95% of UK 18-24 Year Olds Belong in Jail

Turns out in the UK, it’s illegal to even copy music for personal use.  They lack the ‘Fair Use’ laws we have in America that allow for copying of files (rip, duplication, etc) for personal use in a car or iPod.  In a recent Guarding survey 95% of the 1158 respondents between 18 and 24 admitted to some form of ‘sealing.’  While personal file sharing is still most popular with two thirds admitting to duplicating a CD for a friend, the chief executive of British Music Rights (BMR), the singer Feargal Sharkey, is concerned with the ease that online file sharing offers.  Before music was just copied on to tape and shared with personal friends, now a user can share with thousands of people instantly.  This is my favorite quote from the article: “Ultimately it has to get better ... At some point musicians and songwriters have to make enough money out of it otherwise they stop doing it,” he said “My concern is for the next generation of sexually frustrated, hormone-ridden 17-year-olds that are sitting in a bedroom about to possibly, and I hope, write something like Teenage Kicks.”  So let me get this right, if you cannot make money from music, 17-year-old kids will not look to writing awesome music as an outlet for their angst?  Interesting…

So, it turns out that the United States is not the only country experiencing the phenomenon of piracy.  However, BMR is not running around suing 14-year-old kids and 80-year-old grandparents for downloading Britney Spears from Limewire.  It looks like Sharkey is aware the market needs to change (unlike the RIAA).  In this world of Internet and situational ethics, “knowing something is illegal is no longer a deterrent,”  Sharkey states, “a combination of education projects and new ways of providing music to consumers - for example, advertising-funded downloads - will change that.”  It is a step in the right direction. 

Watching the music industry try to catch up is like watching a car company produce cars that only go 20MPH (32.18688KPH for UK readers), and they do not realize people are already traveling 70MPH on the Interstate, but they have a deal with the Highway Patrol to give tickets to random people going over 20MPH.  Hopefully with the iTunes Store pulling ahead of Wal-mart in music sales and the ability to buy a single track (what? the return of the single? who’d of guess?) things are moving in the right direction.  Also, please do not use Limewire, I do not care about your music purchasing habits, it’s just a really easy way to get viruses, and they suck.

Enjoy: