opinionated arseholes

The issue has been amplified of late by the arguments over the Government's proposed measures to tackle file-sharing or copyright-theft, the 'three strikes' suggestion that repeated downloaders would have their broadband removed. Ignoring the fact that 'repeaters' are likely to be more net-savvy than their pursuers and that the likelihood of carrying out this action successfully is relatively slim, it seems sad that the music industry can't get its act together and help the Govt to form rational plans.

Instead we had the unfortunate war of words - via blogs, letters, etc - between the various music business organizations (of which there are too many) and certain individual artists like Lily Allen. She was reacting to the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) whose members had argued that the Govt plan should be modified - offenders should maybe just have their access curtailed. Lily was pointing out that those in the FAC were likely to be established musicians who'd made their fortunes and thus less affected by the file-sharers. Whatever you think of Lily and her music there is little doubt that she is intelligent and opinionated, and someone famous/newsworthy had to say it.

Some were willing to weigh in behind her, but only in the vaguest sense. The problem for artists is that they're too scared to offend anyone - particularly those who are net-savvy who then scatter their opinions far and wide across various networks. Artists want to be your friend, they want you to like them - they can't deal with the thought that millions in the blogosphere will take against them and not buy their records (which they probably weren't doing anyway) or come to their shows.

This is essentially the Metallica-effect, wherein the metal band were seen to be one of the main objectors to the original Napster - making their anti-filesharing views widely known and taking legal action. The backlash was fierce and few artists are big enough to withstand it. Even Lily Allen eventually took down the myspace blog that made her points fairly clearly and fairly.

Artists used to be able to hide behind their record labels, claiming that it was the labels that took these actions and didn't necessarily speak for the individual acts. This, of course, was the classic chicken or ostrich defence. The fact that it allowed the horse to bolt through the unlocked stable-gate, since no-one cares about stealing from what they consider to be major corporations, is why we're in the position that we are now.

Artists were too slow to make their point - there's no living out there if you have to struggle to make music, no job-seekers allowance for those seeking jobs as working musicians. The whole system is flawed, and fraught with problems. It needs to be re-invented, but no-one seems clear on how to take the first step. It's clearly a slow process - but then it's always been a long way to the top if you want to rock n' roll.

As I said, there are opinions and opinions and opinions.

There are so many that I didn't link to them in the text, but you can see them here, here, and here as well as this one I hadn't read prior to writing the above but is pretty similar to my thoughts. So now we all have competing opinions.

Here (nearly) every week
Randomly here and there