BPI – stevelawson.net

Following on from the BPI and their mad statistic that Â£200 MILLION is lost in UK music revenue due to â€˜illegal downloadingâ€™, (their head of public affairs attempted to defend the notion, based on ‘research’ they’d done at the all party meeting last week. Balls.) I thought itâ€™d be worth talking about what a download is worth.

Because, clearly, a collection of bytes on a harddrive isnâ€™t, in and of itself, worth anything. Itâ€™s also not â€˜takenâ€™ from a central repository of bytes that gets smaller as it is dipped into. In fact, every time a new person downloads it, more â€˜productâ€™ is able to exist. If bands were in a situation where for every CD they gave away, they were given another 2 CDs to give away, theyâ€™d give everything away, because CD ownership is a tangible, measurable thing, and having 100,000 CDs out there, and not have lost a penny to make it happen, would be awesome.

But why would a CD be worth more than a download? Letâ€™s keep going… Continue reading “Whatâ€™s A Download Worth? Part 1 – The MASSIVE Downloader…”

Well, the Digital Economy Bill passed. One of the stupidest yet most potentially catastrophic bits of legislation ever forced through in the Wash-Up (the last couple of days of a Parliament before an election.

I opposed it, I still oppose it and I will continue to oppose any legislation about the internet written by people who don’t understand the internet or, in this case, the music industries and the role that music plays in our culture.

I’m particularly ashamed that the Musicians Union – a Union of which I am a member, was a proud member, and have supported by paying double what I should’ve been paying for the last two years – supported this insane bill, to the detriment of musicians everywhere.

I made this public, and got an email of their ‘official position’ this morning, which is: Continue reading “My letter to the Musicians Union About the Digital Economy Bill”