Slow Thrills

Music downloads - 95% are illegal
Interesting, if puzzling, article over at Drowned in Sound on the state of the music industry and how much revenue is supposedly lost through illegal downloads. Of course, it is a skewed statistic, ignoring the amount of people who fill their boots with entire artist discographies as well as those who have been downloading just to hear stuff. Happily, websites such as last.fm and the new kid on the block, Spotify are catering to the latter type of freeloading consumer.
The writer suggests two solutions, the second of which - creating a license which increases in cost in proportion to the amount of data downloaded - seems entirely sensible and in sync with current web strategies addressing this problem. It was the first solution which shocked me though. Bearing in mind that DiS is (or sadly, should is say was) a promising independent record label as well as a music reviewing website, I can see their desire to claw back some of this money lost. However, restricting our internet freedoms to bring them in line with China and Cuba is an astonishing idea. Also, bearing in mind that DiS incorporates a busy and often useful message board, this is the one that will get the people talking and generate the most web traffic, therefore pleasing their advertisers.
Those guys are no slouches ;)