Daily Meh is an edited stream of consciousness, by Simen.

U2 manager takes Internet providers to task

This man has made me want to download a complete U2 collection, just to defy him.

“There’s a lot of money in the music business, but it has stopped coming to the artists,” McGuinness said, though he agreed that U2 long ago determined that it “would be pathetic to be great artists but not be great at business.”

One reason it’s stopped coming to artists is that there are loads of unnecessary layers it has to go through, and when the money streams get thinner, some of them simply won’t reach the artists. Cut the cruft.

Decrying ISPs that hold up their hands in innocence when music is downloaded via their systems, he offered a comparison. “If you were a magazine advertising stolen cars, handling the money for stolen cars and seeing to the delivery of stolen cars, the police would soon be at your door,” he said. “That’s no different to an ISP, but they say they can’t do anything about it. If you steal a laptop from a store or don’t pay for your broadband service, you’ll soon be cut off and nicked.”

If, by stealing cars, you mean making an exact copy of the car at no cost, with the permission of the owner.