Indelicates: 'Pick a side on piracy bill'

Simon Indelicate has again hit out at the controversial digital economy bill and urged artists to pick a side on the issue.

The singer-songwriter's band The Indelicates played a gig last night at Camden's Monarch venue (with support from Akira The Don, Dan Bull and Lily Rae) in opposition to the legislation, which paves the way for the broadband throttling of internet users accused of piracy.

"I'm starting to think that this idiotic travesty of a law might really pass. These are the opening shots of a long, bitter war," he wrote on Twitter. "Musicians who allowed it to be done in your names: there will be a reckoning before this is over.

"If the MPs fail to listen, perhaps you should write to your favourite musicians and demand to know where they stand... It is being rushed through to 'protect' them, after all."

He added: "Ask them how much a 'sale' actually earns them - considering there's almost zero chance that they've earned out their advance and if it's worth stripping rights away from real, unblessed people to protect an income they weren't getting anyway.

"It's all very well floating about evoking powerful notions of the feminine, but what do you think about something that matters? Eh? That goes for everyone in a 'creative industry' - you are specifically named in the justification for the [digital economy bill] - How does it feeeeeel? Pick. A. Side."

The Indelicates have pledged to make their upcoming second album freely available for download on a pay-what-you-like model and urged fans to share tracks via social networking sites and blogs.