Would've been nice if he explained WHY piracy is "great." The way the story is presented, it makes it look like he's encouraging IP theft. Maybe he could've said something about how the music industry could leverage piracy instead of wasting time combating it (which is what I think he was trying to say).

Look, I'm only 30-something, but I have no freakin idea who Robbie Williams is, except that I think someone online (younger and hipper than me) said he was in a gap commercial. [reaches for pipe and slippers]

Funny how this blog never posts articles about artists who don't think piracy is great. It seems impossible at this point to find out what percentage of recording artists favor or oppose online file sharing.

Cypherpunks:

1. I already got the message when you posted it earlier

2. I've also heard you say this before, assuming you're the same cypherpunks

3. You're wrong, we have discussed the claims of artists who are suing various online providers here over the years

4. You can't seriously be asserting that it's difficult to lay hands on the opinions of artists who decry piracy, given the millions (tens of millions?) of dollars worth of TV, radio, banner, and print ads devoted to the subject

"4. You can't seriously be asserting that it's difficult to lay hands on the opinions of artists who decry piracy, given the millions (tens of millions?) of dollars worth of TV, radio, banner, and print ads devoted to the subject"

Ah, but you see, YOU aren't doing it, so YOU aren't being balanced. Of course this ignores that you ARE doing it, and folks like Cypherpunks never seem to feel that BOTH sides need to present the dissenting views. Why is that?

So what percentage of artists would you estimate favor or oppose file sharing? Was the point of your entry that here is a very unusual artist who supports the technology, a "man bites dog" story? Or was it intended to imply that such support is common?

It's an important issue, because many online activists like to suggest that it's only the "evil" record companies that oppose file sharing, but that the "good guy" artists actually support it. If so, that's an important and relevant fact in helping us to formulate opinions about the technology. But is it true? Your story could be considered evidence in that direction - but really, it's just anecdotal and as we know, self-selected anecdotes are not evidence.

That's the real point of my complaint. These stories give a possibly misleading impression that many or perhaps most artists support file sharing technology. But we have no way of knowing whether that is true or whether in fact the opposite is true. In the end such stories are counter-productive in helping us get at the truth, as they substitute emotion for logic.

You'd have a hard time not knowing who Robbie Williams is if you lived in the UK, Mark. Robbie Williams is one of the biggest names in UK music (which is why this was front page news on the BBC).

"So what percentage of artists would you estimate favor or oppose file sharing?" is not a meaningful question. Which artists? Which file-sharing? Which circumstances? If I told you that 98% of all Trappist monks considered Gutenberg Bibles blasphemous, would it be meaningful?

Let me give you my explicit agenda -- in case you've missed it: I believe that by the year 2020, nearly 100% of the artists whose work is generating revenue will endorse file-sharing to the same extent that, say, authors endorse books or musicians endorse CDs. They may hate the middlemen, or the payment collectors, or the licensing arrangements, or the taxation levels, or the fidelity, or the editors, or the labels, or the producers, but the idea of hating "file-sharing" will be as silly as hating "recording."

Well, you're way ahead of me then, because I have no idea what things will be like in 2020 regarding sales of music and other creative media. I kind of doubt that what we know today as P2P will map very well onto the kinds of exchanges that occur two decades in the future.

The real question that P2P thrusts upon us is, will creative people be compensated for their work, and if so, how? I sincerely hope we find a way to do it, because I like being exposed to new creative works on a regular basis. But given the technological realities, it seems almost impossible to achieve this goal without an invasive surveillance infrastructure.

In any case, promoting an "us against them" mentality, demonizing the opposition, over-simplifying issues, all these don't help in the long run. Our interests as consumers are fundamentally aligned with those of the music industry; we both will benefit if performers can be paid for their work, and we will both lose if this turns out to be impossible. Recognizing our shared interests would be a good first step towards finding ways to salvage a future for creative thought.

Let someone take Robbie Williams' 80 mil out of the bank, without his permission and start handing it out to anyone that wants it and see what he thinks then. Not that anyone should give a flying fig what he thinks anayway; how can you see this as anything more than Robbie Williams getting his monkey-arsed face in the papers. Had his comments come from some piss-poor session musician or a record company exec., instead of a pathological attention seeker, then they may ring just a little more true.

Oh, and the decline in record *sales* has not yet caught up with the decline in *quality* of records being released. (the latter started with disco, and ends with robbiewilliams.) It will, executive friends at EMI, it will, and when it does and you are still (shamelessly) blaming it on piracy, and Robbie Williams still has 60 odd million in the bank, you might just see the error of your pestilent little ways.

I am Anne Coulter's love child.

I rather liked Take That. Back For Good was a lovely song.

artists don't make money off albums anyway! Artists make money off touring. When a musicican makes an album, the record company is charging them for the recording time (a lot of dough), then they have to make a video and get charged for that, promotion, yeah they get charged for that.

sign to a label and after a years time you will have to recoup the label close to half a million. The label takes all of that money out of your record sales.

when an artist goes on tour - they keep every dime. in the last five years, what didi the Stoines make the most money on? i think it was their tours - $300 million.

fuck the labels- they've been ripping off arists for decades! The sad states of music today is because of their choices on who to push and who to sign and forget, leaving them trapped with a contract and albums tha6t don't get released.

Record execs make 30 times what artists make. Its high time for them to get what they deserve.

don't mention "artists" when you discuss file sharing reducing revenue. the only people that are losing revenue are fat cat execs at these major labels and they deserve it.

SHUT UP, just SHUT UP okay? I know some record execs and they are SUPER COOL!

You know musicians are screwed when concert promoters are the ones giving them the better deal (than record companies)!