The morals of the music industry are sickening, which makes it hard to take Feargal Sharkey’s Crocodile Tears a bit much to stomach.

Firstly, they rip off artists more than any teenager downloading music ever could, with one sided contracts, stealing royalties etc.

Secondly, they have ushered in ever more draconian laws which will restrict our freedoms online, just so that they don’t have to come up with sales models that suit the age. Even prominent Artists don’t agree that piracy is the problem

There will always be freeloaders who just want something for nothing – but Illegal downloading truly thrived for one reason and one reason only – the copyright industry treated normal consumers like criminals rather than provide a legal way to download music and video that could be freely used on any of our devices.

They are so desperate to control us that they have made illegal downloads attractive. I buy my music from Amazon now because they give me unrestricted MP3 files without DRM, that I can play in the house, in the car, on my Zen… and I would love to do the same with TV shows, but that industry is still desperate to stop me from using content I have paid for as I wish.