Digital download culture "criminal" says president Greene

Michael Greene hit out at the digital download culture while delivering the president's address at the annual Grammy awards last night, describing it as an “insidious virus”.

His comments, coming just days after legal proceedings resumed between the record industry and Napster, are likely to spark more difficulties in the already fractuous relationship between music labels and the illegal downloaders.

“No question the most insidious virus in our midst is the illegal downloading of music on the Net,” he said. “It goes by many names and its apologists offer a myriad of excuses. This illegal file-sharing and ripping of music files is pervasive, out of control and oh so criminal.

“Many of the nominees here tonight, especially the new, less-established artists, are in immediate danger of being marginalized out of our business.

“Ripping is stealing their livelihood one digital file at a time, leaving their musical dreams haplessly snared in this World Wide Web of theft and indifference.”

To demonstrate his demonisation of the digital download market, he arranged for three young children to be present during the awards to show how easy it is to illegally download songs, claiming they had managed to download 6,000 tracks between them.

However, the recording industry faces a battle to ensure it wins its case against digital download pioneer Napster after Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ordered both sides to present all documents relating to the case for examination - meaning the record labels will now have to prove they own the copyright on the songs under contention.

The court had granted a month-long suspension in the case, with hopes high that a settlement may be reached, but with no light at the end of the tunnel Ms Patel ordered all documents to be presented, to the chagrin of the record industry which claims Napster's accusations it does not own all the copyrights affected are “baseless”.

Napster declined to comment on Greene's comments today.