviously doesn’t understand, but no. Bono continues:
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.
Dear Bono. Thankfully, China is not succeding very well in doing this. That’s why they have to shut down entire services. And a quick trip to China would tell you that kids (and non-kids) there are pretty darn savvy when it comes to using proxies, onion routers and what have you to get around the kind of censorship you are suggesting. In fact, we’ll all become pretty savvy at this if we take your advice and introduce similar practices in western societies.
While at it, your censorship scheme would unleash the power of music for innovation of great stealth technologies which would in turn make life much easier for terrorists and child pornographers who now get access to these same technologies. Your goal of protecting the old business model would not be met, but the internet would become more evil. And I hate to break it to you; while America’s effort to stop child pornography may be noble, that war is hardly over. What’s worse is that you even putting the protection of children and protection of old fat cat record label business models in the same priority paragraph makes us all blush on your behalf.
Still love Rattle N’ Hum though.
[Edit: If you know Swedish, also read SVD's take on the subject and some of the 283 comments.]
[Edit 2: Or the follow up debate article on the topic, also in SVD.]
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Hugely entertaining.
Bono är bäst.
Hans inflytande är enormt
världen över, och hans inställning ger verkligen effekt.
Let’s hope you’re wrong in this case. Or do you agree with Bono’s stance on file-sharing and internet censorship?
här finns mer att läsa om moralens väktare http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0225/breaking60.html sen finns det riktiga ljusglimtar bland musikerna också david byrne tex http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=all
That’s a rather marvellous post, about a rather despicable human being. (I should state at this point that I also think his music is awful.)
I don’t think he’s being an idiot. The way I see it is that he is against file sharing for the sake of the creators, composers and art itself.
What many downloaders claim is that artists and bands make money when playing live and that they are doing them a favor by downloading, listening and sharing their music. I agree that this is true in some cases when the artist/band creates largely accepted music. They might make more money by sharing their work freely, create their audience and go out on a tour to make a living. (It would be great if they could chose to do so themselves, though.)
But what about a specific kind of musician (say an Aeolian Wind Harp player that plays blues on it) that has listeners spread all around the world (say that only 0,0001% of the world population listens to his music), he would never benefit from free file sharing to put up a profitable US tour. His art is too specific for live gigs. Still, he would make roughly $7’000 for each song sold for 1 dollar to that percentage of the world population . That’s honest money making! But this guy probably doesn’t exist.
In a time where we can actually create a huge amount of new content, make it find the right listeners, support each other’s choice of living, we benefit those that make art for the mass and force those that are different to become another lawyer, a clerk at McDonald’s… ’cause that’s what we really need!
(Or you might find him playing “Where the streets have no name” on an acoustic guitar for a few bucks on a corner… ’cause that’s what we all learned to like anyway…)
Obviously we’ve reached diametrically opposing conclusions from the same basic data. You (and Bono) believe that sharing music is bad for creators and even for the art itself, while I believe that it is good for creators and art itself.
Let’s assume for a moment that your conclusion is the right one, and that free distribution of the digital content itself will quench creativity and creators, how do you explain the phenomenon of blogging?
Also, what is the business model you propose then, and what measures do you feel are reasonable to protect that model?
Thanks for commenting! I appreciate different points of view.
I would say that it is more true that the owner of this blog is the idiot as he either probably haven´ t read or understood Bonos list! FAIL!
@Zonnox
You may be right here of course. Can you be more specific as to which parts of Bono’s NYT-article that you think I may have misunderstood?
Most of it! Read his text again, but this time use your brain!
I’d be happy to discuss with you Zonnox, but you have to be specific in order for me to do so. What you are resorting to now is called straw man argumentation and is something we are trying to refrain from in this forum.
But like I said, I appreciate different opinions and welcome you back when you can be specific in your argumentation. Also, I would highly recommend not being anonymous since it would give you more credibility and would allow us to perhaps read more elaborate thoughts that you may have posted on your blog or other forums.
You are obviously engaged in the topic and probably have interesting thoughts for us to share.
Welll first we can talk about this.
“First off Bono, modern distribution technology does not hurt the creators”
Thats what you say but actually a lot of creators have seen their income from musicmaking creep so low in part because of piracy that they actually can’t afford to record and compose anymore and have to switch trade.
Studios who used to be booked around the clock are now either deserted or churning out commercial-jingles.
“While at it, your censorship scheme would unleash the power of music for innovation of great stealth technologies which would in turn make life much easier for terrorists and child pornographers who now get access to these same technologies.”
In what way can Bono be accused of having a censorship scheme when he only stated obvious facts? And shouldn’t you be ashamed by threatening with increasing childporn and terror activity on the net if your beloved filesharing hobby would be at threat!
You claim:
So what you’re suggesting here is that we adapt reality to fit the old business model? By force if necessary? Even if we were willing to pay the price of massive collateral damage, this would be impossible. Business people of all time have had to adapt their business model to reality and reality’s changes. This is no different. Trust me, music will not disappear. There are ways of making money off of great artistry and music which do not involve sending around plastic circles.
You claim:
Again, we have a business model problem. Supply is simply greater than demand. Have you watched the price of semi-professional recording equipment lately?
You claim:
In the article (which I’ve read thoroughly) Bono suggests tracking content as a feasible way to save the movie industry. And why track it if you don’t intend to censor/prosecute? To me, it is pretty clear in the text that Bono is of an opinion here, and does not merely state facts – especially if you carefully study the whole “Intellectual Property Developers”-section. Moreover, what he’s stating is not fact, but in fact false. Tracking those who do not want to be tracked is difficult already, and the more we fight for this “selling files”-business model, the better the stealth technologies will become. This will in turn be applauded by those with shady intentions but smaller resources because they will be able to both piggyback on the same technology and hide in the increased noise of encrypted data.
For full disclosure here I also want to be clear that file-sharing is not hobby of mine. I’m in this discussion for philosophical reasons, and even so, I don’t think that file-sharing is really the issue here. Lowering human transaction costs is however. Feel free to read my other posts on the subject if you find the topic interesting. My bottom line belief is that we should keep increasing human efficiency, and that this is how we evolve as a species.
Instead of file-sharing, I indulge in the luxury of a visiting the cinema when watching films (cinema is showing excellent growth by the way, appart from a dip in 2007) and for music I use Spotify Premium which I love, though I hate to see the music cartel kill off all competition to Spotify (Chilirec for example). This kind of illegal abuse of oligopolic power is the real threat to organic free market evolution.
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