The Daily Swarm

The successes which make up the constituency of the Featured Artist Coalition, coupled with their criticism of the proposed three-strike rule (which recently passed in France) is what first spurred Allen into going public with her opinion on the issue. From her MySpace post:

“Basically the FAC is saying ‘we’re alright, we’ve made it, so file sharing’s fine,’ which is just so unfair to new acts trying to make it in the industry.

You don’t start out in music with the Ferraris. Instead you get a huge debt from your record company, which you spend years working your arse off to repay. When you manage to get a contract, all those pretty videos and posters advertising your album have to be paid for and as the artist, you have to pay for them. I’ve only just finished paying off all the money I owe my record company. I’m lucky that I’ve been successful and managed to pay it back, but not everyone’s so lucky. You might not care about this, but the more difficult it is for new artists to make it, the less new artists you’ll see and the more British music will be nothing but puppets paid for by Simon Cowell.

And it’s not like there aren’t alternatives to illegal downloads anyway. Sites like Spotify give us access to new music and different music without having to rip someone off – you can listen to tracks and see if you like them before you buy them. Then obviously there’s MySpace, that streams music and helps acts like me get enough fans to convince record companies to sign us up.”

FAC responded today saying they are not supportive of illegal downloading, but concerned about the erosion of civil liberties in the fight against it:

There has been much discussion over the past few weeks regarding the Government’s proposals to combat the challenge of copyright infringement through the suspension of the internet connections of individuals alleged to have illegally downloaded copyrighted material.

Statements made in opposition to this idea by members of the Featured Artists Coalition have been taken to imply that we condone illicit file-sharing. This is not the case and never has been.

We wish to make it clear to all parties that we believe the creative work of artists should be paid for by those who enjoy it and that whenever our music is used, royalties should be paid.

However, we seriously question the wisdom of seeking to deal with this problem by terminating the internet connections of individual music fans. We are not referring to websites that reap commercial benefit from file-sharing: seeking to make money from giving our songs away. We want the industry and Government to come down on those thieving rascals with all the weight of the law.

The focus of our objection is the proposed treatment of ordinary music fans who download a few tracks so as to check out our material before they buy. For those of us who don’t get played on the radio or mentioned in the music media – artists established and emerging – peer-to-peer recommendation is an important form of promotion.

Now Allen has started the blog It’s Not Alright to compile hers and other well-known musicians’ gripes with person-to-person filesharing. Her response to FAC‘s response of her response of their response:

I want to make it clear that I’m not after a fight with the Featured Artists Coalition – I want us artists to stand together on this – but they’ve released a new statement which just doesn’t make sense. The FAC seems to be viewing the government’s proposed legislation as an attack on freedom and liberty, but stealing’s not really a human right, is it?

What the government is proposing is the temporary suspension of the internet accounts of people that are repeatedly downloading loads of music through unlawful P2P file-sharing – as a last resort after they’ve been sent warnings. It doesn’t mean the government’s going to look at everything sent over the internet, as the FAC says – how would the government even do this? The proposal is to look at P2P sites – which are public anyway – to identify people who are acting unlawfully, so they can be asked, and then made, to stop. Not really an attack on civil liberties there.

The FAC also talk about the importance of free music to promote albums – like the free tracks you might get on NME. But the crucial difference is that the artist is in control of these. With file-sharing they’re not. Artists should be in charge of how their music is distributed – not some file-sharer who decides they deserve everything for free, just because they know how to steal it.

And so, they meet in the ‘twain?