Writing for The New York Times, U2 lead singer Bono offers up “10 ideas that might make the next 10 years more interesting, healthy or civil.”
Bono’s “ideas” include:
• Return of the Automobile as a Sexual Object: The Obama administration — while it still holds the keys to the big automakers — ought to put some style fascists into the mix: the genius of Marc Newson … Steve Jobs and Jonny Ive from Apple … Frank Gehry, the architect, and Jeff Koons, the artist. Put the great industrial designers in the front seat, right along with sound financial stewardship … the greener, the cleaner, the meaner on fossil fuels, the sexier for me.
• Intellectual Property Developers: A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business. We’re the post office, they tell us; who knows what’s in the brown-paper packages? But we know from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s perfectly possible to track content.
• An Equal Right to Pollute (and the Polluter-Pays Principle): Your average Ethiopian can sell her underpolluting ways (people in Ethiopia emit about 0.1 ton of carbon a year) to the average American (about 20 tons a year) and use the proceeds to deal with the effects of climate change (like drought), educate her kids and send them to university.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bono could make a Woodstock Festival Porta-Potty look empty.
Are we really supposed to believe that the young, musically intense Paul Hewson didn’t have bootlegged recordings of bands in his collection? I mean, come on…….
Hey Bono here`s another idea….
blow me
opinions are like assholes, everyone`s got one, just cause you happen to be uber rich does not make you uber right.
Bono, STFU And just sing.
Bono’s wonderful ideas should stay where his talent is… on torrent sites.
Woodstock porta…
Hey, I see what you did there.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
@chew
Come a little closer. I’ll tear you a new opinion.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
@ X–
He can’t very well STFU and sing. You need to pick one or the other.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
I agree with chew. Seriously. No one is perfect. And usually, the more moeny someone has the lest perfect they are. (Warren buffet is the exception and that’s why people respect him)
The content police ARE coming make NO MISTAKE about it.
But it will be about controlling material produced by big media companies whose content creation costs are high and who must put them behind a pay wall to be able to afford to keep producing it.
Mark 2010 as the year that a lot of free content went away. Remember Napster? Well SOME news, primarily feature stories and in depth integrated content is going up behind pay walls SOON. When people try to steal it…and they will, they will be pursued and legal action will follow. This won’t be like file sharing of music files…this is website CONTENT which has been essentially free for some time. Once there’s something to be defended (because there is money in it) the lawyers will come out and the watermarks and specialized search tools will come out, and the lawsuits for copying content will follow.
Bono has some both addled and good ideas…clearly.
Bono is still #2 in my opinion
Reminds me of South Park.
Bono have many awards & well known but still he is piece of sh’t.
” just cause you happen to be uber rich does not make you uber right.”
or uber-wrong!
This just another flame bait posting, let the lefty and righties go at it. Nice way to start the year at MDN.
How much money does an up and coming music act actually get from sales of their first album? Practically nothing. Piracy hurts the music companies more than it hurts the artist. To the artist it is just free advertising.
Of course that doesn’t make piracy morally right or provide any legal justification.
Getting on Time Magazine’s cover has gone to Bono’s head, it seems.
ISPs tracking downloads?? In this time of heavy competition in this area, the last thing ISPs are gong to concern themselves with is monitoring downloaded content. Say goodbye to all your top-tier customers paying for the fastest service with the highest caps.
Would be suicide, LOL.
I really can’t understand you guys. You seem to think it’s well within your rights to steal from musicians, the vast majority of whom really do struggle financially for their craft, yet if anyone tries to steal from Apple, one of the world’s richest companies, you turn into a lynch mob. I reckon Bono’s opinion on “file sharing and swiping” is absolutely right. Flame away!
“Ethiopian can sell her underpolluting ways”
Underpolluting? ‘She’ really should try to pull her weight in polluting like the rest of us.
I think a translation of his speech would be “I’m great. Wow, I’m fantastic. Hey! Look how wonderful I am. I care about Ethiopians. I’m not sexist. I hate greed and excess wealth, even though I have it.”
@Megame
So you think Bono is still doo doo?
All of these celebs like to talk about carbon footprint. Of course, they all fly private jets, have many houses and cars. So, their carbon footprint is like a really small…… nation.
Bono weighs in at 80 courics. That’s one hell of a pile of s**t!
well said Des send me your address so I can mail you this DVD I just ripped of snow leopard.
@Des Gusting
They don’t even have to steal from Apple to get a lynch mob formed. Wasn’t Pystar installing paid copies of OSX into their hardware, the people here went loopy.
These ideas make as much sense as Bono’s backing of the Pre.
Starting the year off with some hate, eh guys? This shut up and sing business is bullshit. He’s allowed to express his opinion, and yes, you are allowed to express yours. But his ideas are pretty benign/interesting and not deserving of such hate. I don’t recall one of his ideas being, “kill all babies.”
Besides, as Apple fans I’d think you’d support the iTunes model of legal downloading.
@ nobo,
” ‘She’ really should try to pull her weight in polluting like the rest of us.”
What, all 67 pounds of it?