(From Daily Express Saturday July 19,2008 pg. 15 by Gavin Docherty)
A TOP singer-songwriter has been the target of an internet hate campaign over illegal downloads of her new album.
Glasgow-based Indiana Gregg, whose husband and manager is the former Wet Wet Wet supremo, Ian Morrow, has been deluged by malicious mail in a wave of "cyber-bullying" by operators of The Pirate Bay and thousands of their supporters, who have been file-sharing her music for free.
And it all started because Indiana, pictured, politely asked that they remove a link to a download of her impressive debut album Woman at Work.
She and Ian were forced to act after they discovered that more than 250,000 illegal downloaders had leeched copies of the full album which was released to strong critical acclaim last year.
By writing to sites demanding that links be removed on the grounds of copyright, they had begun to stem the haemorrhage which has threatened to bankrupt their independent record label Gr8pop.
Nearly every site around the world they wrote to either blocked the link to the album or took it down, but The Pirate Bay torrent site reacted aggressively. Not only by refusing the request but also by publishing Indiana's e-mail address all over the web. This resulted in a stream of insults too offensive to be repeated in a family newspaper.
Verbal abuse is something this straight-talking vocalist from the American mid-west can handle. But the grave financial injury caused by the illegal downloading of her album is a different matter.
"I see my livelihood being sucked away every day through fild-sharing, which is allowing copyright material to flow in and out," she said. "All they have to do is claim it's the 'user's' responsibility to make sure the content being shared is not copyright-protected material. "I'm the artist who put my heart and soul, time and sweat into an album and raised money to market that album and who hasn't received a dime... not one cent from illegal downloads totalling at least a quarter of a million."
Husband Ian, who has sat on cross-parliamentary commitees in Scotland, resolved to regenerating music and culture, has referred much of the correspondence to First Minister Alex Salmond.
But he knows full well the issue of resolving illegal music downloads is a global one, requiring policing of the web and the introduction of internet 'passports'.
He added: "Pirate sites are destroying the music industry, taking away any chance a developing artist has of fulfilling any aspirations whatsoever.
(full jpg on my myspace blog at www.myspace.com/indianagregg)
