During the SOPA protests earlier this year I asked:
If the iconic singer songwriters of the labour movements were Arlo Guthrie and Billy Bragg, who are the iconic singer songwriters of the digital rights movement?
At the time, I posted a number of my favourite anti-SOPA songs from across the internet, but I didn’t feel that the question was really answered.
In my mind, whilst I loved most of the songs, most of the acts concentrated on writing songs specifically for SOPA, having not written about digital rights much before. That’s brilliant of course – not everyone needs to constantly write about digital things to support the movement, but equally, I feel just doing a one off collaboration, may not make the an iconic in the digital rights movement.
Dan Bull has a strong claim to the title. He’s spoken at Open Rights Group events, teamed up with the UK’s Pirate Party, Torrentfreak once described him as “a file sharing darling“, he’s done columns at Techdirt, Falkvinge has blogged about him and he’s collaborated with Creative Commons UK.
During 2010, following Dan’s song “Dear Lily”, inspired a competition for budding singer songwriters to focus on the Digital Economy Bill, yet despite some great entries and winners, as far as I’m aware, only Dan has soldiered on writing songs in this area.
But as a friend of Dan and having helped him out in the past, I’m worried about being blinded by my own confirmation bias and missing other contenders.
Nina Paley perhaps deserves a mention, but I don’t feel that recognition comes largely as a result of her work, rather her activism and persistence.
Jonathan Coulton, Akira The Don and many others have spoken out about digital rights issues, yet rarely tend to express these sentiments in music.
Who are the other challengers?