Kanye West: I'm No Music Pirate ... But I'm A Huge Troll

Kanye West is not jacking music and software off the Internet -- and the tweet he posted that suggests otherwise was all a setup to mess with haters.

Yeezy came under fire Tuesday when he posted a pic of a desktop monitor with a song by Sufjan Stevens ... only problem was, the other browser tabs were filled with sites used for illegal downloading.

Our Kanye sources say the whole thing was trolling -- 'Ye was in the studio Tuesday and thought it'd be funny to send out the pic. He's well aware 'TLOP' has been pirated more than 500k times, and while he'd never steal music ... he knew the Internet would have a field day.

More evidence of the trolling -- the monitor's a Samsung and it's well known Kanye's got a Mac laptop. Why would he illegally download programs on a computer that's not his?

He got what he wanted though ... the tweet pissed off not just random haters, but famous ones. Fellow Tidal artist Deadmau5 jumped all over Kanye for promoting piracy. West is laughing it off by cracking jokes about the DJ's mouse helmet.