UPDATE: The video has been pulled from Vimeo, making it seem as if UMG has won the most recent round in the back-and-forth war over this video.
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PREVIOUSLY: If you feel a tinge of guilt every time you illegally download one of your favorite artist's songs from a torrent site, you can now breathe a little easier. As it turns out, some of today's biggest stars are big fans of file sharing technology themselves.
In what is the most curious cause célèbre in the benefit single field of late, major artists such as Kanye West, Diddy, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and even Kim Kardashian have joined their voices together for a song in support of Megaupload, the file sharing service that moves content in massive blocks across the web.
What's particularly interesting about the song is that those singing on the track are doing so despite the fact that the major label record industry reviles Megaupload for the ease with which its music can be pirated by those using the web service. In fact, UMG, which owns labels to which Diddy, Will.i.am and Kanye are all signed, moved to have the video removed from YouTube, with a back and forth on copyright issues ensuing, TorrentFreak reports.
While the video doesn't explicitly have the artists giving the thumbs up to piracy -- "When I got to send files across the globe, I use Megaupload," Will.i.am says in the song -- there should be little doubt that they're aware of the struggle between their labels and the web service.
For much more on the issue, click over to TorrentFreak; check out the video below.