The Vox Box

Sat., Aug. 30, 2008

It was a ‘Beautiful Day’…

For U2 fans, when 4 tracks from the band's new album, No Line on the Horizon, were recorded and leaked onto YouTube.

Getty Images photo

The songs were leaked after Bono blasted them from his French villa and a passerby recognized Bono's voice and recorded the songs on his cell phone, subsequently posting them to YouTube.

The songs are no longer up, after the band cited copyright infringement. The Spokesman-Review's TXT blog's take is here, and a New Zealand Herald story on the event is here.

Do you think it is copyright infringement if the music was being blasted loud enough for passerby to hear? Should Bono or the fan be blamed for the leak? Did anyone on here hear the songs before they got taken down?

Posted Aug. 30, 2008, 10:12 p.m.

In 2006, then-editor Steve Smith of The Spokesman-Review had the idea of starting a publication for an often forgotten audience: teenagers. The Vox Box was a continuation of the Vox, an all-student staffed newspaper published by The Spokesman-Review. High school student journalists who staffed the Vox made all content decisions as they learn about the trade of journalism. This blog's mission was to give students an opportunity to publish their voices. The Vox Box and the Vox wrapped up in June 2009, but you can follow former staffers' new blog at http://voxxiez.blogspot.com.