I love music, I'm obsessed with it, I spend large amounts of money on it - I bought both Beatles box sets, for example. But I love to hear music that is never going to get a commercial release and which will therefore never make any money for the artists. Recently, someone on here pointed me to a site offering the facility to download dozens of audience recordings of gigs by Joy Division and New Order from the late 70s and early 80s. I am ecstatic to be able to hear this stuff, which will never be made available commerically. Therefore the only way I will get to hear it is via illegal filesharing. In the past it would have been by way of crappy bootleg tapes. These sort of filesharing sites are only likely to be of interest to sad music obsessives like me in the first place, who are EXACTLY the sort of people who also still buy the artists' records.
So, by downloading this music, I am not harming the artist. By uploading ut, neither is the filesharer (who will often be equally as much of a fan of the artist as the people downloading are). Many filesharing sites are fan-oriented labours of love, by and for people who just want to hear the music. Further, as I still prefer buying CDs and records, if someone did release this stuff commercially, I would no doubt buy it anyway. If the record labels actually gave a toss about the music and the artists, rather than the profit margins, much more of this stuff might get an official release in the first place.
Anyway, this proposed legislation would brand me a criminal and potentially cut off my internet access, thus preventing me from buying "legal" products which do support the artists. This is especially irritating when the government and the record industry has done nothing to support record shops (which is where I used to buy actual records) and has therefore forced me to look online.
