featured artist coalition

November 12, 2009

Online Music: Balancing The Scales Of 'Free'

I’ve just been reading Helienne Lindvall’s latest blog post on the Guardian site, entitled, ”
Behind the music: Can we ever measure the impact of downloading?“

It’s well worth a read, as it talks about vested interests on either side (though doesn’t mention that Helienne herself was a signatory on the patently loony pro-MandelsonÂ AIR statement from the Featured Artist Coalition – she probably has mentioned it in previous posts). It does contains a couple of interesting points that I thought I’d throw out for discussion. Continue reading “Online Music: Balancing The Scales Of 'Free'”

October 28, 2009

"Piracy" And The 3 Strikes Law – A Few Thoughts From A Working Musician

Right, so “Lord” Mandelson has announced that the Government is indeed going to go ahead with their unenforceable nonsensical plans to “cripple the internet bandwidth of persistent file sharers“. Here’s a few highlights of the plans:

the cut-off is a ‘last resort‘, used if people don’t comply with requests.
the cost of monitoring will be “shared between ISPs and content providers” – that means that the labels that are already incapable of making money for the musicians signed to them are now going to fund this Wile E. Coyote-esque plan to catch people sharing files.
The ‘trade-off’ is that copyright ‘law’ will be rejigged so that now – WOW – “someone who has bought a CD would be able to copy it to their iPod or share it with family members without acting unlawfully.” (does he not remember listening to tapes made from his mum’s record collection in the car in the 80s??) Continue reading “"Piracy" And The 3 Strikes Law – A Few Thoughts From A Working Musician”

October 5, 2009

Featured Artist Coalition Backs Lily. "WTF?" Says Everyone Else.

So, after initially recognising the truth that Lily Allens position on file-sharing – her pro-Mandelson notion that ‘persistent file-sharers’ should have their internet connections cut off/crippled – was nonsense, they’ve now turned round and said, “ah no, see when Lily was talking like a complete loony? yeah, we’re all about that now. Rock on, with your Machiavellian internet snooping!” Here’s a link to their statement on it. Continue reading “Featured Artist Coalition Backs Lily. "WTF?" Says Everyone Else.”