Battling online music piracy

听力练习
Paul McGuinness, manager of the rock band U2, discusses the battle against illegal music downloading

The basic premise is the music industry is in a crisis. Tell us about it.

Well,what's,what has replaced, physical product sales is an illegal peer to peer file sharing across the Internet, and that means that the industry which is decreasing in volume by about 15-20 percent a year is on the way to oblivion. Em, it will be followed by the movie industry, if cooperation from the ISPs on a worldwide basis, is not forthcoming.

Where do you attach the blame in the primary sense?

Well, that is very, very directly to the Internet service providers around the world who sell broadband subscriptions all over the world which are primarily used to illegally download content whether it's music, films, television programs or books. And what we would like the ISPs to do is, first of all, prevent the flow which they can do through filtering of illegal content, but also join us in a new business model, where they would actually collect on behalf of content owners and share that revenue, with record companies and film companies.

Why has it been so hard to get these,these people on board to get some sort of shared arrangement?

Well, personally, I believe the ISP industry has been quite cynical. They have claimed that it is not possible to filter. That's not true. And several courts in Europe in Belgium, and in Denmark and other countries have determined that this is not a good enough excuse. They must sooner or later take responsibility for this because what's happening is that the deluge of illegal content is now clogging up their pipes and they are unable to deal with the vast amount of illegal material passing through their systems.

Now I know that baidu.com is one of those that's been singled out by the music industries, it's the biggest Chinese search engine, it's listed on Nasdaq and it's been subject/ to be deliberately named. We couldn't get Baidu to talk to us, but they issued a statement in which they say they believe in copyright protection. They have announced a series of partnerships with companies including EMI, Rock Music Group and more than half of the domestic recording companies in China. They take intellectual property rights seriously so they say they continue to work to fight piracy on the Internet. Sounds great, isn't it?

It sounds very good, but I'm afraid the practice is not as good as the rhetoric. Baidu particularly made very very large sums from other people's content and passed on very very little of it to the content owners and the content makers, the musicians and the performers.

Is there a legal strategy? Is there a legal place in which you can seek redress for this?

Yes, the best example is what the French have decided to do. The French are introducing legislation which will, which will warn once, twice and then on the third time will disconnect a serial downloader of illegal material, illegal downloader of material. And that is being recommended by certainly the music industry to governments all over the world. It's known as the Olivennes Initiative and should become law later this year in France. And we certainly approve of that.

And briefly, could U2 have been as big as it was if it was starting now, and can you...?

It's not, this is really not a fight on U2's behalf. This really to the extent that I'm,I'm,I'm a representative. I'm representing all artists.

Sure, but if a new band, a new potential U2's starting today, could it get it underway given that there’s such a leeching away of potential profits?

It is a very big problem because the record companies, the traditional record companies are no longer able to make the investment in new talent that they used to be relied upon for.

Fascinating. Paul McGuinness, glad to have you in here.

Thank you.

文本参考中文翻译

Paul McGuinness是摇滚乐队U2的管理者，他谈论了关于非法下载音乐的一些问题

今天的基本论题是，音乐产业处于危机中。请跟我们谈一下这一点。

呃，现在，互联网共享逐渐取代了购买唱片，这意味着音像产业每年销量下降15%～20%，该产业逐渐被遗忘。如果全球各地的网络服务供应商不采取广泛合作，电影业也会重蹈覆辙。

你认为谁要为这种现象负责呢？

当然，最直接的就是互联网服务供应商，他们为世界各地的用户提供宽带服务，并且可以非法免费下载音乐，电影，电视节目或者图书等资料。首先，我们希望网络服务供应商们能够过滤掉含有非法下载目录的网页，然后，更我们合作采取新的商业模式，他们可以作为版权所有者和唱片公司，电影公司分享收益。

为什么要和这些供应商达成这种共享模式的协议如此困难呢？

从个人的角度来讲，我认为网络服务供应商行业非常愤世嫉俗。他们曾经宣称，他们不可能过滤网也。这是说谎。欧洲的比利时，丹麦和其他一些国家的法庭都表示，这并不是充分的理由。他们迟早要为这种行为负责，因为非法下载的泛滥正在堵塞他们的网络，他们无法处理系统中如此大量的非法材料。

我知道，现在百度被音乐行业列入非法下载黑名单，它是中国最大的搜索引擎，在NASDAQ（是指美国"全国证券交易商协会自动报价系统）榜上有名，这次被单独提名列入黑名单。我们不能让百度和我们进行谈判，但是他们发表了声明说，他们相信产权保护。他们宣布，他们和包括EMI，摇滚音乐集团和一半以上的国内唱片公司都有合作关系。他们认真对待知识产权保护法，所以他们会继续在互联网上进行打击盗版的活动。听上去非常冠冕堂皇，是吗？

听上去很好，但是只怕做的不如说的好。百度利用别人的专辑赚了非常非常多的钱，但是他们给专辑所有者，作者和演员的却非常非常少。

有没有法律策略呢？有没有什么司法部门可以让你们要求赔偿呢？

是的，最好的例子就是法国。法国一旦发现非法下载者就会提出警告，警告三次以后就会断开非法下载者的网络连接。世界各国的音像行业都向本国政府推荐这种模式。这种方法是Olivennes首创的，今年年底可能会在法国立法。我们对这种做法非常赞同。

简单一点来说，如果从现在开始实施这种策略，U2乐队会不会还像以前那样风光呢？

我们不是为了U2乐队才采取这种行动的。这是代表音像行业，我只是一个代表，代表所有艺术家。

当时，但是如果一个新的乐队，一个新的有潜力的U2乐队从今天开始成立，他们能不能赚取那么多的钱在收益呢？

这是非常大的问题，因为传统的唱片公司过去依赖人才，但是现在他们不愿在人才上做投资。

非常精彩。 Paul McGuinness，非常感谢你到我们节目做客。