Snow Patrol defend illegal downloading

SNOW PATROL have said that a recent music piracy court case was "over the top".

The four founding members of file-sharing site Pirate Bay were last week jailed for a year and fined £2.4 million for copyright infringement.

But Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody said he thought they shouldn't have been sent to prison.

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.

"I'm not anti-filesharing at all. 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, 'F**king go for it'."

But the singer said he downloads all his music legally and often opts for physical releases.

He said: "I love getting an album back and looking through the booklet and the artwork. That's lost when you download it."

Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde has called for a retrial after it emerged that the judge in the recent case was a member of a number of copyright protection groups.