McGuinness at war

Rock band manager Paul McGuinness of U2 delivered a passionate speech against online piracy at the MIDEM music conference, reports Reuters.

To great applause, McGuinness blamed ISPs, Silicon Valley, and record labels for the problem of piracy — not individuals.

McGuinness said record labels suffered from "lack of foresight and planning." Silicon Valley companies "create marvelous devices but don't think of themselves as makers of burglarly kits," and governments "created a thieves' charter" by agreeing ISPs should not be responsible for what passes through their networks.

The McGuinness rants included a comparison of ISPs to a "magazine advertising stolen cars, handling the money for stolen cars and seeing to the delivery of stolen cars."

And because no revolution is complete without an ignored call-to-action, he demanded ISPs to do two things to change their naughty ways: first, protect the music, and second, "make a genuine effort to share the enormous revenues."

"Their snouts have been at our trough for too long," sneered the manager.

ISPs did not address the assertions.