REVOLVER:Lined up on one side are Lily Allen, James Blunt, Gary Barlow, Spandau Ballet and Keane. On the other are various members of Radiohead, The Clash and Pink Floyd. Instinctively you know whose side you're going to be on when these two collide in a row over illegal downloading, writes BRIAN BOYD

It began when Allen (supported by her mates above) had a go at Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and the Floyd’s Nick Mason over their stance on file-sharing. O’Brien and Mason, along with Mick Jones of The Clash, are prominent members of the Featured Artists Coalition, a sort of rockers trade union that oppose illegal file-sharing but thinks criminalising it is a futile exercise.

“I think music piracy is having a dangerous effect on music, but some really rich and successful artists like Ed O’Brien and Nick Mason don’t seem to think so,” opined Allen on her MySpace page. “For new talent ... file sharing is a disaster as it’s making it harder and harder for new acts to emerge ... I’m going to be writing to British artists, saying just this. File sharing’s not okay for British music.”

She joins a debate that features some heavy-hitters. In the UK, Labour’s Peter Mandelson (he’s on Lily’s side) is threatening to boot illegal file-sharers off the internet. The Featured Artists Coalition (whom she criticised) is opposed to this, and instead wants two warning letters sent to serial file-sharers before their broadband speed is restricted. This latter option, unlike Mandelson’s proposal, at least leaves people with basic e-mail and web access.

Lily Allen thought the coalition was being just a bit too liberal and mealy-mouthed about file-sharers.

However, her cough softened considerably when it was pointed out that she had uploaded several MP3 mix tapes to her website – containing the work of other artists. Allen had encouraged her fans to download them for free, which is illegal. Allen rushed to delete the mix tapes, then deleted all her postings about the Featured Artists Coalition.

Allen’s entry into the file-sharing debate – vacuous pieties and all – is welcome, in that it exposes the heavy-handed solutions favoured by the record companies and governments as lacking sense and reason. Broke 16-year-olds downloading the new Arctic Monkeys album for free are unlikely to consider the implications of their file-sharing on a multi-billion dollar global industry.

Really, though, this has nothing to do with Lily Allen, Radiohead or Peter Mandelson. It has everything to do with Shawn Fanning putting the first shareable MP3 file up on Napster in 1999. The record companies and all associated music bodies have had 10 years to get on top of this and all they’ve come up with is tedious finger-wagging and the odd legal threat.

The fact that nothing was ever done about this leaves us in a situation where you’re looking at two near-identical web links: one gets you the new Arctic Monkeys album for a price (ranging between €10 and €15); the other gives it to you free. Whose fault is that?

Can you honestly blame people for going for the free option? The fault lies with the music bodies and governments who allowed it to get to this point.

The Man can do whatever he wants: send you letters, restrict your broadband speed, throw you off the internet. But none of this can be properly enforced, and it’s preposterous to suggest that it can.

Throw somebody off the internet? What are you going to do? Follow them around to make sure they don’t go to a friend’s house or an internet cafe?

The only things governments can do are: one, tear up all the existing copyright laws (most of them are ancient and out of date); two, draw up a new set of laws that recognises the ungovernable nature of the internet; and, three, accept that there will always be free music available on the internet and there is nothing anybody can do about that. Start from there and get back to us when you’ve got something half decent to propose.