Lily Allen quits anti-filesharing blog after she’s caught pirating
Lily Allen is a British singer, songwriter, and musician who is famous for using MySpace and the Web to build a following upon which she could launch a career. A career that, to this point, has been quite successful. However, the last week has seen her take a stand against illegal filesharing, have her position compromised by tales of her own copyright infringement, and then shut down her blog and claim her career is over.
The British government is trying to push through legislation that would see people caught downloading copyrighted material have their Internet connections pulled. Peter Mandelson claims this is the only feasible way to stop the proliferation of the illegal filesharing of music, movies, television shows etc.
These plans have seen a rift open up amongst musicians and artists. The Featured Artists Coalition, lead by Billy Bragg, Radiohead, Robbie Williams, and a host of other new and established acts, argues that the proposed law is a step too far and fails to address the real issues. It should be noted that these musicians aren’t pro-filesharing, just pro-fairness and evolution of the business.
In response to the FAC’s point of view, Lily Allen came out in support of the government’s proposal, and started an anti-filesharing blog intended to garner support for her position and field the opinion of other acts, both for and against. Which was a brave move. And possibly a stupid one as well.
Unfortunately for Allen, she failed to truly grasp the issue. Her ignorance showed through when she stole an article on the subject from Techdirt, copying and pasting it onto her blog word for word with no attribution given. She also scanned articles on the subject from newspapers and uploaded them on to her blog. She apologized but seemed ignorant of the fact this is blatant copyright infringement.
Then it got worse for Lily. Techdirt discovered Allen had uploaded two unauthorized mixtapes at the start of her career which were still available to download on LilyAllenMusic.com. The tapes include dozens of tracks from other artists and could easily have got her sued by the RIAA. Allen responded to this discovery with a host of excuses, including ignorance of the music industry, and the site belonging to EMI rather than herself.
Inevitably after being found out for pirating not only music but also copyrighted written work, Allen has deleted her blog on the subject, stating on Twitter it was because “the abuse was getting too much.” The abuse mentioned was nothing more than people disagreeing with her views and telling her why she was inherently wrong on the subject of illegal downloading.
Before she shut it down, she used it to claim her career was over, with no new albums planned. I wonder if that decision has anything to do with the fact she’s now lost a lot of fans and would probably find any new album pirated rather heavily. Taking a stance isn’t easy, and Allen seems to have picked up where Metallica left off.
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September 25th, 2009
whilst we are at it, let’s confiscate the tvs and radios from everyone who hasn’t paid their TV license fee, and scrap the cars of anyone who is caught speeding, cut off the water to anyone ignoring a hosepipe ban, remove the printers and photocopiers from anyone who has ever printed or copied copyrighted material and retrospectively sue everyone who has ever purchased a blank cassette or video. That would be just as effective.
September 25th, 2009
It was amusing to watch it all go down.
Funny thing is, she obviously never “got it”. Taking down her blog rather than admitting she was wrong and being part of a solution just shows his clueless she was all along.
Does she have a song many of us would know? We knew Metallica, so their career could survive. But they lost a huge number of followers, many of us swearing we were gone as fans forever.
September 25th, 2009
I think this just about sums it up: http://kickupthefire.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/its-not-alright/
September 25th, 2009
Funny thing was underneath all the stuff she got wrong there was a good point that bands, espeically new ones, can’t survive if no-one pays for content.
She was defending an archaic business model but, I personally think that, people should pay for music.
Bands work hard writing it and producing music and ultimaltey, if you like a band you should support them the best way you can – by buying stuff of them!
September 26th, 2009
The only Lily Allen song I know is “Smile”, that was her only hit (that I know of) here in the U.S. Seems her career stalled after that.