A few days ago Kanye West released The Life of Pablo. The album subsequently ended up on various pirate sites where it was quickly downloaded by hundreds of thousands of fans.
A lot of media attention has focused on The Pirate Bay, where it is still listed as the most popular music download, with thousands of people actively sharing the tracks.
Meanwhile, the news also reached Kanye West himself, who is reportedly furious that he has potentially lost millions of dollars due to the leak. He sees The Pirate Bay as one of the main culprits and is now considering taking the notorious pirate site to court.
“Kanye is going to meet with his legal team to discuss the possibilities of starting legal action against torrent site Pirate Bay,” a source informed HollywoodLife.
“He’s going to talk to his lawyers and see where he stands, and hopefully Tidal will partner up with him in any legal proceedings because it was supposed to be an exclusive release.”
The Pirate Bay is not new to being the target of legal action. The site’s original founders stood trial in Sweden and late 2014 a new investigation into the site was opened after a raid on a local datacenter.
However, The Pirate Bay (TPB) is still around today and the current staff members are not impressed by Kanye West as a person, or worried about another legal battle.
“Kanye West is a blithering twat who has an incredible sense of self-importance. Even diehard fans are saying his new album sucks balls, but as for Mr. West suing TPB, good luck Kanye!” TPB staff member Spud17 informs TorrentFreak.
“Our legal department will be waiting,” he adds.
Needless to say, the TPB team has no intention of removing the album from the site. They have a clear policy not to remove any copyright-infringing material. The only files that are regularly deleted are those that link to spam or viruses.
Kanye, meanwhile, has reportedly been hard to be around and is determined to have someone pay for the damage he’s suffered.
“He’s touchy, angry and feels like his material was stolen. He hates the idea of people not paying for his music and feels someone needs to be held accountable for that,” the HollywoodLife source said.
Theoretically Kanye can sue The Pirate Bay in court and win the case. However, it is unlikely that anyone associated with the site will respond, so any potential damages that are awarded will be hard to cash in.
To a certain degree the unusually high piracy numbers can be attributed to the album’s exclusive release on the streaming service Tidal. Many fans don’t want to be tied to an expensive subscription, and even those who paid up had problems getting a copy.
Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, who is no longer actively involved in the site, has had plenty of run-ins with copyright holders in the past, He says that West should be happy that people are going to the trouble of checking out his music in the first place.
“The album was only released on Tidal, so I’m impressed it got leaked anyhow since fewer people pass by there than at Fort Knox. He should be happy someone cares enough to listen to it, so that they signed up for an account to stream the low quality music you get at Tidal,” Sunde says.
If Kanye does indeed move forward with a lawsuit he joins the company of several other artists who tried before, including the late Michael Jackson, UB40, Prince and The Village People.
