More of the same

2/25/2009 | 6:23 PM | Evolved Rationalist

Guest post by plot regarding The Pirate Bay spectrial.

Today’s witnesses are:

Tobias Andersson (Piratbyrån)
John Kennedy (IFPI)
Rasmus Ramstad (SF)
Bertil Sandgren (SF)
Per Sundin (Universal Music)
Louis Werner (IFPI Sweden)

The trial started with Tobias Andersson being called to the stand by the prosecution, where he admitted writing the speech that TiAMO (Neji) gave the 2006 raid.

John Kennedy, arrogant IFPI bumbler

Kennedy stated that IFPI’s mission was to improve copyright laws (har har), lobby governments, fight piracy, and perform litigation. Funny quote from Kennedy: “Piracy has done immense damage to the music industry”.

He bragged about how the music industry has won the cases against Grokster and Kazza and how TPB emerged to fill the void. He went on about how he first heard of TPB in 2004 and that TPB is the no.1 source of illegal music, and how this was damaging the industry, blah blah.

He goes on to whine about how “new business models” will fail if people are able to download music for free. (Apparently the CEO of the IFPI is too simple-minded to embrace technology and formulate a business model that takes advantage of technology instead of unsuccessfully fighting against it.)

Kennedy blabs about damages

Makes the silly statement that the amount they are asking for is “justified and maybe even conservative.” Whines about how the music industry has to spend a lot of money (eh, which business does not require funds to run?).

Goes on to talk about how CD sales have decreased, but when asked about the simple fact that legal downloads would decrease CD sakes as well, he denied that legal downloads has anything to do with it (sure sure). Kennedy has made up his mind that the music industry cannot “compete with free”, and that piracy is the cause, and not their flawed and outmoded business model.

Cry me a river, Kennedy. Whine more in court. Cry like a baby for me, please.

Kennedy fails Logic 101

Denying that free downloads actually promote the artist and increases revenue from live performances; he said that every live performance success is linked to good sales. Hey Kennedy, your logic does not make sense. If indeed your sales are decreasing because people are pirating music, the numbers of people listening to a particular artist are not actually decreasing, and might even be increasing. How this negatively affects live performances is only known to Kennedy and the rest of the prosecution clowns.

The stupidity continues

Next failure in logic: When asked about why Google is different from TPB, Kennedy says that searches for a particular artist on Google produces both legal and illegal content, while searches on TPB produce only illegal content. Even if his reasoning were true, it wouldn’t change the fact that Google also points to illegal content, which is what TPB is charged with doing. Oops!

He whines that TPB is growing. (Here’s a tip: If you produce a better business model, maybe your industry would grow as well and not produce embarrassing failures like yourself.)

He then mentions how IFPI has teams of “experts” (I sure never seen any of those experts in court apart for the prosecutor/IT expert who couldn’t open his own PowerPoint presentation…) that monitor piracy (and they still fail at combating it, go figure).

He said that if people can’t download music for free, they would buy it. (Life does not work that way, Kennedy. When people can’t download for free, they simply don’t buy the album, they don’t become fans of the artist, they don’t buy merchandise, they don’t go to live shows…see where this is going?)

Kennedy next claims that the reduction in sales is directly caused by illegal downloading.

Just another n00b

As with the other prosecution witnesses, Kennedy admitted that he does not know how BitTorrent works or how TPB works, and when asked if IFPI has taken any action against the uploaders, he said that no action was taken. He admitted that he did not know who the uploaders are. (King Kong in the jungles of Cambodia, remember?) The defense asked him about why he thinks TPB is to blame if he does not understand how it works, and again he said that he had no idea of the exact details.

TRIAL HIGHLIGHT: He would have sued Google!

He was asked why Google was not sued, and he made the shocking revelation that they would have sued Google if not for the fact that Google teamed up with the IFPI to fight piracy! He claims to have a team of 10 people working with Google daily.

Is he seriously saying that the IFPI would sue any search engine company that they couldn’t strong-arm into supporting their draconian stupidity? Does he not understand how the internet works at all? Does he really think that he would be able to sue Google and win? (Oh wait, it would make a great spectacle…two organizations with a shitton of money battling it out in court. Money is the reason why that battle would never take place…)

The funniest part? A search for torrents on Google still brings up illegal content, even with the IFPI partnership. Maybe they should sue Google after all.

Blah blah…

Bertil Sandgren claims that piracy is the cause of the decrease in movie ticket sales, but refused to comment on the fact that 2008 was the best year for the Swedish movie industry ever. (Ah, self-pwnage.)

Another one in the long string of prosecution liars

Per Sundin said yes to the question of if the decrease in sales could be fully attributed to filesharing, and made the unfounded claim 50% of the loss in sales for the music industry is directly linked to TPB.

When questioned, he admitted that he has no evidence to back up his claims and that he is merely relying on “experience”. (Sure, liar. You don’t just grab percentages out of the air and claim that you “experience” them. You just lied in court, but it is ok for you as your side has the money.)

The prosecution has shown itself as devoid of ethics and even a semblance of respect for the court by putting bunglers and plain liars on the stand. We’ll simply have to wait and see how many bunglers and liars they are going to present tomorrow. Keep up the Kopimi spirit!

Kopimi love,
plot