Poor Lily Allen.
Ten days ago, she joined Metallica in the “poacher turned gamekeeper” chapter of pop history when she spoke out, not only against filesharing in general, but also against the Featured Artists Coalition.
She’s a bit hazy on factual accuracy in there, but we’ll let that pass for the moment. It’s always funny how so many cheeky, edgy young popsters quickly leap on their high horses when they suspect that someone might be chipping away at their new-found wealth. To be fair, we’d probably all do the same, but perhaps we wouldn’t need quite such a large shovel as Ms Allen will be buying this week.
First came the revelation that another of Lily’s anti-filesharing blog posts was copied almost verbatim from a Techdirt article. Well, she’s a busy woman, isn’t she? Most of my blog posts are just copied word for word out of John McCririck’s autobiography.
But that’s not all. Lily really has no respect for the copyright laws she so vociferously battles to uphold. Her “mixtapes”, used as a marketing device at the start of her career, are still available for free download from her website. Free mp3s from a variety of artists! Just ask for Lily, she’ll see you right! Filesharing is uncool, unless it’s done by cool people, right?
Cory Doctorow writes an excellent summary of the whole sorry mess on BoingBoing. Like Cory, I’m a small-time fan of Lily’s music and have no wish to see her humiliated. And like Cory, I don’t think she’s actually a complete hypocrite… she’s just got all excited over the subject and really hasn’t thought it through. On balance, despite her aversion to the established rockers who “do sell-out arena tours and have the biggest Ferrari collections”, I suspect Lily would be more at home in the Featured Artists Coalition than she might think.