This is how I imagine how his informal little dinner chat over the fabulous gourmet meal in Rothchild's Corfu villa went down...
David Geffen: "Ooooh, (crocodile tears) boo-hoo, boo-ooooh Mandy, you've no idea how difficult it is being a multi-billionaire - I mean, I just don't know where my next few million dollars are going to come from any more. Especially not with that evil, evil, evil, internets - did you know people are out there practically STEALING the Almas Caviar out of my mouth? How am I ever going to pay for my breakfast lobster thermidor and oh yes, my artistes their pittance - if those good-for-nothing normal people go around downloading the music for free?"
Mandelson -"ooooh poor, poor Daaaavid, [oh, you're so scrummy you multi-billionaire gay you] (pass the white truffles please) - that's absolutely heart breaking. I'll tell you what - when I get home I'll make sure our lot take the internet piracy thing a lot more seriously. Like, oh, I don't know - let's say, no more internet for those file sharers and massive fines and long prison sentences for all who transgress - will that do you?"
David Griffin: "Well -it's a start... but if you could at some point in the future start fining the people who don't buy music from my record label - that would be good too. Oh, look the desert course has arrived - will you take your rent boys here or would you like to retire to your room?"
"Oooh rent boys - my favourite - hope they'll be gentle on my prostrate though..."
There now follows some free advice for the music entertainment industry on how to combat pirates...
1. Simply Totally ditch CD releases (and even iTunes) - go back to vinyl only releases.
[Well let's face it - it all started going wrong for the music industry when they practically forced every one to go over to CDs. Yes, at the time it was a boom time for the industry as most people ended up replacing their vinyl record collections with CDs... but that boom time is long over. Unfortunately - all that extra income got the industry thinking this was going to be the normal state of affairs from then on... Well, this was back when there weren't any such thing as CD-burners on computers. Let along computer games and mobile phones and internet access for people to spend their disposal income on. Then later there came those pesky MPG files and those damn iPods... and well, it was all downhill from then on.
Yet the industry is still frozen at that very point back in the Eighties and totally unable to comprehend what has happened in the rest the world since then - all they know is they still want to be making those huge amounts of money... except they have been repeatedly and so absurdly lazy-ass about facing up to how they could now be earning money from music in the internet age...
So bearing that in mind - they really should give up on the modern age - it's apparent they don't understand it, can't deal with it - and are unlikely to ever catch up now and should go BACK to what they know best - vinyl records - which are that little bit harder to digitize - hell, especially since hardly anyone has record players any more... and when the technology market starts churning out hundreds of those record players that hook up to computers and turn everything you can play on them into sound files... well, then the music industry can go back to producing rolls for player pianos.
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