I have nothing against the artists themselves being paid.
It's the greedy middlemen that I don't care for. Record companies, publishers and distributors.

They are the ones making a stink about piracy, not the artists themselves who in most cases don't care.
Either because they want people to hear their music, or because most of their incomes are actually from touring.

The nationality of the content has nothing to do with it, but it happens to be the US that is starting to want to lock down the entire internet to prevent sharing of content online.