Who is worse; ‘File Sharers’ and ‘illegal downloaders’ that are robbing the music industry blind, or the industry itself?

This isn’t obviously something new, and in case you’re wondering, I’m not only just ‘clocking on’ to the fact that people take music without paying for it. However, what is new is the idea that a court of appeal has this week reduced the sentence for a woman that was sharing 24 songs on Kazaa. Sounds great doesn’t it? She has to pay less, right?

Well… the nice judge did decrease the figure to a measly £41,000 ($65,000) which means that the poor lady sharing 24 songs in 2006 will be paying 51,898 times more for her music than she would if she paid 79p for the songs in iTunes. Now, that’s taking the piss a little isn’t it? It’s probably the only figure on the planet that is actually higher than the rate of inflation in Zimbabwe.

What about the file sharers that share 30,000 tracks? What about the file sharers that share software products (that don’t work by the way)? What about the file sharers who share 10,000 films? Finding a woman that in the grand scheme of things, is pretty innocent, and charging her £41,000 per song seems a little over the top. She was sharing little over 2 albums and she gets caught out and hung, drawn and quartered. The way that this industry is attempting to tackle illegal downloads is so far away from perfect that it’s embarrassing.

Have you ever seen a gangster film where the police chase after the drug users? No. Why? Because they aren’t worth it. Go for the big boys. Go for Pirate Bay. Leave poor Mary alone for Christ sake.

During the process of reading this article, writing this blog and chatting with sP from Sentric Music, I think I have an idea which will change the world.

Ready?

Align the penalties for file sharing with the relativity that it deserves. Looking at other penalties, it becomes easy to see how the industry can tackle a problem that has ‘crippled’ it (it is downloading of course, not the fact that people aren’t writing good music) without alienating the people who are most important; the consumers.

I dropped a cigarette on the floor a few months ago, and I got pulled by one of those traffic coppers. After a long debate about whether the nice gentleman even qualified as a policeman, I was forced to pay a £75 fine. Bit of a ball ache, but given that I must’ve dropped about 50,000 cigarettes on the floor in my time it’s not a big price to pay. It actually made me feel better about the other 49,999 stubs I threw on the floor, as if I’d paid my way somehow.

If you’re unfortunate enough to get a parking ticket, the same principle applies. You’re pissed off at the traffic warden for about 15 minutes, and then you think, ‘I get away with this all the time so if you average out the fine against the amount of times I park illegally, it still works out less than £5 per minute I get raped for every day by parking legally’.

If the Music Industry took this approach, the cost of fining these murderous file sharers would dramatically decrease. Simple letters would be sent, and the fine would be £25 per track for example. If you get fined £25 the parking ticket principle applies; fair enough, it’s more than 31 times the value of the song but it’s £25. You’re given 3 weeks to pay the fine, and if you don’t pay it goes up to £35 per song.

The annoying thing about this whole topic leads me back to a pet hate. The only person than wins in this scenario is the lawyer. Poor Mary can’t afford to pay £984,000 for 24 songs meaning the record label doesn’t get the money. Poor Mary lives a life of hell and goes bankrupt, and so does the artist because the record label won’t commit to another album.

The lawyer gets £3k per hour to solve nothing. The robbing bastard.