ZZzzz - Britney, Sting to Whine In "Anti-Piracy" TV Ads

[JackSpratts]

By Sue Zeidler, Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Teen queen Britney Spears, the bubbly dancing spokesgirl for Pepsi, will soon be shilling again but on a more serious note in a commercial to warn people of the evils of online piracy.
Spears, rapper Nelly, hip-hop diva Missy Elliott and other pop stars will be featured in coming weeks in TV spots funded by the world's biggest record labels to educate people about illegal downloading of music, which the music industry blames for a protracted sales slump.
After falling more than 5 percent in 2001, CD shipments dropped another 7 percent in the first half of this year as illegal downloading of music persists at high levels.
Industry estimates show that more than 2.6 billion music files are downloaded illegally from the Internet each month, mainly through unlicensed "peer-to-peer" services.
"We want to hit fans with the message that downloading music illegally is, as Britney Spears explains in one of the spots, 'the same thing as going into a CD store and stealing the CD,"' said Hilary Rosen, chief executive officer of Recording Industry Assocation of America (RIAA), a trade group for the music industry.
http://www.forbes.com/business/newsw...rtr732100.html

for one thing, if you steal from a store the product is gone. if you just make a copy they still have it and can still sell it, so it's not "the same thing" - sorry britney. for another, recording and sharing music is not illegal, nor has it ever been. yet. further, the 90 or so "artists" featured in the spots like Eminem, Madonna, the Dixie Chicks, Missy Elliott, Elton John, Sting, Phil Collins, Luciano Pavarotti, Brian Wilson, Spears, and Natalie Cole etc. need to understand that their constituency is not the riaa or even the record companies but us, the general public. that for almost every recording artist in the world their living comes not from unit sales but from direct fan support at live events, that record sales have never buttered their bread.

fans have only so much patience and i wouldn't want to stake my livelihood on the ones i've pissed off.

- js.