At the Grammy awards the other week, an unusual note was struck by Michael Greene, a record industry bigwig. The only real point of interest at most award ceremonies is the frocks (and sometimes, admittedly, the hair), so it was a break with tradition when Greene and his tuxedo launched into the subject of Internet piracy. 'No question the most insidious virus in our midst is the illegal downloading of music on the Net,' he said, firmly putting HIV in its place. 'This illegal file-sharing and ripping of music files is pervasive, out of control and oh so criminal.' He went on to reveal that a backstage mini-sweatshop of three college students had spent the last two days downloading music files. 'Please say hello to Numair, Stephanie and Ed.' In their two days the industrious trio had downloaded six thousand songs. 'The RIAA [Recording Industry Association of America] estimates that - now listen to this - an astounding 3.6 billion songs are illegally downloaded every month.'

LRB 25 April 2002 | PDF Download