Pity poor penniless pop stars

Lily Allen and James Blunt have joined forces to promote a cause very close to their hearts – their wallets,

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Twenty-odd years ago pop stars would come together to sing about famine, even four years ago it was about poverty or the environment.

But that's changed. These disadvantaged singers don't have the luxury of the extra cash to go caring about world events because they have to stop people file sharing.

Despite my general, jealousy-fuelled, scorn for the rich and famous I have a greater deal of sympathy for Lily and James's campaign against internet piracy than I did for Live 8.

When Bono swore at the nation on live TV and demanded we make poverty history (this was before we all became poor ourselves in the recession) he did so at a time when he was fighting to register U2 away from Ireland's shores so he wouldn't have to pay tax.

There were those who said that Bono was a hypocrite for calling for our cash at a time when he didn't want to pay his dues to fund public services in his own country.

So listening to Lily Allen talk about how musicians start out with a pile of debt which is made worse if they don't sell enough records at least has an upfront honesty to it.

The record industry has taken a pounding as a result of online music. When I was 13 and just starting to buy CDs, in 1995, a single cost £3.99 and an album was £13.99.

Fifteen years and a whole 10-years-of-growth and a recession later and a chart album is now available for under a tenner.

Clearly someone is losing out as a result. But file sharing, while a breach of copyright and illegal, need not be the big baddie Lily and James make out.

If the record moguls had tried to work with Napster, the first such application, at the start of the decade instead of forcing it to shut down they might have harnessed the technology for their own good.

Now we have Spotify, which is licensed to let users stream songs for free over the net. They don't get to keep them but they do get to see what they think before deciding to buy a CD or legal mp3.

There are plenty within the record industry, and within the print media for that matter, that would love it if this whole internet thingy had never been invented. We all have to move with the times and find ways of adapting our products to the modern world.

That of course does not excuse those who are stealing music and they should be punished accordingly, though cutting off their internet access is a little extreme. For the record I think it would be better to simply fine them the cost of buying the material legally plus court costs.

Lily Allen and James Blunt, while they hardly seem cash-strapped, are making a worthwhile point and whether they care about others or not they are standing up for musicians starting out in the business.

If the debate over file sharing is to be settled then they have to be heard. And I think we'd all sympathise with them more than the moguls who just invite Lord Mandelson aboard their yachts.