Carla Bruni, ex-supermodel and current singer- songwriter, is best known these days for her relationship with French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Her new album, No Promises, which contains poems by Yeats, Emily Dickinson and Auden set to music, has just been re-released and is not that bad - as albums by ex-supermodels go.
Still, for all her attempts to establish herself as a legitimate recording artist, the fetching
Ms Bruni may well have a far more significant role to play in the music industry. Carla Bruni may have a hand in bringing about the beginning of the end of music piracy.
President Sarkozy caused a bit of a stir in the music world last November when he announced dramatic new measures to curb music piracy (as in the down- loading of music for free from
the internet). Sarkozy went further than even the most belligerent official music bodies had gone, by calling for French internet service providers to automatically disconnect customers involved in piracy. Sarkozy wants the
ISPs to use filtering technology to find users who share unlicensed music and films via peer-to-peer and then effectively throw them off the net.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents the recording industry worldwide, was jubilant at Sarkozy's statement.
"The French government's decision to seize the day is deeply refreshing," said CEO John Kennedy. "It shows an urgency of approach that is badly needed in every market where music is today being massively devalued by piracy. "A turning tide of opinion is one thing - a concrete programme of action is another. There is only one acceptable moment for ISPs to start taking responsibility for protecting content - and that moment, after years of prevarication, is now."
Sarkozy has never expressed the most remote interest in music, legal or illegal, so his initiative has, rightly or wrongly, been attributed to his association with the singer- songwriter Bruni.
It's perhaps no surprise that Sarkozy and the IFPI are making such noises at this time. The received wisdom has always been that since Napster was hauled through the courts and forced to
go legit, the industry was somehow slowly getting on top of the piracy problem. The latest figures, just released by the IFPI, make a mockery of that. Illegal music downloads now outnumber tracks legally sold by 20 to one.
Legal digital music downloads are still a growth market, but they have yet to make up the gap caused by the fall in physical CD sales. Downloads now account for 15 per cent of the world's music sales, and there are now more than 500 legally licensed music sites available. So the issue is not one of a lack of consumer choice, but the ease with which you can download illegally.
The IFPI report was not sanguine about the future of legal downloading. It found that Japan is still driving the digital market, which is down to consumers using mobile phones to download songs (see Musical Mobiles, p8). But Japanese "pirates" are now illegally downloading to their phones, so the same problem remains.
Obviously the IFPI will be calling on governments not just to go after the mobile providers as well as the ISPs. The new 20:1 ratio has certainly emboldened the industry to press for far- ranging legislation on the issue. Any such legislation will likely run into civil liberty problems.
For the IFPI, Sarkozy's proposal may well be "the most significant milestone yet in the task of curbing piracy on the internet," yet members might be better off in the short-term looking at how they themselves treat consumers. Everyone knew that the price of CDs was run almost as a cartel by the labels, and when legal downloads came along the price of an album was supposed to be drastically reduced (due to savings in distribution).
This has not been the case - and as long as the IFPI sanctions such a pricing policy, the pirates will thrive.
