Music exec blasts infringers during Pirate Bay trial
One of the most difficult tasks for companies that sell copyrighted music, movies, or computer software is estimating how much money they lose due to piracy. So they have been known to--how to put this delicately?--exaggerate.
That's the topic that The Pirate Bay trial in Stockholm explored on Wednesday when John Kennedy, the chief executive of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, testified that every MP3 file that is swapped online represents a lost sale. The IFPI is the Recording Industry Association of America's international affiliate.
Kennedy answered "Yes" to Pirate Bay defense attorneys when asked whether that was true, to peals of laughter from less-than-sympathetic spectators, according to news reports.
In the trial that started last week, prosecutors have accused the defendants, who have insisted that their Web site is legal under Swedish law, of making available copyrighted material in violation of the law.
Defendants Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi, and Carl Lundstorm have argued that no infringing content is located on their servers. Instead, they claim that The Pirate Bay acts as a search engine that points visitors to files--many of which are Hollywood films, music videos, and commercial software--available through the BitTorrent protocol.
IFPI said in a statement Wednesday that, in the post-Grokster and post-Kazaa era, The Pirate Bay became the world's most popular font of copyright-infringing music files. "If you lost 1,000 sales in week one, your recording, instead of going into the charts at No. 5, would go in at No. 20. If you aimed at No. 10--which is good for a new artist--you could fall to No. 75 and if you had aimed at No. 20 you may not make the chart at all," Kennedy said, adding that CD sales fell 38 percent from 2001 to 2007.
Kennedy called the damage requests from the music companies--2.1 million euros, or about $2.67 million--"justified and maybe even conservative because the damage is immense."
The music industry's statistics have been called into question before: a 2006 government report obtained by The Australian says copyright owners "failed to explain" how they reached such dire conclusions. A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that losses due to counterfeiting and piracy are much lower than estimated by business groups. (In a related industry, The Economist has assailed software piracy statistics.)
"I want Pirate Bay to close down," Kennedy told the Associated Press after his testimony. "I want some compensation and I want it to be clear people cannot steal other people's property without there being consequences."
Also testifying on Wednesday, according to Swedish news site The Local, was Ludvig Werner, head of the Swedish chapter of IFPI. Pirate Bay attorney Jonas Nilsson pressed him on whether or not the group had done an analysis of copyright infringement and lost revenue for specific songs (it hadn't).
A day earlier, prosecutors adjusted the language of the indictment, according to The Local. This language was removed: "All components are necessary for users of the service are able to share files with one another." And the phrase "provide the ability to others to upload torrent files to the service" was changed to "provide the ability to others to upload and store torrent files to the service."
A civil claim brought by large content holders--Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, and EMI--is also being heard with the Swedish government's criminal prosecution.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
"I want Pirate Bay to close down," Kennedy told the Associated Press after his testimony. "I want some compensation and I want it to be clear people cannot steal other people's property without there being consequences."
This moron doesn't understand torrents, or copyright law. So if he gets compensation, how much do the artists get? This clown produces nothing, does nothing but in the unlikely event TPB are found guilty, this thief will pocket all the money.
The IFPI and their clone the RIAA are nothing more than a pack of thieves.
Further, the idiot CEO they put on the stand said he searched for coldplay on TPB and Google, TBP list 800 all torrent files, and Google had hundreds of thousands and many of the links were not related to torrents.
I guess he thought that was worth something. He also missed the irony of using one of the countless crappy corporate bands. The fact these crappy bands are all they have to offer is what is hurting them.
Google coldplay torrent: 797,000. You know the defense will bring this up and ask why Google isn't also behind the defendants table. They will also go page by page showing that those results are not from TPB. I check the first 5, TPB didn't appear once. Case closed.
For fun google Eminem torrent: 1.58 million
So why aren't the record companies going after Google?
but, they'll never get taken to court.
There are two things that are blindingly clear here: 1) the music industry needs a new business model and wishing it weren't so won't change that, and 2) it's pointless to go after the enablers because they aren't committing any crimes - the law is on their side.
Computer geeks need to understand that illegally downloading, P2P, file sharing of music, movie, games and publications is stealing. You are putting people out of legitimate employment and destroying industries. I submit those of you are terrorists. Then you blame it on the industry's business model, thereby saying stealing is an approved business model. What a load of self-justified crap! You should be in jail.
Let me put it to you like this:
Let's say you have a massive transportation system - composed of railroads, highways, streets, boulevards, and back roads - that connects a whole bunch of communities.
Let us also say that there are companies that specialize in taking goods and information from one community to another using this transportation system.
Let us also say that someone discovers that one of the companies has some employees and/or customers who are using the company's vehicles to transport illegal goods - it could be stolen computers, counterfeit money, narcotics, weapons, whatever - from one place to another, using the transportation system above.
Would you honestly expect the government to shut down that company just because of the behavior of certain employees and/or customers?
The CORRECT answer would be NO - not unless the company turned out to be a front for other criminal activities as well. You'd arrest the people involved, put them on trial and give them the appropriate punishments.
But you'd rather go for the complete-shutdown route, right? Because that's what you're advocating with regard to BitTorrent.
You see, the Internet is a transportation system, and BitTorrent is just a means of transporting stuff across the Internet.
Sure, people can use BitTorrent to copy music and movies - just as people can use moving companies to transport narcotics and the like - but it's also got legal uses, such as distributing free and open-source software and media (such as the Linux operating system or the Creative Commons-licensed show "Patrolling with Sean Kennedy") - just as people can use the same companies to move their posessions from one house to another, or to a self-storage facility.
Considering the name Pirate Bay chose for their company, I do not believe they did not anticipate users would use their "roads" in such a way.
I admit I'm not up on all of this and don't have an entire grasp on the Bit Torrent issue, however I know right from wrong. An action is not "right" just because it can be done. Gotta go. thanks
The record companies business model is based on theft.
Artists get less than a quarter per CD sold.
You are seriously defending these people?
There are a lot of things that need to be changed here, but I don't think shutting down any P2P file sharing network will help solve anything. People will find other ways. It's easy (especially on college campuses) to share music with people; over the internet or making a DVD with hundreds of MP3s on it. Or use senuti to get songs off of someone else's iPod (which pretty much all college kids have). They don't understand that their general audience is younger people who don't have money to spend on music and who feel that these types of things should be free and shared, not priced and sold. As a musician I understand that making music is difficult and no one really plans on making a living making music and still plans on being super rich. Some people who make music don't deserve any money for what they do.
I never understood this whole "intellectual property" argument with, specifically, music. I mean, if they want my money then they need to come perform at my house or I need to go to their venue and see them perform.
If I'm just home and listening to music that is recorded, I don't understand what I am paying for.
Now, someone will try and explain this whole "intellectual property" construct, but instead of trying to explain it to me, maybe you should examine why you swallowed what you were force fed.
I mean, in my job, I have to actually do something to get paid. I can't do my job on thursday and then continue to get paid for it next week. I have to keep doing my job.
Whatever, I guess the world needs followers. Not everyone can think for themselves I guess.
What do you do at your job? Let's say you build houses, long after you finish building the house, it's sold. Seems like you're asking, why does the home buyer have to pay $300,000 for the house because hey, you did the work last month.
By your logic, any "recorded" media is yours to freely exploit because you are so "enlightened" as compared to us "drones". Weak. You are a parasite. You rationalize your theft in self serving romantic terms. It's baloney.
When you compare your pay vs. an artists you reveal your true nature: you're simply jealous that you do not have a talent that can be exploited at a different pay rate.
You don't make the same $$ or have the same pay out as Donald Trump, does that make it okay to squat in one of his condo's? It should, since you are so very enlightened. '-)
Good luck making it out in the real world. You're gonna need it.
If he builds a house, he gets paid for it ONCE.
If he works at McDonalds, he gets paid once that burger he put together.
What content providers do is they make one house or one burger and constantly get paid for it for the rest of their lives.
It is not that complex.
Here's the deal, pentest -- when people create digitial media, they sell it for extremely cheap per copy. For example, you can buy a copy of Windows XP for (say) $100. Now, Windows XP cost a lot of money to make. It was a massive project - thousands of people, millions of hours of work, millions of lines of code. They sell it for $100. How can they possibly do that? They sell lots of copies and spread the costs out over millions of people. Now, what are you suggesting that companies do? Do you want Microsoft to sell exactly one copy of Windows XP for $100 million? You make it sound so awful that companies get to sell the same thing over and over, but the fact that they sell a million copies means the cost for each person is less (you don't have to pay $100 million). Besides, if you really think "selling the same thing more than once" is so awful, then you should also complain about concerts. Those terrible musicians are selling the same exact performance to thousands and thousands of people. You should demand that musicians play to one person at a time. Of course, that would also drive up the price, too. You'd have to pay $50,000 to have a personal concert with U2. Again, they spread the costs out over lots of people - and that helps everyone.
The problem is that we are talking about prerecorded sound and a culture saturated with media and media technology. If a band plays music and the sound wave travel to your ears, it is assumed that you are free to decode those waves into your brain. If a radio station plays music that is overheard by someone in a store, it also is free. Paparazzi "take" images from people all the time and that has been ruled legal. The problem is that these industry powerhouses are trying to control too many layers of human behavior. . . and the emperor has no clothes.
Sharing objects is illegal, but the the recording industry wants you to think it is. They ignore academic and noncommercial usage rights. They confuse selling counterfeit objects with legal usage. If you extend their logic then libraries would be illegal. . who wants that? THEY DO.
And Finally, it is Sony, Phillips, Samsung, and countless other companies that have developed electronic tools that allow quick and easy replication of digital media. These tools a LEGAL. This current attack on the rights of individuals is nothing more than a gross display of power. The big guy is showing everyone that he can rip apart the little guy. Again, the Emperor has no clothes.
When someone buys a car and decides to use it to plow down a bunch of pedestrians, who do you sue?
The manufacturer of the car or the driver?
It seems that in this case they try to go after the manufacturer simply because the driver can not be a determined.
All piratebay really did was provide an open platform where users can generate content without censorship. (like yellowpages)
How should they have known that users would use the platform for piracy?
Shouldn't manufacturers of CD/DVD Burners be sued because those can be used to burn Copies of copyrighted content aswell. Sames goes for Copiers which can copy images and interlectual property etc...
Are you daft??? The name is PIRATE Bay!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, which TV shows and which movies are free?
You can argue in as many ridiculous, pompous circles as you want, we ALL know that the vast majority is for downloading stuff that would cost you money if you were to go elsewhere.
But shutting down Pirate Bay and other clever little jerks who's business model is built on stealing has to happen too.
You can't have a first world economy without protecting IP.
You see, in order for protection of any kind - be it physical security (e.g., the defenses of a military base), electronic (e.g., firewalls/antimalware programs), or copy protection - the defender has to be perfect and constantly monitoring whatever he's supposed to be protecting.
An attacker, however, only needs to find a single flaw (be it an inattentive guard, a malfunctioning camera, or an undiscovered bug in the software) in order to perform a successful attack.
And when it comes to the world of copy protection, there are people who actively LOOK for these flaws.
Some of them do it for perfectly legal reasons (like creating backups of their movies/music/games/etc. - or, if they're working for a copy-protection company, so they can fix the flaws in the next version of their software).
Some do it because they're active in file-sharing communities (some of which are legal - like friends sharing music amongst themselves on mix tapes/discs - and some of which aren't.)
And then there are some who do it just because they like the challenge - "Hey, look, such-and-such a company said their copy-protection stuff is uncrackable! Bet'cha ten bucks I can break it wide open by the end of the day/week/month/etc!"
Long story short: with all the people looking for flaws in copy protection - many of whom don't work for copy-protection companies - it's inevitable that, no matter how advanced your copy protection is, it will eventually be cracked.
Even if the bitTorrent protocol was prohibited then something else would come along to replace it like the fondly remembered FTP sites. The ingenuity and the resourcefulness of the human mind will see to that.
IRC anybody? I'd like to see the prosecutors trawl the murky depths of that mutha LOL.
Maybe if the prosecuting parties had not been so greedy over the years when marketing their products they wouldn't be in this position now. Remember - necessity is the mother of invention.
- by magielph March 4, 2009 1:45 PM PST
- "If you lost 1,000 sales in week one, your recording, instead of going into the charts at No. 5, would go in at No. 20. If you aimed at No. 10--which is good for a new artist--you could fall to No. 75 and if you had aimed at No. 20 you may not make the chart at all," Kennedy said, adding that CD sales fell 38 percent from 2001 to 2007. ---
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(35 Comments)Excuse me, who put them in charge of where songs are on the charts? And did Mr. Kennedy forget that his industry has added substantial new ways of receiving music besides CDs, INCLUDING DOWNLOADING MP3S?? Could that not be the cause of such a sharp decline? ARE THEY REALLY HURTING THAT MUCH??
Think about it, people. In the early 90's, we bought things that we knew about, as in things the recording industry WANTED us to know about. Who chose what was played on the radio? THE RECORDING INDUSTRY. Who chose what artist went to the awards shows and got those precious awards of theirs? Instead of thanking God, they should've forwarded that thanks to THE RECORDING INDUSTRY. Who decided what songs they were going to allow to be played on your favorite comedy/drama TV show?
Before the "EVIL FILE SHARING" (lol) machine was unleashed, I never knew how many genres of music there really was. That's not to say I don't listen to pop music nowadays (Ike, err, Chris Brown's "Forever" song is one of my new favorites). But now, the little-known artists are getting their dues, and the RIAA's pets are whining and complaining because they have to share the wealth. So sorry you have to settle for the Porsche instead of the Lamborghini... you didn't really need that house in Maui anyway, right?