[i][b]File-Sharing Case Worries Indie Artists [/b][/i]
[i]By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer [/i]

[i]LOS ANGELES - Recording industry executive Andy Gershon sees opportunity in the online file-sharing networks that most of his rivals decry as havens for music pirates. As president of V2 Records, home to such established acts as The White Stripes and Moby, Gershon mines such Internet distribution channels for new fans and revenues. "The cat is so far out of the bag and so far gone that it's pointless to keep fighting it," Gershon said. "I might as well make as many people fans of our music, whether they illegally download it or not." [/i]

[i]A number of mostly independent recording artists and labels have experimented with and embraced the freewheeling digital distribution that the Internet affords. And many worry that a victory by major recording companies in a landmark file-sharing case now before the U.S. Supreme Court could short-circuit the very technologies that they believe are making a more level playing field of the music business.

Several artist rights associations, music publishers and well-known musicians, including Don Henley, Sheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks are backing the major recording labels, which accuse Grokster and StreamCast [which distributes Morpheus] of profiting from a business model that depends on piracy. [/i]

[i]But some artists, including Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, see an upside to file-sharing. "I look at it as a library. I look at it as our version of the radio," Tweedy said.

"It's a place where basically we can encourage fans to be fans and not feel like they're being exploited, which is basically what the whole industry is geared to do."

About 20 independent recording artists, including musician and producer Brian Eno, rockers Heart and rapper-activist Chuck D, filed a legal brief with the high court in support of Grokster and StreamCast. They insist file-sharing and related technologies help expose new audiences to their music — outside established channels of the recording labels. [/i]

The artists argue that file-sharing "has the immediate potential to develop into a significantly more prevalent alternative distribution and promotion system." But a ruling that outlaws or limits it "will block that potential from ever being fully realized," the brief contends.