Name: Trent
Dateline: 1990
Age: 14
Income: $ 0.00

Where does a fourteen year old get ABBA records without having any money? The local library. The lush sounds and soaring harmonies that I heard began a very expensive affair that I am still involved in today.

Begging money from your parents is an old art, and I succeeded in getting all the original LPs in one batch. Soon after, PolyGram began issuing all the albums on CD and I purchased my first ABBA CD - even before we had a CD player! Dancing Queen came out on single, followed a couple of week later by ABBA Gold. I bought them both and watched avidly as both climbed the Australian charts. I had my own little taste of how it might have been back in the 1970s - a new release, chart action, press coverage, excitement!

The Complete Recording Sessions book came out and made me wonder - what else is lurking in the archives? Happily, we then received I Am The City on More ABBA Gold, followed a year later by the Thank You For The Music box set. The years passed and I bought the 1997 remasters and gave away all my original CDs, and did the same thing when the 2001 remasters came out. I purchased all the official DVDs, hits compilations, books, solo material and the rest.

The official catalogue was the official catalogue and there wasn't much chance of there being anything else. I received a tape of the first bootleg LP that a friend kindly gave me and I heard several new things for the first time. Shortly afterwards I discovered a couple of record stores in Sydney that stocked bootlegs at extortionate prices and I purchased all of the most interesting ones. By the late 1990s, downloading from the Internet became popular. It was now possible to get tracks that never made it onto bootleg CDs, and I ended up downloading several tracks I'd never heard.

Can any of you say that you've never heard or owned an unofficial recording? I doubt it. Hardcore fans of music, television and a host of other pastimes go out of their way to get their hands on the rare and unusual. From bloopers reels from televisions shows to fan recordings of concerts and interviews, you've just got to have it all.

The hot news in the ABBA world at the moment is the legal action from Universal Music via MIPI against ABBAMAIL. The supposed "crime" committed is that ABBAMAIL provided other fans with material that was not commercially available. Considering that fans have been swapping stuff like mad since the 1980s doesn't seem to mean anything.

Perhaps it was the alleged "profit" that ABBAMAIL has been making. I've heard people speculate that ABBAMAIL's pwners have been raking money in hand over fist since the web shop went online. Completely untrue. The truth is that the profit from the webshop sales has always gone into running ABBAMAIL. The purchases also helped to offset some of the costs of several Australian conventions that ABBAMAIL held since 1997. Not one of the conventions broke even, let alone made a profit - yet fans came away with memories they'll have forever. The shortfall in cash initially had to be paid for by the people that run ABBAMAIL. The ABBAMAIL web shop purchases also funded regular mailouts to fans in Australia with no Internet access, and of course the behemoth that is the ABBAMAIL web site, internet list, forum etc. etc. Some people seem to imagine that ABBAMAIL is just a simple website and email list - they imagine it could be hosted for free. In truth, ABBAMAIL is so much more - there's an entire administration infrastructure set up to keep the whole ABBAMAIL machine running - and those costs for administration, equipment, the ongoing costs of running a company etc. go on and on. And the whole point of ABBAMAIL being a company and all of this infrastructure has been to allow it to be professional and fund things like conventions, newsletters, adding new services without annoying 'pop up' advertisements etc. etc.

I've watched with great interest the debate on several other forums, notably on ABBA - The Site. Much to my surprise and pleasure, the vast majority of responses were supportive of ABBAMAIL. Many people mentioned how ABBAMAIL was the best place on the Internet for news. Others mentioned how the wealth of images and written material provided a virtual time capsule for ABBA fans. It seems that the greater fan community realises what a great site that we have in ABBAMAIL and aren't afraid to acknowledge that.

Unfortunately, there are some malcontents that seemed hell bent on pursuing personal vendettas. People hoping that this would be the final nail in the coffin and that ABBAMAIL would cease to exist. Others had personal problems with the ABBAMAIL owners and were more than happy to spread lies about what was really going on, to try to convince MIPI and Universal to shut the site down.

As I write this column, the legal action is still going. It's costing ABBAMAIL thousands of dollars for solicitors fees. The longer this drags on, the bigger chance there is that ABBAMAIL will run out of cash and that will be the end of it. There is no income now that the products have been removed from the website but the regular bills keep coming in. With no money for the bills (web hosting, domain hosting, web space, list hosting - to name but a few) means no money for the web site.

It would be a huge loss to me personally. I've been on the ABBAMAIL e-mail list since day one back in 1997 (which is why I know all of this to be true). Back then, it was an e-mail list. There was no web site. ABBAMAIL was a simple place for fans to chat with other fans about ABBA and whatever else. This sharing of news and personal views created friendships. The web site grew and we contributed to it. People began to travel to foreign countries just to meet other fans they knew via the list. It just snowballed!

At last ABBA fans have a single, credible voice in the world. The people behind the various releases used the ABBAMAIL pool of talent to draw from - for liner notes, proofreading of books, locating rare TV footage - you name it and ABBAMAIL has had a hand in it. Some of the most popular web sites - such as ABBA on TV, ABBAWORLD.net, and my own ABBA - The Worldwide Chart Lists have all been created for ABBA fans to enjoy by ABBAMAILers with the help of other ABBAMAILers.

ABBAMAIL has a lot to answer for. We get the benefit of all the news first. We get the benefit of having interesting things to read on the web site. We get the benefit of a web site that provides, provides and goes on providing. If you want to know it first, where do you go? ABBAMAIL. We all know that.

It's time for the legal action to stop. ABBAMAIL shut down the web shop. ABBAMAIL provided the "master discs" requested in follow up action. What are they going to ask for next? They have their pound of flesh. The ABBAMAIL e-mail list members believe in ABBAMAIL so much that we now pay quarterly subscription fees. After nine years of a free e-mail list, we all put our hands in our pockets because we love ABBAMAIL and all that it has done for us.

There are few web sites that can claim to have made such an enormous difference. ABBAMAIL is one of them.

Universal, MIPI - stop the legal action now. You've made your point.

Trent