I'm amazed by the people on this thread who think it's fine for a complete stranger, who made no attempt whatsoever to contact me directly at any stage of this process, to put my album out for free downloads by as many people as read his blog. I'm amazed that you think I should be grateful to (a) the anonymous blogger and (b) the anonymous people who may or may not have taken up the opportunity. When all the blogger needed to do to tell the world about my music, was to either direct his readers to my My Space site, or to my website, or to CD Baby, or to iTunes or to any number of other legal download sites. I would point out that I do my best to ensure my music isn't a secret from the world, that I have never discouraged anyone from singing one of my songs AND that I have not, myself, made copies of other peoples' CDs for friends. At any time. If I want my friends to have a copy of a CD, I buy one for them. That way I support the artist who has created the music in the first place. That seems to me to be the right way to support music and musicians. If I can't afford to do that, I just let my friends hear the music and trust them to buy or not as they decide. "Holier than thou"? I don't think so - but it is the way I choose to do things.

As someone said (Tom?) earlier on, would you be grateful to an anonymous "well wisher" who liked your property so much that he left your front door open and invited the world to come and help themselves?

I have no issue at all with people singing my songs - to that extent, the music is free. If they're singing in a context in which royalties are due, then yes, I do expect the song to be credited to me so that I get my share of the royalties. If they enjoy my albums, which have taken time, money and effort to record, manufacture and distribute, that's great and they can always tell their friends about them - for free, of course. But giving away downloads of my album? Why the hell should anyone do that without my agreement?

Someone earlier made a comparison with lending a book - it's not about lending. It's about making a photocopies of the book and handing it out on street corners. Not surprisingly, there are limits to how many pages of a book you're legally allowed to photocopy. Not surprisingly, international copyright also exists on recordings. Most albums always used to carry a clear notice to this effect - and, guess what - the album in question has the words printed onto the CD itself. "Unauthorised copying, public performance, broadcasting, hiring or rental of this recording prohibited." So my blogging fan has really no excuse.

I think what still sticks in my throat about it all is that when it was suggested in a comment to the blogger that he could direct his readership to a legal download site for this album his response was that he didn't think he "could go THAT far". How hard would it have been to have included a URL, by comparison with uploading my material illegally?

Now you can accuse me of being selfish, or sticking my head in the sand, or putting too high a price on my music, but you'd be wrong. Songwriters, whether in the folk world or out in the Big Wide World of the entertainment industry (and please note that it's an industry), have rights. They may choose to waive those rights, under certain circumstances, but it should be their choice, not the choice of some stranger hiding their own identity behind a nom de plume and a blog. If Billy Bragg and Show of Hands have given permission for free downloads of their music, that's their decision and their choice. In this situation, I was given no choice at all.

The bottom line? Even if I made a lot of money from readers of this blog rushing to buy legal copies of the illegal download (and trust me, that's not happening)it still wouldn't make this form of theft right.

Anne