After a fortnight of internecine bickering, the Featured Artists Coalition has met in London and issued a statement in support of Lily Allen in “her campaign to alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry and to condemn the vitriol that has been directed at her in recent days.”
Signed by artists as diverse as David Arnold, Billy Bragg, Cornershop’s Tjinder Singh, George Michael, Annie Lennox, Blur’s David Rowntree, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, The Hoosiers and Patrick Wolf, it goes on to say: “Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer’s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional.”
Talking afterwards about Allen’s stand, Ed O’Brien added: “She's taken a lot of flak for what she's said. What she's done has been brilliant because she started the process where artists have stood up and said, ‘you know what, there is a consequence to illegal filesharing’. In the meeting, we didn't always agree but we came to an agreement that we thought was good for everyone. We're going to have further meetings like this – we've realised the importance of doing this together.”
One of those Featured Artist Coalition signatories, David Arnold, will be appearing on October 3 and 4 as part of The Music Show in the RDS.