bragg
File sharer at UK Digital Economy meeting?
p2pnet news view P2P | Politics:- When Billy Bragg and I started a2f2a.com , we intended it to be both an advocacy site, and a channel through which musicians could talk directly to fans, and fans could talk directly to musicians. We thought we were being optimistic when we tentatively slated it for a December launch. However, it’s been online for a month, now, and it’s forging ahead with the tenet musicians want to be paid, and fans want to pay them, as the cornerstone.
Continue reading »‘To join REFF you need to break the law!’
Scambioetico is the Italian movement for the decriminalization of P2P and the defense of net neutrality, a part of the European Coalition Opennet , and REFF , explains Scambioetico press officer Gianfranco in an email to a2f2a.com co-founder Billy Bragg. Under REFF, “artists, writers, musicians, designers, architects and creatives can submit their works, as long as they are created by remixing, mashing up, cutting-up, recontextualizing, squatting, morphing one or more ‘objects’ that are subject to copyright/patent restrictions,” says the site, noting in bold type: “ Yes, to join REFF you need to break the law!” After saying he was glad to see a2f2a.com go online, Gianfranco brings up the recent French debacle under which Nicolas ‘3 Strikes’ Sarkozy demonstrated his overwhelming commitment to Hollywood and the Big 4 record labels , and his “extreme contempt for the people who elected him,” as p2pnet put it recently, going on »»» France’s parliament … gave its final approval to the Three Strikes bill created principally by the entertainment industry, with the software and gaming houses in the wings. It gives the cartels the power have anyone they accuse of being an illegal downloader taken offline without proof of wrong-doing.
Continue reading »Billy Bragg: “Better Way” to Fight P2P is Viable Alternatives
Says fight is unwinnable, that file-sharers will just disappear into darknets, and that allowing record labels to legislate the Internet means that eventually we’ll have an Internet “controlled by and for big business, which can only be accessed by those willing to pay.” Billy Bragg, English alternative rock musician and member of the Featured Artists’ Coalition (FAC), which formed this past March to give artists an equal voice in the P2P debate, has written an op-ed in the UK’s Guardian that offers “ A Better Way to Sink Internet Pirates. ” He first talks about how artists had come together to support bandwidth throttling versus disconnection at the recent “ urgent ” P2P summit in London’s Air Studios as an example of how artists can have a united voice in the file-sharing debate, even if it’s one that contradicts the record labels’ party line . Bragg , who long ago argued that artists should be able to “decide when their music should be used for free, or when they should have payment,” says that ultimately fighting illegal P2P will be a costly, long-term endeavor with absolutely no guarantee that any savings, if even achieved at all, will wind up in the hands of artists as the record labels promise.
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