According to Ars Technica:

Once upon a time, [Simmons] explained, there was a farmer, who noticed that a baby fox was taking an egg from the chicken coop.

The farmer couldn’t kill it; the fox was too cute.

“But that little fox went back with a free egg,” Simmons warned, “and told all the other little foxes about it, and then the foxes overran the farm, killed all the chickens, took all the eggs, and didn’t pay for it.”

“Now the farmer lost his farm. His wife divorced him and went with another farmer who was smarter. The kids ran off because the spineless farmer didn’t have enough sense to kill the fox. The trucks that delivered the chickens—they’re all out of business. The stores that sold them—they’re out of business.”

“Why?” Simmons declared. “Because of one goddamn cute little fox. So don’t let any cute little foxes get near your henhouse!”

Kiss frontman Gene Simmons’ contorted analogy is apparently a parable about the importance of “suing the bastards” who download music via p2p, bittorrent, etc.

“The music industry was asleep at the wheel,” Simmons complained, “and didn’t have the balls to sue every fresh-faced, freckle-faced college kid who downloaded material. And so now we’re left with hundreds of thousands of people without jobs. There’s no industry.”

Obviously “no industry” includes the Kiss branded junk that Simmons is pedalling, from reality TV to condoms to funeral caskets.

I’m not going to make a defense of illegal downloading – although I think Simmons is completely missing a valuable and fundamental point about the promotional possibilities of sharing scraps of work – and I think that it is important that rightsholders and creators can make money from their work. And of course commercial copiers and infringers should be chased up.

But I’m really disturbed by this idea that it’s appropriate to chase after fresh-faced, freckle-faced college kid[s] using laws that were designed to issue punitive damages against commercial copiers: and I’m equally disturbed by the implication that Simmons sees his fans as something to be milked for cash. Now I’m not immune to the lure of value-added versions of things: I’m totally planning on picking up the CD version of B&S’s new record as well as the vinyl; and I’m currently clutching the DVD version of KT Tunstall’s latest rather than the CD only issue. Recent purchases of mine include special editions of Pavement records, reissues from Arab Strap, and the reissued version of Mogwai’s Young Team. All of these were things I’d already bought when they first came out. But you can bet I’m not planning to go to the grave in a “White Collar Boy” branded casket.

There are so many complex issues around copyright in the 21st century that it deeply concerns me that there are people in the industry who think that taking a really aggressive approach is somehow going to get the genie back in the bottle. Aside from the fact that many of these litigations recoup very little in the way of cash which doesn’t necessarily make its way back to creators (see for instance this Graun piece on UK company ACS:Law who are taking more money than the rights holders they “represent”), they alienate music fans – and they belie the fact that the proliferation of distribution methods and means of getting material to fans brought about by the web and other new communication methods could be argued to have reinvigorated the way in which the music industry and groups connect with music fans.

Again, this isn’t a plea for a free-for-all. But it’d be nice to see some more nuanced thinking over this than the simplistic bullshit Simmons is pumping out.

Ars Technica: KISS frontman on P2P: “Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars.” (Matthew Lasar)

The Guardian: ACS:Law gets more of copyright fines than rights holders (Josh Halliday)

Further Reading:

Guardian columnist Cory Doctorow has a pretty interesting article on the issues surrounding downloading, “free”, and how artists can make a living (or not) from their work.

The Guardian: The Real Cost of Free (Cory Doctorow)

And Ars also has a further piece on the EU’s continuing “alarm” over ACTA:

Ars Technica: MPAA <3 ACTA, but European Parliament “alarmed” by it (Nate Anderson)