Bono attacks ISPs over filesharing

10:36 | Monday January 4, 2010

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times yesterday entitled Ten For The Next Ten, Bono outlined “10 ideas that might make the next 10 years more interesting, healthy or civil”. Among them was Intellectual Property Developers, where he wrote of the threat of online piracy on both the creative industries and emerging artists.

The rise of filesharing, he proposed, has hurt creators and claimed that the only group “this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business”.

Acknowledging that a multi-millionaire rock star is unlikely to elicit sympathy from governments or the public on this issue, he ends his piece with a caveat.

“Note to self,” he says. “Don’t get over-rewarded rock stars on this bully pulpit, or famous actors; find the next Cole Porter, if he/she hasn’t already left to write jingles.”

This all comes after Paul McGuinness, the band’s manager, made a series of high-profile attacks on ISPs last year for not stemming piracy on their networks.