Bono, frontman of rock band U2, has warned the film industry not to make the same mistakes with file-sharing that have dogged the music industry.
What? Resist internet downloads, then price them too high, then stuff a load of Digital Rights Management protection on so you can't play them where you like, making them a less good option than DVD?
Writing for the New York Times, Bono claimed internet service providers were "reverse Robin Hoods" benefiting from the music industry's lost profits.
No, it actually costs ISPs money. The number of people who pay for broadband just so they can get faster illegal downloads is tiny. According to surveys, the total number of people who ever download illegally is less than 1 in 7.
He hinted that China's efforts prove that tracking net content is possible.
Just staggering. The man who used to play Amnesty International gigs now suggesting we have a blanket internet control mechanism just to keep the record industry in business.
"The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we're just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of '24' in 24 seconds," he wrote.
That's bollocks.
"A decade's worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators...the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business."
And so is that. The creators aren't being hurt. It's the record companies, the middle men who are being hurt as this Times article shows. Music artists are losing a little recorded revenue, but more than making up for it in tickets to live gigs (the chart also doesn't include things like merchandise and personal sponsorship which also make some artists a ton of money).
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