Billy Bragg: Cutting Off Illegal File Sharers is Wrong!

Billy Bragg speaks against The Digital Economy Bill

New names join the Digital Economy Bill debate after the recent publication of the legislation which was highly criticized for its stringent disconnection rule with regard to repeat copyright infringers.

Billy Bragg, the popular UK singer/songwriter who is also a board member of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), has added to the number of those voicing against the bill.

Mainly, the reasons for which the stipulations in the new legislation cause rather wariness and not enthusiasm concern the huge amount of money ISPs would have to spend to apply the system and the losses they would suffer by cutting off their customers, the way public and office networks would be affected (the cases of network hacking would dramatically increase as people would still try to download breaking into public wireless networks or into other users networks), an unproductive appeals process and the criminalization of a huge number of people etc, all amassing to very harmful consequences for the industry.

"The industry’s going to cut off potential fans for listening to music and sharing it around, and that’s not going to help artists; we’re in danger of persecuting people for listening to records. We need copyright to move from being about permission to being about remuneration. I think the industry needs to understand that this is not about piracy, it’s about promotion,” says Bragg as quoted by PC Pro.

He went on emphasizing the difference between music fans who are using p2p network to listen to their favorite artists or discover new ones and those who are trying to make profit from piracy: “We want the weight of law coming down on people who are selling our music illegally, not people who want to listen to a new song. People want a specific Pixies track that’s not on an album, you can’t even buy it – and it’s mad, this is mad to me – the only way to get it, is to download the entire Pixies back catalogue on Bit Torrent, get the track you want and throw the rest away. That’s the problem with streaming, it’s still an attempt to control distribution, and that model is dead.”

As noted countless times before, perhaps the UK music industry should really invest efforts and money in trying to come up with a new business model rather than punish people who don’t want to wait until a film reaches their hometowns or an album is put for sale in a nearby music store.