Other Artists Lash Out About Piracy

September 28th, 2009

Val

Provided by Paste

Nearly 100 musicians attended yesterday’s meeting to support Lily Allen’s fight against digital piracy, then greeted the U.K. pop star with cheers when she decided to pay a surprise visit.

Billy Bragg , Patrick Wolf and Radiohead’s Ed Brien had also joined George Michael and Annie Lennox in signing a statement further backing Allen in her ringleader role. “We the undersigned wish to express our support for Lily Allen in her campaign to alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry and to condemn the vitriol that has been directed at her in recent days,” it said, as reported by Billboard.

Nearly all of the musicians agreed on a new law proposal that the British government should receive before Tuesday, to send two warning letters to file-sharers before restricting their broadband speeds. The U.K. Internet Service Providers Association has stated before that it would not support such government regulation on individuals, though it has not commented recently on the issue.

Allen launched and led initial discussions on MySpace before she moved them to a separate online venue, It’s Not Alright. Her stance: “File sharing’s not okay for British music. We need to find new ways to help consumers and buy music legally, but saing file sharing’s fine is not helping anyone – and definitely not helping British music.”

Although enthused by support she received from Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan and Muse’s Matt Bellamy, Allen was also overwhelmed by abusive responses she received from music listeners. As a result, she announced through It’s Not Alright that she will not be making another record, then removed all entries from the blog.