Lily Allen hits back at artists who condone illegal file-sharing

English pop singer-songwriter Lily Allen has condemned a group of artists who are calling on the British government to abandon proposals to cut off the internet connections of people who illegally download music. Nick Mason, Radiohead's Ed O'Brien and Blur's Dave Rowntree are among the artists who believe the internet is bringing their music to a younger generation.

Writing on her Myspace blog, Lily Allen said: "It probably is fine for them. They do sell-out arena tours and have the biggest Ferrari collections in the world. For new talent though, file sharing is a disaster as it's making it harder and harder for new acts to emerge."

The Hammersmith-born singer - who, it's worth noting, is pretty successful herself with a string of top 10 hits to her name - was responding to an article in The Times. In that article, Ed O'Brien is quoted as saying: "File sharing is like a sampler, like taping your mate’s music. You go, ‘I like that, I’ll go and buy the album’. Or, ‘you know what, I’ll go and see them live’."

Allen has responded: "Mix tapes and recording from the radio are actually very different to the file sharing that happens today."

"Mix tapes were rubbish quality - you bought the real music, because you liked the track and wanted to hear it without the DJ cutting off the end of each song. In digital land pirated tracks are as good quality as bought tracks, so there's not a need to buy for better quality," she writes.

The singer adds that, though she herself has just hit the big time, not everyone is as lucky. "You might not care about this, but the more difficult it is for new artists to make it, the less new artists you'll see and the more British music will be nothing but puppets paid for by Simon Cowell."

You can check out the full text of Allen's blog here.