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The music industry takes the stand

by on26 February 2009

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The Pirate Bay trial continues

Yesterday it was the music industries turn to witness against the The Pirate Bay, with Friday last week being the final two members of The Pirate Bay, which didn't bring much news to the case itself, Monday being a day off and Tuesday being a half day, not much new has happened in the case so far.

First up was IFPI's chairman, John Kennedy and he made for a somewhat amusing day in court. Not only did he seem very unprepared for the questions asked, but he also gave answers to questions that weren't asked, as he was too busy reading his notes. As John Kennedy is British, this part of the trial used a translator, who also seemed to misinterpret certain questions and answers which really didn't help the overall situation.

According to John Kennedy, one of the main tasks of the IFPI is to fight piracy. At one stage he states that the IFPI spends 20 percent of the $18 billion yearly industry turnover on fighting piracy, but later corrects himself and says the number is somewhere in the regions of £75 million (about $107 million) which is a lot less than his initial figure. However, it's important to note that this sum includes lobbying and only some £200,000 (about $285,000) has actually been spent on court cases in the past year. It's unclear if this figure is for the UK, Europe or Worldwide.

When asked if the thought that all the people that are downloading illegal music would actually buy it if The Pirate Bay wasn't around, he answered that he thought they would. At this point one of the defence lawyers said that he didn't care about his personal opinion, but wanted to know what he based this on. John Kennedy replied that he based this on six research projects that had been commissioned and five out of those six pointed at the fact that piracy harms the music business. However, at this point the court chairman pointed out to John Kennedy for the third time that everyone in the court already understood that piracy was harming the IFPI's interests and that this wasn't a relevant answer to the question. The question was never answered to satisfaction of the defence lawyer.

In a separate interview with DN (the largest morning paper in Sweden), John Kennedy is quoted saying that if The Pirate Bay walked free "it would be a terrible signal. New court cases would then become very difficult. If the IFPI hadn't won against Grokster and Kazaa, I'm not sure the industry would be here today". We can't but say that this sounds like the words of a corporate puppet. As much as we can't condone piracy, we feel that the music industry is hopelessly stuck in its ways of distributing music.

It's interesting that the IFPI's press release on the same subject reads very differently from the actual court transcripts we've been reading, you can find the English press release from the IFPI here

In the afternoon Pär Ekengren, responsible for corporate finance at Lindebergs Grant Thornton, an accountancy and consultancy company is called to witness. He was contacted by the prosecutors team to make a value assessment with regards to the claimed files that have been downloaded via The Pirate Bay. One of the interesting points here is that Pär Ekengren calculated the costs based on the CD pricing in Sweden rather than the cost of the same files bought online, which would be far cheaper than purchasing them on a CD. He claims that he was very "humble" when he calculated the value of the downloaded files and even underestimated the costs.

It's also interesting to note that Pär Ekengren based his calculations on numbers given by the prosecutor side and didn't do his own research into how many files could possibly have been downloaded via The Pirate Bay. Next up is the Swedish chairman of the IFPI Ludvig Werner, followed by Universal Music's vice president in Sweden Per Sundin. Again, both suggested that the calculation on the damages owed is on the low side. At one point, pressured by one of the defence lawyers, Ludvig Werner admits that the downturn in CD sales might not only be because of piracy and that other factors might play in, but at the same time he claims that at least 50 percent of it is directly caused by The Pirate Bay, based on his opinion and gut feeling, rather than it being based on facts from any kind of research.

We'll keep you posted as this develops.
Last modified on 26 February 2009
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