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30 April 2008

Childrens Charity Hijacked to Prevent Filesharing

The old “stealing music is like stealing a car” debate rages on this week, with a children’s charity of all things sticking its BMI-backed nose into what kids are downloading.

Given the disgusting amounts of child pornography on the internet, childrens charity Childnet should either throw in the towel or get back on top of warning children about paedophiles preying in chatrooms.

The BBC News dot.life blog has addressed the subject of Childnet dissuading children from exercising their right to listen to free music, to which The Gadget Monkey have given this response:

Unfortunately this is a massive argument, but it can be summed up as follows:

The music industry, desperate to RE-sell us CDs of albums we had already on vinyl and tape, spruced up with extra tracks and quality, are now upset because people are opting to try before they buy.

In an era when music acts from the 1960s and 1970s continue to outsell those from the current age, the people responsible for running these organisations need to stop blaming the technology that they encouraged us to adopt, and get their own houses in order.

The changes we’ve seen since Napster were signalled in the late 1980s, and none of the big publishers did anything about it.

Music is a big business. Like any business, if you don’t keep up, you’re out of the game.

What is most frustrating though is that people are continuing to paint anyone who downloads music as the same sort of thief who will steal a car. It’s far more involved than that, and framing a complex issue that bisects culture, technology, law and economics in such black and white terms is not only stupid, it is irresponsible.

It really is time to put this argument to bed.

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