IFPI Advises Children to Use LimeWire and Kazaa

Together with the charity Childnet, IFPI recently launched acampaign to educate kids, teachers and parents about the dangers offilesharing. Ironically, the legal alternatives they suggest direct thekids to LimeWire, Kazaa and sites that sell hardcore adult movies.

The campaign’s leaflet (pdf)is distributed through schools and colleges, libraries, record stores,teaching portals and websites in 21 countries. It advises kids andparents about the dangers of filesharing, and advises them to use thelegal music online stores, which are listed on pro-music.org, with theaim of keeping kids safe online.
IFPI proudly announced their new campaign a few weeks ago, writing:“The campaign comes as millions of people take advantage of theexplosion of new ways of accessing music digitally, but still lackclarity on safety and legal issues, on finding legitimate sites, on thebasics of copyright and on how to unpick the jargon of digital music.”
IFPI has always been concerned with the safety of children, and onpro-music.org they maintain a list of download stores that are ’safe’to use. I was of course curious about these legal stores, and since i’mfrom the Netherlands, I decided to give the Dutch legal stores a try.This turned out to be an interesting experiment.
To my surprise, the first 4 sites on the list were all gone, somehad quit, and others redirected to websites that didn’t sell any music.Even worse, commodore.nl -the first site on the list- served ads for ascam site that sells filesharing software.
I finally got something that looked like a music store when I got to the fifth link, dance-tunes.However, when I searched for the latest Radiohead album, nothing cameup. The site only has a few mp3s, and nothing of my choice.
The journey continued, and with sixth site, download.nl,I finally found some good music. Interestingly however, the songs Ifound were not for sale. Instead, I was advised to download LimeWire,Shareaza and Kazaa Lite. This may indeed sound a little confusing, butthe IFPI apparently wants kids to use filesharing software after all.
So, to sum up my legal music experiment. I tried the first 6 sitesadvised by IFPI, 4 didn’t sell any music, the fifth only listed a fewsongs, and the sixth website I tried advised me to install LimeWire orKazaa. It gets even worse further down the list where the kids end upat sites that sell hardcore adult movies.
Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Mediasaid about the new campaign: “The new guide is a very good example ofan initiative that offers simple, practical advice to parents andteachers to keep young people safe and legal while enjoying music onthe Internet.
I guess she didn’t try it herself.
Screenshot of a music “store” promoted by IFPI

How are these people not sued yet? Also, I never ever heard of online downloading being illegal. No one gives a crap if a friend gives you a CD but the album companies make a big deal about online sharing. That might just be USA, I'm not sure.