Bono's "Ohno"

Lately, Bono (Paul David Hewson) has had to say a lot...about what other people think about the world.  Much to the familiar fantasy of Team America World Police, Bono is acting like a real-life member of FAG.

What's that Bono?  Global warming is an inconvenient truth?  Thanks for bringing that discovery to the world's attention!  I'm sure because of your brilliant expertise on the subject we can stop some chemical-bullets hellbent on penetrating the blue sky and really cool things out here on planet Earth.

Come again Bono?  Trouble in Africa?  We had no idea the cradle of civilization had problems!  Lions, and tigers, AK's and AIDS on my!  Boy am I glad we have you to bring these travesties to our attention Bono!

In a recent Op-Ed column for the New York Times Bono commented briefly on the net neutrality debate, a decade after Napster and Metallica lit that powder keg.

So Bono, what's illegal about doing things with the internet it was designed for?  File-sharing is the bud of the internet through which it has blossomed.  The systems that eventually developed into the world wide web of today were constructed by universities in an effort to share research and data...you know files.

But at least your understand of American lawmaking helps shed more light on the travesty that has befallen the music industry.

"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. Many will expect to get it free."  Well, many already get it for free.

What we have here my fellow Americans, is a foreign citizen who has never sought to study the due process of Americas Congress.  Along with a misconception that a few contracts with a record studio makes one a legal expert.

The system of bringing forth legislation in America was designed to move slowly through a bureaucracy of consideration before coming law, to ensure it didn't infringe the promises within the preamble of the Constitution.

Through the Declaration of Independence, Paul, the founding fathers sought to ensure for the Americans to come, a guarantee of unalienable rights endowed by the Creator of their beliefs.  One of which is a right to free will.  Hence our American obsession with freedom.

So what if a few rotten eggs are spoiling your profit margins, you have no right to infringe upon the freedom of American citizens who abide by copyright laws by targeting our internet service providers, we pay for that bandwidth it doesn't come for free. 

We also have an obsession with due process over here Paul.  Simply calling out red-herrings in your catatonic crusade to save the music industry will get your thoughts through to nothing but the scathing tongues of our public discussion.

Are the internet service providers truly at fault here Paul?  No, they offer a paid service to willing customers.  How can you even relate Robin Hood's moral to their service?

He robbed wealth from the rich and distributed it to the poor, ISP's rob no one and give nothing for free.

Yet you called them "reverse Robin Hoods", who would rob from the poor and give to the rich?  Have those tinted glasses truly blocked your ability to see the light of reason?

"A decade's worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators..."

Math time.
2009 - 10 = 1999
mIRC released 1995
1995 - 1999 = -4

That's some sloppy research Paul.

For those of you who don't use mIRC.  mIRC is an Internet Relay Chat program which allows computers through an internet connection or local access network to connect, communicate, and share between each other within a chatroom setting; peer to peer.  Remember the p2p programs such as Kazaa, Morpheus, perhaps Limewire or Frostwire?  Guess where the abbreviation came from.

Aside from chatting, we could share files of any sort with each other.  At the time, based upon the speed of connection, the only worthwhile files to share were music and word processor files.

Did we illegally take copywrited material and release it illegally by deriving profit?  No, we ripped music we had received by willing creator or store clerk and shared it with the world free of charge.

Yet you claimed, "...the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business."

When in fact, a fledgling artist who shares his music with a passerby leading to it's publication and distribution online will give that artist notoriety as his music spreads.  Once people connect with that music they will feel a calling to purchase the music once it hits a store shelf or iTunes browser. 

Precocious conclusions of another mans' thoughts are but one of many failures in logic.  For the music industry didn't suffer severely until certain technologies for delivery and other advancements in access turned sour to the bloated appetites of an industry based upon talent before vision.

Look at the price of a U2 iPod compared to a Walkman cassette or CD player.  Then look at the model of access for the iPod.  Don't need to buy the whole album anymore do you?  The whole thing's become a customized single beckoning the preference of a cash-strapped consumer.

I used file-sharing over the internet this weekend to obtain music from a friend's computer which was purchased and ripped to his hard drive.  Is there anything illegal about that?  No.  Did that musician miss out on my $20?  Yes  Why?  Because I don't have that $20 and neither has the average American for a decade.

Didn't care to clean those tinted glasses of yours and see the real world over the last 10 years did you?

Just bought another pair when their euphoric-shine faded?

Purchasing power is down man!  Shot to pieces like a barrel of fish at the business-end of a barrel of gun.

Look at CompUSA.  Computer sales have remained consistent, the overall price has even decreased offering the consumer more choices!  Video game sales are doing better than ever, and with the sexy in-bed relationship game developers have fostered with third-party performance parts manufactures, CompUSA offered under one roof everything needed to put that game on your monitor for $20 less than Circuit City or Best Buy.  Yet they went belly up.

Did file-sharing of video games lead to CompUSA's demise?  No, purchasing power within their market of inventory dried up.  Many games have become too resource-demanding for the pay checks average gamers receive.

Music devices that put your "work" in our ears are getting there as well.  At the price of an iPod today I could score a new CD player plus $250 worth of CDs.  Today, since mp3 has taken over the format, that luxury has turned archaic.

"Not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s perfectly possible to track content."  ...Certainly if it works for a communism it works for democracy.

Yet Paul, failed within that hinting to realize his tinting has blinded his foresight.  China controls internet content for one reason, censorship.  Not in the protection of industry, but to censor the marketplace of ideas within it's society.  Not for ignoble means, but for control. 

In that respect, the American government has very limited right to toy with net neutrality.  For our marketplace of ideas is to remain free and unhinged based upon the First Amendment.

Does that grant us the right to in certain cases, share files across the internet under illegal pretense?  Of course not.  What is does give us the right to uncensored discourse.  For tracking internet content is a slippery slope at Mount Privacy.

Yet your foresight of technological advancement is at least looking in the right direction Paul.

"Caution! The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files."

Warning!  It only takes but an hour to download a full length HD-quality movie onto my computer from the internet....times sure have changed since I started file-sharing through mIRC.  I can even play an online game without suffering a drought in bandwidth while I'm downloading that movie.

For if your beloved music industry, Paul, operated by the wings of creativity, average consumers would have had the ability to purchase music online since TCP/IP went live to them through Windows 95.  Instead they stuck to their compact disc format until Apple released iTunes.

So until Irishmen are granted unconditional American citizenship, lobby your own government with your plagiarized ideas and leave innovation to the truly creative.

You want an example of media creativity Paul?...Radiohead's In Raindows.