Steven Wilson begging in Facebook

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 Roland113 wrote:

 moshkito wrote:

I appreciate Steven's work a lot, as you well know ... but I don't see the point of any of these folks complaining ... almost none of us, will ever even have a CD made and have 10 people listen to it and say something about it in Prog Archives ... and today, we've become so callous to the artistry and the work behind it, that we act like we don't care. I care tremendously ... but complaining to you, or to anyone here on the board ... is a DEAD END ... and in the end, really bad PR ... because some folks will get pee'd off for whatever reason.

Sorry to wade in here, but I somewhat disagree with this statement.

Pedro, I gather you're a musician and have 'lost' a good amount of music over the years.  It also seems that you're accepting of this, which is your choice.  As a musician, you have the right to pick your battles as you see fit.

When something like this is debated in this forum, there are people that are reading it and not commenting.  There have been almost four thousand 'reads' of this thread alone.  I'm certainly not saying that four thousand different people have read the thread, but I would guess more people have read it without commenting.  If by our arguments, we can convince ten people to buy their music rather than steal it, then some good has been done.

Furthermore, as one of the premier progressive rock web sites on the internet, we rely on many different walks of life to maintain that credibility.  If we condone, even implicitly, illegal downloading of music, we loose a certain amount of credibility with the artists themselves.  We, as a web community, are honored by the musicians that frequent our website.  Frankly, I'm not willing to compromise our reputation as a community by not giving the people that steal music a free pass for any reason.

I've had conversations with artists that I respect tremendously, Phideaux Xavier, John Young, Jonas Reingold, Nad Sylvan . . . Each and every time I talk with one of these artists, I'm able to hold my head up high when I talk about our website because we have a good reputation.  As I said, I'm not willing to let that reputation to be tarnished by taking any other stance other than what Dean and many other have said.

As I said, I disagree with your statement.  There may be a lot of people that will never be convinced that illegal downloading is a bad thing, but this is not a dead end conversation, this is relevant to many people that aren't commenting here.

Well said Tom.  Wilson simply asked, very politely, for people to please pay for his music (i.e. hard work, monetary investment, time investment, lively hood, etc.).  The only people who consider such a request inappropriate and/or controversial are those who feel guilt (however buried deep down it may be) about taking his hard work and not paying for it.  It's astounding to me that this even needs to be said.