Britney Spears To Star In TV Ads Against Piracy

Britney Spears, Nelly, Missy Elliott and other pop stars will be featured in coming weeks in TV spots funded by the world’s biggest record labels to educate people about illegal downloading of music, which the music industry blames for a protracted sales slump. “We want to hit fans with the message that downloading music illegally is, as Britney Spears explains in one of the spots, ‘the same thing as going into a CD store and stealing the CD,”‘ said Hilary Rosen, chief executive officer of Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a trade group for the music industry.