The concept of free

Lord Lloyd Webber was quoted last week as saying peer to peer file sharing would prevent the Beatles from making a living if they emerged today.

Arguably, the real loser would be the group’s record label Parlophone, but the broader point here is that if nobody is paying for music (or films, or books), the artists don’t get paid. Of course, there are other ways artists can make  money through live performance, or licensing the music in films, adverts etc, but while Paul McCartney won’t be going penniless any time soon, it’s legitimate to ask whether it is fair we should enjoy their work without them getting any reward.

Plenty of people responding to our plans for legislation and a new rights agency have suggested the key is getting the record labels to provide digital downloads at a reasonable cost, at which point people will stop pirating material. Maybe so. But it’s difficult to compete with something that is free.

So what is the answer? Can we ever get away from the concept of free? What would it take to see piracy reduced to the hardcore and determined rather than the general public?