The Featured Artists Coalition, Piracy, and why I sympathize with Lily Allen

It’s been a tough week for Lily Allen. After weighing-in with a blog post re: the long-brewing debate over piracy and the future of the music industry, the young pop singer now finds herself the target of vast amounts of nerd rage from technology bloggers and anonymous netizens alike.

I don’t find it at all surprising that many people have chosen Ms. Allen’s hypocrisy as the focal point of their attention. Nor do I find it surprising that the technology press, an industry vastly dominated by males, was quick to jump on her and ignore others (e.g. James Blunt).

Let’s all take a step back and remind ourselves that the real issue at hand is the very active debate that is taking place within the UK music industry over the rights of artists to control, own, and be compensated fairly for their work.

The press is really quick to boil the debate down to whether or not artist A, B or C agree/disagree with the concept of piracy, and whether or not they support Lord Mandelson’s proposed plan to combat piracy. Ultimately, that has really steered the online debate in the wrong direction. But when it really comes down to it though, the FAC and Lilly Allen are representative of a set of common goals. If you read the charter of the FAC, it states:

• artists should retain ultimate ownership of their music
• all agreements should be fairly conducted and transparently accounted
• rights’ holders should have a fiduciary duty of care to the originator of those rights and must always explain how any agreement may affect how their work is exploited.

This will be achieved by:

• changing artists’ approach to agreements
• changing the recorded music and technology companies’ treatment of artist rights and incomes
• up-dating laws to reflect the new music landscape.

So we will campaign for laws, regulations, business practices and policies that protect artists’ rights.

We will stand up for all artists by engaging with government, music and technology companies, and collection societies. We will argue for fair play and will expose unfair practices.

Although I believe that Ms. Allen misunderstood what the FAC is all about when she penned her blog post, I don’t think she would take issue with any of the items outlined in their charter. And she’s hardly to blame for her ignorance since the press and all of the anonymous internet haters are equally ignorant.

My personal beliefs on the recording industry aside, the bottom line here is that piracy is still considered illegal by definition according to today’s laws. I think we can all recognize that there is an issue at play here, and it has negative repercussions for both artists and consumers. It’s bigger and far more widespread than this spat over piracy and whether or not we should be disconnecting people from the internet.

People need to stop hating on Lilly Allen, and focus on the real, tangible issues that will affect artists for many years to come. We’re all in this together.

But what do you think?