I find myself in an unusual position regarding the Pirate Bay ruling which has seen a bunch of Swedish Pirates (or Vikings as we used to call them) sent to prison. Normally I am boringly full of opinion about events but the surrounding buzz about the rights and wrongs of piracy and the entire future of creative capitalism leaves me confused.

First of all I, naturally enough, agree with Lee’s sentiments about getting paid for making stuff up. However I think Cath was closer to the mark when she kicked the whole debate off saying that “…Creativity needs supporting. We are all invested in that [but] the ‘to steal or not to steal’ just surely isn’t the right question?”

One of the big problems I have with damning piracy was, oddly enough, summed up in David Hepworth’s eulogy to pirated music sessions on Radio 4′s “Archive on 4: For One Night Illegally”, which is worth listening to again either at 3pm this Monday afternoon, or on iPlayer.

Hepworth points out that many of the great moments of music history, (including the sublime moment in which Dylan answers the hysterical shout of “Judas” by playing one of the best songs ever written) only come down to us because of pirated live recordings.

More importantly he references a law suit Bruce Springsteen brought against a pirate trader which he won, despite the fact that recording clearly starts with Bruce himself shouting “BOOTLEGGERS! BOOTLEGGERS! ROLL YOUR TAPES! THIS ONE IS GONNA BE HOT!”

Now obviously there is a difference between a live event badly recorded, or a studio out-take saved from the dustbin (the programme is also more than worth listening to for the sounds of the Troggs arguing about drum beats) and the pirating of an otherwise available piece of work like a finished film or album. However the Springsteen case highlights for me the complicated relationship between Piracy, Sales and Fans.

In the world before the mass and near instantaneous dissemination of creative content via the internet, piracy and bootlegging played a vital role in opening up new markets and bringing an audience to work that they might otherwise ignore. For instance, as a child I fell in love with the Specials through a bootleg cassette of a live gig they’d played ten years previously in Boston. It’s still one of the best live shows I’ve ever heard and it kicks seven shades of shit out of any of their studio recordings. Listening to it explains why they were so important and had I not heard it I wouldn’t have obsessively bought all their albums on cassette, vinyl and CD.

Things are different now but the same principle applies. I have recently become obsessed with Spotify, another Swedish file sharing site which, unlike Pirate Bay, claims to be legal. I say “claims” because the offer is so astoundingly good I can’t believe it’s not a crime. For the price of nine quid a month or having to listen to an advert every quarter of an hour, you get live streaming access to pretty much every song in the world ever. It’s like iTunes but… well… free.

Now I don’t know where the advertising and subscription money goes. I find it hard to believe that it all trundles back to the MCPS but perhaps it does. I’d like to think it does because that means I’ve recently given the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s and the Black Lips a lot of someone else’s money. My fingers are crossed.

Anyway, the point is that being able to hear the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s latest album has made me want to buy it and own it and have it as mine. Moreover Spotify has massively reawakened my interest in contemporary music – finally there’s a music station I can listen to that doesn’t force me to hear the Xfm playlist of songs I’ve definitely decided I don’t like, intermingled with the banal chat of idiots who are desperate to convince me that it’s all the best thing ever.

People recommend me stuff, I listen to it, if I like it, I buy it…