Celebirties about piracy

Celebrities often express their opinion on piracy in public media and show their attitude in
quite a childish manner. The most popular way of trying to show piracy in bad light is comparing it
to stealing or to insult people who prefer downloading files from the internet. A Polish musician,
Kazik Staszewski wrote on his band's official website a few years ago: “Anyone who buys pirate
CDs is a dick and should get the fuck out” (Savski, 2000). Even a cartoon character Bender from
Futurama proclaimed: “You wouldn't steal a spaceship” which may be a parody, but still it reflects
the popular beliefs about the phenomenon promoted by the American television (moo113, 2008).

Some artists, for example James Blunt are for permanent disconnecting pirates from the
Internet. He wrote: "The world over, people are stealing music in its millions in the form of illegal
file-sharing. It's easy to do and has become accepted by many, but we need people to know that it is
destroying people's livelihoods and suffocating emerging new British artists" (Telegraph, 2009).
Jack Black in anti-piracy advertisements says “Don't be a douche” (NewLine, 2006) The fact is that
artists and producers are the most affected by piracy, but not necessarily they lose millions of
dollars because of that.

Some musicians (for instance Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, Blur’s Dave Rowntree and
Keane’s Tim Rice-Oxley and George Michael) have signed up to a motion by the Featured Artists
Coalition and support the idea of a ‘three strikes’. It's a law according to which those who download
files illegally would receive three warnings and then their internet connection would be slowed
down. This view may seem controversial, however it is in fact less strict than a policy promoted by
the British government to completely disconnect pirates from the Internet (Hyatt, 2009)

Interestingly enough, there are artists that perceive piracy as something somehow justified
and understand that not everyone can afford their albums, but people still want to listen to music, so
they just download the songs. Trent Reznor said that prices of his albums in Australia are raised to
absurd and that it is obvious that people will download them rather than buy in stores for twice as
much as other CDs (Yoskowitz, 2007)