Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody defends Pirate Bay founders

Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody has spoken out in defence of the founders of The Pirate Bay file-sharing website, who were given one-year jail sentences and fined £2.4million for copyright infringement recently.

The frontman told The Big Issue Scotland that he thought they had been treated harshly, saying the sentences were "over the top".

He said: "They shouldn’t have been jailed. A year in jail for someone doing that is crazy. The punishment doesn't fit the crime."

Lightbody said that unlike some musicians, he was not opposed to file-sharing. "I'm not anti-filesharing at all," he said. "This is the modern way. This is what we've brought on ourselves and you have to live in the society you created. Music is available to everyone if they know how to get and I say, 'Fucking go for it'.

He added that he paid for all his own music, however. "I love getting an album back and looking through the booklet and the artwork," he said. "That's lost when you download it."

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