TalkTalk responds to Bono's "outrage"
TalkTalk's Andrew Heaney is clear in his blog post that Bono's comparison of file sharing with child pornography is an "outrage."
As reported over on IT Pro, Bono's comments in a Wall Street Journal piece - supposedly about ten ideas the U2 frontman thought would be big in the next ten years - opined that claims from ISPs to be like "the post office" ferrying sealed "brown paper packages" were nonsense - citing "America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent," as evidence that "it's perfectly possible to track content" and prevent the sharing of copyrighted music and video.
The comments have angered ISPs, with TalkTalk - an ISP already known for its opposition to the government's Digital Economy Bill, which looks to introduce data transfer limits and a 'three-strike' system to disconnect persistent file sharers - executive Andrew Heaney saying "the U2 frontman is seriously misguided" equating "the need to protect minors from the evils of child pornography with the need to protect copyright owners."
In a post to the official TalkTalk blog, Heaney stated that "to suggest that sharing a music file is every bit as evil as child abuse beggars belief," and accused Bono of not grasping the technicalities of the issue or "how simple it is to access copyright protected content without being detected."
While Heaney admitted that "P2P file-sharing can be spotted (albeit at great cost)" he also pointed to the "dozens of applications and tools out there which allow people to view content for free" with no hope for the ISP to ever detect the infringement.
Heaney has also launched a petition against the Digital Economy Bill - specifically its ability to summarily disconnect those accused of sharing copyrighted content without permission - which has gathered almost 31,000 signatures - an upwelling of support sadly lacking for Bono's comments.
Do you agree with Andrew Heaney that asking ISPs to police their users for copyright content with the same vigour they would child pornographers, or is Bono bang out of order with his inflammatory statements? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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24 Comments
Discuss in the forums Reply"BONO STOP STICKING YOUR F*%^&ING NOSE IN STUFF"
you arent the voice of the people, jesus' second coming, or the savior of the world. your just a guy in a band who knows nothing.
*not actually a massive music lover, but sick to death of being patronised and vilified about stealing music*
Why is it that in most other markets they try to adapt to the new mediums whereas in the music market they just want to take people to court?
I reckon the hardcore pirates, who downloads tons and possibly sell it, would be using newsgroups + ssl, which would be pretty hard to crack.
Plus its not ISPs jobs to police the internet.
I will never forget the time I walked past him in Dublin when he was paying off a motorcyclist whom he had dinged with his mercedes :D
Racist much? Cop on.
Bono is very much the typical rich pop star for whom enough is never enough. He needs to wise up and get lost on a lot of matters.
I don't like piracy at all, I pay for music off the internet but its not the ISPs job to prevent piracy. The fact is that piracy of music doesn't hurt his pocket. Its the smaller up and coming bands that really get hit by it. Most musicians these days make their money from live gigs and concerts as a lot of the money from album/single sales goes to so many different people.
Bono talking about piracy just destroys the anti-piracy movement. I'm more likely to listen to guys like Sergeant, Temper Trap or other new bands about it as its those guys that get hurt as they can't sell albums, can't sell gigs at high prices so end up getting dropped from their label if everyone just pirates their material. The fact that bands like Radiohead, Coldplay etc release songs/albums for free shows they don't need the money from CDs, they just need to promote their songs so people go to their concerts.
The tax exemption for the everyday man is roughly £3,500 (?).
Tax exemption for artists is £1,000,000 (?).
The tax rate in Ireland is 12.5% (?).
When the Irish government suggested reducing the tax exemption from £1million to £250,000 for artists, U2 moved their 'affairs' out of Ireland.
Bob Geldof is also a tax dodger (apparently).
And yet they all squeal so damn hard about pirates (which incidentally I object to for the right reasons and wasn't going to respond to this thread until I just heard John telling Mark Thomas all about U2's tax dodging). If U2 agreed to pay a proper tax rate, and pirates agreed not to pirate music/games, I still think U2 would end up more financially worse off!
+1 rep for making me laugh in work
I'd buy it!!
Andrew Heaney for number 1!!!!
lol
+respect
Imagine the views!