UK Music decides to ignore counterviews, claims to be one voice

An astonishing claim at the top of a Guardian story:

The music industry claims to have reached a unified position on illegal filesharing but it remains unclear whether it will maintain its demands for persistent filesharers to be suspended from the internet.

In a statement ahead of a 29 September deadline for comments in the government's illegal filesharing consultation, umbrella group UK Music says "government intervention is extremely welcome".

The confusion of "UK Music" with "the music industry" manages both to perpetuate a myth, and ignore that the not-exactly-low-profile FAC have very publicly disagreed with UK Music's line.

Sharkey rebuffed suggestions of a growing rift in the UK music industry.

He said the debate around what measures were needed to curb filesharing had been a "very productive exercise" and claimed it had in fact brought various parties closer together.

The debate, Feargal, actually starts at "do measures need to be introduced to curb filesharing at all", isn't it? And how does people issuing statements effectively insisting that UK Music is wrong really bring people "closer together"?

I suppose in a world where a self-selecting group claims to speak as one voice for everybody, anything at all possible. It's a pity that Feargal's Music claims are being treated as being representative rather than selective.