Rotten Apple Doesn't Fall Far from the Joshua Tree

Bono's business manager had this to say today about people gooching music online:

I suggest we shift the focus of moral pressure away from the individual P2P file thief and on to the multi billion dollar industries that benefit from these countless tiny crimes – The ISPs, the telcos, the device makers. Let’s appeal to those fine minds at Stanford University and Silicon Valley, Apple, Google, Nokia, HP, China Mobile, Vodafone, Comcast, Intel, Ericsson, Facebook, iLike, Oracle, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, Tiscali etc...

They have built multi billion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it. It’s probably too late for us to get paid for the past though maybe that shouldn’t be completely ruled out...

They have a moral obligation to be true, trustworthy partners of the music sector. To respect and take responsibility for protecting music. To work for the revaluation, not the devaluation of music. To share revenues with the community fairly and responsibly, and to share the skills, ingenuity and entrepreneurship from which our business has a lot to learn.

...our talented clients deserve better than the shoddy, careless and downright dishonest way they have been treated in the digital age.

U2 spent years never paying taxes on the royalties of their music.

You may recall that in 2006 - Bono and his ilk moved a significant portion of their $450 million business empire from Ireland to the Netherlands in order to forgo paying taxes. [Link] and [Link].

You see kids, the Irish government used to not tax artists for earned royalties, but in 2006, they decided that artists who earn more than 250,000 euros a year should fork over a little cash, you know, to
"share revenues with the community fairly and responsibly..."

Except if you're Bono, of course...

What a trifling, cheapskate hypocrite...