Copyright Law

Snow Patrol Says Pirate Bay Sentence is ?Crazy?

By soulxtc

UK-based alternative rock band says file-sharing is the”modern way,” and that a year in jail is a “punishment that doesn’t fit the crime.”

Snow Patrol is another of the many music artists that have spoken out against the recent conviction of Swedish BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay for the facilitation of copyright infringement.

In a recent interview with online music publication “The Big Issue,” the band has some choice words.

?They shouldn?t have been jailed,? says lead singer Gary Lightbody. ?A year in jail for someone doing that is crazy. The punishment doesn?t fit the crime.?

He says a year in prison is “way over the top” considering that many people share files illegally online.

?I?m not anti-file-sharing at all. This is the modern way,? he added. “Music is available to everyone if they know how to get and I say f**king go for it.”

It’s not that Lightbody himself is an avid file-sharer, it’s just that he’s being realistic about it. He himself doesn’t however, preferring the look and feel of a physical album.

“I don?t, I buy all my music but then I don?t spend money on anything else except going to the pub,” he continues. “I love getting an album back and looking through the booklet and the artwork, and that?s lost when you download it.?

Snow Patrol has sold in excess of 7 million record worldwide to date.

If anything you have to concur with Lightbody because the prevalence of file-sharing makes the punishment look arbitrary and capricious. Combined with the knowledge that The Pirate Bay never, at any point, stored copyrighted material on its servers, and that the presiding judge was a member of several pro-copryight organizations, how can anyone say the sentence isn’t “crazy?”

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on April 30, 2009 (boomark / email).