UK Music stars ask for more anti-piracy measures

Some of the biggest names in the UK’s music industry, like Simon Cowell and Elton John, have sent an official letter to the UK prime minister David Cameron asking for stronger anti-piracy measures to be put into place.

The UKs richest music celebrities clearly think the best way to prevent music piracy is by pressuring the government to trap ISPs into a corner. They want an all out assault on ISPs, advertisers and search engines to make sure illegal downloading is marginalised – in their eyes the rise of music piracy is the fault of everyone but the music industry.

Although the letter did not lay out a framework for how the UK government should go about controlling the UK’s music piracy, among the previously proposed ideas are getting ISPs to block notorious piracy sites (more “successful” Pirate Bay style blocks for other sites?), getting advertising companies to stop working with infringing sites and getting search engines to delist sites involved with music piracy.

You can read the full letter below:

Dear Prime Minister,

As the world’s focus turns to the UK this summer, there is an opportunity to stimulate growth in sectors where the UK has a competitive edge. Our creative industries represent one such sector, which creates jobs at twice the speed of the rest of the economy.

Britain’s share of the global music market is higher than ever with UK artists, led by Adele, breaking through to global stardom. As a digitally advanced nation whose language is spoken around the world, the UK is well positioned to increase its exports in the digital age. Competition in the creative sector is in talent and innovation, not labour costs or raw materials.

We can realise this potential only if we have a strong domestic copyright framework, so that UK creative industries can earn a fair return on their huge investments creating original content. Illegal activity online must be pushed to the margins. This will benefit consumers, giving confidence they are buying safely online from legal websites.

The simplest way to ensure this would be to implement swiftly the long overdue measures in the Digital Economy Act 2010; and to ensure broadband providers, search engines and online advertisers play their part in protecting consumers and creators from illegal sites.

We are proud of our cultural heritage and believe that we and our sector can play a much bigger role in supporting UK growth. To continue to create world beating creative content, we need a little bit of help from our friends.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Cowell
Roger Daltrey CBE
Professor Green
Sir Elton John CBE
The Lord Lloyd Webber
Dr Brian May CBE
Robert Plant
Roger Taylor
Tinie Tempah
Pete Townshend

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