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Bono accuses ISPs of 'reverse Robin Hooding' over piracy

Learn from China, track content abuse

U2 frontman and save-the-world mouthpiece Bono has hit out at internet service providers for failing to clamp down on illegal file sharing over their networks.

The rockstar attacked ISPs in a New York Times op ed piece yesterday.

Bono warned the film industry to beware of the rise of illegal file sharers online, whom he claimed had already done lots of damage to upcoming music makers across the globe.

"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," opined the multi-millionaire Irish rocker.

Bono claimed that the only reason the movie biz hadn't suffered the same fate as the music industry was down to the size of the files.

"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," he cautioned.

He claimed it was possible for ISPs to track web content in order to flush out illegal file sharers and used "China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent" as an example of scuppering the activities of web pirates.

In 2008, U2's manager Paul McGuinness made plenty of angry noises about ISPs, accusing them of turning a blind eye to piracy on their networks. ®

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