Brit Music Scene

Paul McCartney Hates You… If You’re A Pirate - Beatles Man Talks The Pirate Bay Posted: 20 Apr 2009 12:26 PM PDT Online file-sharing, which first came to light with Napster and is now predominantly made possible by BitTorrent and peer-to-peer networks, is a huge problem which needs to be resolved in some way or another. You may have heard about four people closely associated with The Pirate Bay being convicted of “assisting copyright infringement” last week. The four men, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström can expect prison sentences and heavy fines. For those who don’t know, The Pirate Bay is one of a handful of huge torrent trackers which act as directories of torrents which can be downloaded. They link to files present on people’s computers, be they copyright-free or otherwise. Most people were shocked that A Swedish court decided to convict the men, essentially siding with the IFPI and big media companies who hold The Pirate Bay responsible for online piracy, be it of music, films, TV shows, games, or software. However, one man, a certain Mr. Paul McCartney that you may possibly know of, has come out and stated he agrees with the ruling. In essence, Paul McCartney hates you if you’re a music pirate or someone who has any part to play in it. The former Beatles singer/songwriter, who is worth an estimated £825 million ($1.2 billion), made clear what he thinks of those who download music without paying for it, telling BBC Newsbeat: “If you get on a bus you’ve got to pay. And I think it’s fair, you should pay your ticket.” “The problem is you get a lot of young bands coming up and some of them aren’t going to last forever. So if they have a massive hit that’s going to pay their mortgage forever.” “They’re going to feed the children on that and if they don’t get that money, if they don’t see that money, I think it’s a bit of a pity.” I have to say I disagree with McCartney almost 100 percent. Not only does he not seem to realize that most people who download music still contribute towards artists’ pay checks one way or another, he clearly isn’t very knowledgeable on how The Pirate Bay works. The fact that The Pirate Bay merely links to torrents rather than hosts the files on its own servers means Google is just as guilty as “assisting copyright infringement” as it or any other torrent tracker is. It also doesn’t sit well to have a man who is a billionaire from music preaching to a new generation about paying for music. Does he not realize that piracy has always been with us in some form, even in his day, and it has never managed to put the music industry out of business. Maybe McCartney should stick to belting out his back catalog at music festivals from now on. [Photo Source: slagheap at Flickr via Creative Commons] Tags: BBC Newsbeat, BitTorrent, Brit, British, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström, Music Piracy, Napster, Online Piracy, Paul McCartney, Peter Sunde, Pirate, The Pirate Bay, The-Beatles, UK Share This

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