Brian May and Pete Townshend Call For British PM To Curb Music Piracy

US Rockstars believe music could help out struggling economy 25/07/12

Back in the day: Brian May and Pete Townshend // CC // Heinrich Klaffs & Eddie Mallin

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A group of music industry major players have written to British Prime Minister David Cameron urging him to help push illegal downloading to the margins, and stimulate growth of the powerful creative industries.

The stars, including Brian May, Roger Taylor, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend and Elton John have cited Adele as a global artist who has improved Britain's share of the music market.

You can read the full letter below:

"SIR - As the world's focus turns to Britain, there is an opportunity to stimulate growth in sectors where Britain has a competitive edge. Our creative industries represent one such sector, which creates jobs at twice the speed of the rest of the economy.

"Britain's share of the global music market is higher than ever with British artists, led by Adele, breaking through to global stardom. As a digitally advanced nation whose language is spoken around the world, Britain is well-positioned to increase its exports in the digital age. Competition in the creative sector is in talent and innovation, not labour costs or raw materials.

"We can only realise this potential if we have a strong domestic copyright framework, so that British creative industries can earn a fair return on their huge investments creating original content. Illegal activity online must be pushed to the margins. This will benefit consumers, giving confidence they are buying safely online from legal websites.

"The simplest way to ensure this would be to implement the long-overdue measures in the Digital Economy Act 2010; and to ensure broadband providers, search engines and online advertisers play their part in protecting consumers and creators from illegal sites.

"We are proud of our cultural heritage and believe that we, and our sector, can play a much bigger role in supporting British growth. To continue to create world beating creative content, we need a little bit of help from our friends."

(Signed by)

Simon Cowell

Roger Daltrey

Professor Green

Sir Elton John

Lord Lloyd-Webber

Dr Brian May

Robert Plant

Roger Taylor

Tinie Tempah

Pete Townshend

What do you think of the letter? Do you think battling piracy would do anything to help record sales, or should the prices of records and legal downloads be lowered?

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Editor
@sonicamped