Lily Allen’s Blog Post against File Sharing Gets Response from Muse

Matt Bellamy

Two days ago we reported about British singer Lily Allen’s outburst against fellow artists who support file sharing in a post published on her MySpace blog.On the same blog there’s now a comment from Muse lead singer Matt Bellamy who promptly responded to Allen’s indignation.

“File-sharing is now the norm. This cannot be changed without an attack on perceived civil liberties which will never go down well,” says Bellamy in the email, suggesting that the solution lies in a different approach. Apparently, such approach might be taxing for ISPs for offering users the broadband space to engage in file sharing.

Here’s an excerpt from the response Bellamy sent to Lily Allen:

Radio stations and TV stations etc have to pay the copyright owners (both recording and publishing) a fee for using material they do not own.

ISPs should have to pay in the same way with a collection agency like PRS doing the monitoring and calculations based on encoded (but freely downloaded) data.

Broadband makes the internet essentially the new broadcaster. This is the point which is being missed.

Bellamy also hints at users who download more and who therefore should be charged more – "usage should also be priced accordingly".

Muse's released their fifth studio album called ‘The Resistance’ earlier this week, but unlike the album of fellow musicians from Smashing Pumpkins, whose release we covered in another post today, I guess we won’t be seeing this one made available for free over the net. Not willingly, anyway.