For those who haven't gone to the link, here's the full article:
Music piracy is great, says Robbie Williams
January 19 2003 at 01:22PM
Cannes, France - Pop sensation Robbie Williams said he believes music
piracy, which costs the record industry millions of dollars every
year, is a great idea.
"I think it's great, really I do. There is nothing no one can do
about it. I am sure my record label would hate me saying it, and my
manager and my accountants," Williams said Saturday at the MIDEM
music trade fair here.
Williams, whose contract with EMI is worth a reported $126-million,
said he had investigated the issue of music piracy before
renegotiating his new deal with the record company last year.
"I went and saw all the labels and asked: 'What are you going to do
about it?' And I heard a lot of hot air. The heads of the record
labels don't know what to do about it."
Williams' last album Escapology has sold five million copies since
its release on November 18, but EMI is reported to believe it will
only make a profit when about 18 million copies are sold.
Currently, record companies fear that some 800 million bootlegged
records are sold annually, compared with the industry's total legal
sales of 2,4 billion discs in 2001.
Meanwhile, the industry is also faced with the new challenge of the
spread of music that can be downloaded free of charge from the
internet.
Total sales for the music industry fell by 9 percent last year to
$30,3-billion. - Sapa-AFP
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