McGuinness issues scathing indictment on ISP’s failure to police illegal file sharers

By Veronica Ramsden

CANNES, FRANCE (Hollywood Today) 1/30/08 — U2 manager and music industry vet Paul McGuinness set the tempo of his address in his opening remarks. “U2 always understood that it would be pathetic to be good at the music and bad at the business, and have always been prepared to invest in their own future. We were never interested in joining that long humiliating list of miserable artists who made lousy deals, got exploited and ended up broke and with no control over how their life’s work was used, and no say in how their names and likenesses were bought and sold.”

Having struck a chord with the audience he had their undivided attention, there was not going to be a cell phone inadvertently left on distracting the assembled managers from what this man, with 30 successful years in the music industry, had to say.

McGuinness posed the question ”So what has gone wrong with the recorded music business?” and then vehemently proceeded to give his view. “Part of the problem is that the record companies, through lack of foresight and poor planning, allowed an entire collection of digital industries to arise that enabled the consumer to steal with impunity the very recorded music that had previously been paid for.”

There was ,it seemed, a conspiracy afoot to steal and the ISPs were a deliberate ineffective force in failing to police it. ” If you were publishing a magazine that was advertising stolen cars, processing payments for them and arranging delivery of them you’d expect to get a visit from the police wouldn’t you ? What’s the difference? With a laptop, a broadband account, an MP3 player and a smartphone you can now steal all the content, music, video and literary in the world without any money going to the content owners. On the other hand if you get caught stealing a laptop in the computer store or don’t pay your broadband bill there are obvious consequences: you get nicked or get your access cut off”

In essence what was being propounded was that the ISPs should somehow be held responsible for the illegal file sharers. Furthermore, McGuinness having named and shamed them ,the ISPs had to do something about it, his suggestion being that a series of warnings should be issued from the ISPs to the culprits culminating in disconnection of the offender’s service: “A simple three strikes and you are out.”

McGuinness concluded as dynamically as he had started : “This is a gathering of managers; our talented clients deserve better than the shoddy, careless and downright dishonest way they have been treated in the digital age.”

Whether because of lack of time or design, no questions were invited from the audience.

The address was superbly executed and if asked to vote, had the audience had been a jury trying the ISPs for criminal negligence, they would have been satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the culprits were guilty as charged.

However the ISPs were not represented and neither were the billions of youngsters being accused of theft as being their primary objective in sharing files. McGuinness was appealing to an audience of wannabe peers and not to those most important : the kids who share their music online and those who give them a means to do so: the ISPs.

No taxation without representation was the trigger causing America to fight for independence and in my humble opinion there should be no condemnation without thorough investigation.