The music industry has lost more than 30% in sales since 2001 because of illegal downloading, a top industry official said yesterday, giving evidence in a Swedish trial.
John Kennedy, the head of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, told Stockholm District Court that Swedish site The Pirate Bay had become "the number one source of illegal music," following court actions against two other popular file-sharing sites, Grokster and Kazaa.
"Over a period of time, piracy has done immense damage to the music industry," Kennedy said, adding that illegal downloads had caused industry sales to tumble from $27bn (£19bn) in 2001 to $18bn (£13bn) in 2008.
Kennedy testified on behalf of a handful of record companies, including Sony BMG and EMI, which together with movie companies such as Universal and Warner Bros are seeking 117 million kronor ($13.2m) in compensation and damages.
"I believe they are justified and may even be conservative because the damage is immense," he said of the claim.
Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, 28; Peter Sunde, 30; Fredrik Neij, 30; and Carl Lundstrom, 48, are accused of breaking Swedish copyright law by helping millions of internet users download protected music, movies and computer games for free through The Pirate Bay. They have pleaded not guilty.
The trial is scheduled to end next month.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article