The music industry today revealed its latest cunning plan to quash the evil music sharers. In this article a group calling themselves The Association of Independent Music annouced they are campaigning to make ISP’s middle men in delivering music to their users, whilst ensuring that the music industry gets its cut.
David Ferguson, chairman of the British Academy of Composers & Songwriters stated:
For too long the ISPs have shirked their responsibilities, using music as a tool to sell their own services, whilst making little effort to ensure fair payment to its creators.
I have to disagree with David as I’ve yet to see any ISP advertising it’s services as a means to download illegal music. The fact that they provide their subscribers with a means to do so makes them no more responsible than the fibre-optic cabling and router providers that comprise the Internet. Services involved in the delivery of Internet content cannot possibly be held accountable for what that content is. This would be like holding a courier accountable for the content of a parcel.
The music industry are experts at trying to force everyone else to solve their problems. This strikes me as very strange behaviour for one of the richest and most powerful industries in the world. Music is no longer about music, it’s a big, ugly commercial machine that nobody really benefits from except for a few corporate fat cats. Groups are carefully nurtured in and out of stardom without ever becoming established performers. The only decent groups around today are those that pre-date the likes of the RIAA and their foreign kindred. Now that music as an art form has been reduced to a steaming pile of commercialism, it’s somehow the fault of the Internet and the ISP’s.