Lily Allen starts blog on filesharing

Lily Allen today launched a blog posting responses to her anti-piracy campaign from artists including James Blunt, Muse’s Matt Bellamy, Take That’s Gary Barlow and Tim Rice Oxley from Keane.

She invites those who are against file sharing to reply to her directly and support her campaign for talks with the government and internet service providers.

Artists can respond to a letter posted on the ‘It’s Not Alright’ blog by Ms Allen to other music artists outlining her response to Peter Mandelson’s clampdown on file sharing.

Ms Allen comments on the ‘damaging’ effect of file sharing, particularly on emerging acts. She is particularly critical of established artists who can afford to speak out in favour of file sharing, though she does not name any.

“And now some artists have got their message out there: that file sharing is fine when you’re a successful artist with sell out tours and a back catalogue ready to be sold to a new audience. That might be fine for them, but it’s not fine for the acts that haven’t made it big yet,” she says.

“We can talk about all the legal means of accessing music out there and even come up with new ways to access music, but ultimately we need to establish that we think file sharing is wrong.”

The majority of artists posting are in favour of ISP’s policing illegal downloads in some form or another, with others proposing new licensing rules or financial share from ISP’s to go to copyright holders.

What the artists say (again)

I want to put my hand up in support of Lily Allen. She’s asking British musicians to galvanise over a serious crime: the death of a Great British Industry – our music business. The world over, people are stealing music in its millions in the form of illegal file-sharing. It’s easy to do, and has become accepted by many, but we need people to know that it is destroying people’s livelihoods and suffocating emerging new British artists.

James Blunt

[There should be] a new law where ISP’s have to pay copyright owners a share of the revenue that is generated from broadband subscriptions in acknowledgement of the value that the sharing of copyrighted content online has to those subscriptions and the profitability of the ISPs.

Matt Bellamy, Muse

I’m worried about making sure new talent can continue to come through. Everyone in this world needs an income and the majority of artists chief income should be through selling music, I don’t know how we make it happen but we need to bang our heads together and find a new way to do that.

Tinchy Stryder, grime artist

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