So, finally, some of the big ISP’s over here in the UK have taken tentative steps towards blocking the illegal sharing of copyrighted music. And I find myself torn…
As a musician, I think it’s about time they finally did something, even if it is sending out polite letters nicely asking people to behave themselves online. I wish they’d take this more seriously, and really clamp down on the illegal file-sharing that’s goign on. At the end of the day, I have made, do make, and hope to continue to make money from the ‘music industry’, and illegal downloading and transferring of music files robs the industry of money which could otherwise be used for developing artists like myself (yes, I know that the record company execs still rake it in – their wages don’t go down because they draw the money from the new artists sections of their companies).
But then I look at my own collection of .mp3.s, and remember that I was a prolific music downloader up until a few years ago (I hammered Napster the first time around, as well as that strange Satelite site, and later Limewire), and feel the beginnings of that righteous belief that “I’m a geek – I should be allowed to get it for free!”. I’m skint, and yet I love music – I very often can’t afford half the albums I want, nor do I often have the cash to make it to gigs, even local ones. So downloading music from these illegal services is often the only way I had/have of getting any new music. What’s a boy to do?!
In my defence (in case any record execs/Policemen/snitches are reading this), I usually only download either a) live bootleg tracks or unreleased tracks that aren’tavailable anywhere else, and so aren’t robbing artists of revenue from the sale of said music, b) I download tracks as a precursor to actually buying the album. Ninety precent of my downloaded tracks fall into one of those two categories, with the remaining ten percent being things that were downloaded because I liked ONE track on an entire album, or for special occasions such as parties I’ve DJ’d at.
*sigh* They’re taking all the fun out of the internet. What’s next? No porn?!
TTFN
