UK ISP Calls Bono’s Anti-P2P Rant “Outrageous”

Talk Talk says U2 frontman is “seriously misguided,” that P2P doesn’t earn ISPs any additional income, that it’s outrageous to equate illegal file-sharing with child pornography, and that any anti-P2P efforts can easily be circumvented.

Earlier this week I mentioned U2 frontman Bono’s Ten for the Next Ten, ten ideas that “might make the next 10 years more interesting, healthy or civil, op-ed in the NY Times.

In it he made some startling claims, one of which is that we we need ISP-level content filtering, mocking their “dumb pipe” defense. He said their “swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.”

UK ISP Talk Talk, which claims to be the country’s largest broadband provider with over 4.25 million customers, is fighting back in a recent blog post, calling Bono “seriously misguided.”

“ISPs generate no additional revenue or profit from customers sharing files,” says Andrew Heaney, the ISP’s Executive Director of Strategy and Regulation. “In fact we incur some marginal cost due to the extra bandwidth required.”

Bono also suggested that the successful American fight against online child porn and China’s efforts in suppressing online dissent prove that “possible” to track and filter content.

For this charge Heaney could barely contain his disbelief.

“It is outrageous to equate the need to protect minors from the evils of child pornography with the need to protect copyright owners,” he continues. “As a society we have accepted that it is appropriate and proportionate to intrude on people’s Internet use by blocking access to sites that host child abuse images. To suggest that sharing a music file is every bit as evil as child abuse beggars belief.”

It notes that the proposed “three-strikes” bill allows alleged file-sharers to be disconnected from the Internet without court order while it’s required to disconnect those accused of viewing child porn.

“Most people think that blocking access to sites that host child abuse images is a good thing,” he adds. “Conversely, less than 10% of us think that disconnecting alleged file-sharers without a court hearing is a good idea.”

What really makes Bono’s comments nonsensical is the fact that he thinks P2P can simply be filtered or eradicated at all.

“Bono obviously does not understand how simple it is to access copyright protected content without being detected,” says Heaney. “P2P file-sharing can be spotted (albeit at great cost) but there are dozens of applications and tools out there which allow people to view content for free and no amount of snooping can detect it.”

Exactly. It was even Talk Talk no less that showed the ease with which it was able to hijack unsuspecting Wi-Fi connections this past October, finding that a astounding 33-41% were vulnerable!

I guess Bono thinks that too can be cured, perhaps threatening Internet users with jail time or fines for poor router configurations. That will certainly make people love music artists even more I’m sure.

What has the world become when artists are threatening their fans to “pay up or else?”

Stay tuned.

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