Since it began last week, the trial of the Pirate Bay in Sweden has truly been a “spectrial”—and not just because of juvenile Pirate Bay antics such as last night’s open letter to IFPI boss John Kennedy. The spectacle kicked back into high gear Wednesday as Kennedy traveled from London to Sweden to give testimony in the trial on behalf of the worldwide major-label music industry.
One of the curious aspects of the trial has been the way that both sides have focused on nonlegal questions, such as exactly how much money the global music industry has lost since 2001 (answer: $11 billion, a 30 percent loss). Kennedy’s testimony fit the pattern perfectly as he spoke almost exclusively about how bad the music industry’s revenues are now and how file-sharing was largely to blame. Absent was any real talk of Swedish law, BitTorrent (Kennedy admitted that he has only a general idea of how the whole system works), The Pirate Bay’s specific actions, or even contributory copyright infringement. Instead, Kennedy spent much of his time making clear that he really, really didn’t like The Pirate Bay. “It’s impossible to compete with free,” he said.
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