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Billy Bragg Responds to France's Three-Strike Anti-Piracy Law

4:33 p.m. · September 30, 2009 · by Jenna Humphrey

Political activist and songwriter Billy Bragg has contributed his opinion to the international conversation about illegal file sharing. He has done so in the form of a letter to the Guardian. This letter is a response to France’s new three-strikes law, which allows prosecutors to ban violators from using the internet – or even to jail them.

Bragg discusses a statement that he and other members of the Featured Artist Coalition have produced. He warns against a costly pirate war that could undermine freedom and privacy while failing to restore cash to the industry and its artists.

“The successful music sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Spotify all offer free access,” writes Bragg. “The next step is to create ‘feels like free’ services. We need legal networks licensed by record companies that give users access to all the music they want for a subscription fee. We need P2P communities that spread the word for new artists while offering advertising platforms so that an artist whose work is downloaded can receive reciprocal payment from advertising revenue. We can offer accessible, easy to use, fairly priced alternative business models that people will actually want to buy their music from.” [Hypebot]