The basic premise is the music industry is in a crisis. Tell us about it.
Well,what's,what has replaced, physical product sales is an illegal peer to peer file sharing across the Internet, and that means that the industry which is decreasing in volume by about 15-20 percent a year is on the way to oblivion. Em, it will be followed by the movie industry, if cooperation from the ISPs on a worldwide basis, is not forthcoming.
Where do you attach the blame in the primary sense?
Well, that is very, very directly to the Internet service providers around the world who sell broadband subscriptions all over the world which are primarily used to illegally download content whether it's music, films, television programs or books. And what we would like the ISPs to do is, first of all, prevent the flow which they can do through filtering of illegal content, but also join us in a new business model, where they would actually collect on behalf of content owners and share that revenue, with record companies and film companies.
Why has it been so hard to get these,these people on board to get some sort of shared arrangement?
Well, personally, I believe the ISP industry has been quite cynical. They have claimed that it is not possible to filter. That's not true. And several courts in Europe in Belgium, and in Denmark and other countries have determined that this is not a good enough excuse. They must sooner or later take responsibility for this because what's happening is that the deluge of illegal content is now clogging up their pipes and they are unable to deal with the vast amount of illegal material passing through their systems.
Now I know that baidu.com is one of those that's been singled out by the music industries, it's the biggest Chinese search engine, it's listed on Nasdaq and it's been subject/ to be deliberately named. We couldn't get Baidu to talk to us, but they issued a statement in which they say they believe in copyright protection. They have announced a series of partnerships with companies including EMI, Rock Music Group and more than half of the domestic recording companies in China. They take intellectual property rights seriously so they say they continue to work to fight piracy on the Internet. Sounds great, isn't it?
It sounds very good, but I'm afraid the practice is not as good as the rhetoric. Baidu particularly made very very large sums from other people's content and passed on very very little of it to the content owners and the content makers, the musicians and the performers.
Is there a legal strategy? Is there a legal place in which you can seek redress for this?
Yes, the best example is what the French have decided to do. The French are introducing legislation which will, which will warn once, twice and then on the third time will disconnect a serial downloader of illegal material, illegal downloader of material. And that is being recommended by certainly the music industry to governments all over the world. It's known as the Olivennes Initiative and should become law later this year in France. And we certainly approve of that.
And briefly, could U2 have been as big as it was if it was starting now, and can you...?
It's not, this is really not a fight on U2's behalf. This really to the extent that I'm,I'm,I'm a representative. I'm representing all artists.
Sure, but if a new band, a new potential U2's starting today, could it get it underway given that there’s such a leeching away of potential profits?
It is a very big problem because the record companies, the traditional record companies are no longer able to make the investment in new talent that they used to be relied upon for.
Fascinating. Paul McGuinness, glad to have you in here.
Thank you.
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