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.

The rest of the testimony was spent arguing trying to prove that file sharing profoundly depressed music sales. Kennedy cited six academic papers on the topic and said that one supported the idea that file-sharing was good for music labels; five said that file-sharing depressed record label revenues. When pressed by a defense lawyer on the actual percentage reductions in revenue predicted by the five papers, Kennedy couldn't immediately answer, though his testimony seemed to suggest that file-sharing was in large part responsible for the 30 percent revenue decline.

Defense lawyers once again focused on Google, as they have with nearly every music industry witness. They wanted to know why IFPI had not sued Google, despite the fact that a search for something like "Coldplay torrents" would lead to all sorts of dark and devious places.

Kennedy said that The Pirate Bay and Google were hardly comparable. "If you type 'Coldplay' into Google, there will be 40 million results, made up of press stories, links to legal download stores, concert reviews and a multitude of different links. If you go to The Pirate Bay you will get less than 100 results, all of which will give you access to illegal music, illegal movies and artwork."

But Kennedy also suggested that the issue wasn't just about the percentages of infringing material on the two services—what really mattered was cooperation. And Google has agreed to help.

Kennedy revealed that Google works with IFPI teams on a "daily basis" to address music available illegally online, and he painted the world in stark with-us-or-against-us terms. According to Swedish Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge, who transcribed Kennedy's remarks, Kennedy said, "We have approached Google and told them about this. We have asked them if they want to be our opponents or our partners. We have ten people in London working with them on a daily basis [to make illegal music unavailable]. If Google had indicated they would be our opponent, we would have taken them to court."

The Pirate Bay, needless to say, did not agree to be an IFPI "partner."

Kennedy did make two quite interesting points during his testimony. The first came after he was questioned by defense lawyers about why the music industry had not gone after the end-users—the people who had actually done the file-sharing. Among the trial's many oddities, this is another that stands out, since The Pirate Bay folks resolutely criticized the music industry's decision to do exactly that in the past.

Kennedy pointed this out. "We have been criticized for going after individuals," he said.

The case itself has tended to devolve into discussions about how the music industry should work or what sorts of business models it might embrace or whether file-sharing wasn't a huge promotional opportunity for bands. Kennedy was asked whether concerts might provide a revenue source to replace recorded music sales, for instance.

Kennedy granted the legitimacy of these points, for some artists at least, but he draws a distinct line between what an artist chooses to do with the work that she creates and what some fan chooses to do with that artist's work. It might make sense for many artists to put their music on The Pirate Bay, as Trent Reznor did, but in Kennedy's view, the important thing is that "the artist should have the right to determine how their product is used."

Little of this had to do with the legal issues in the case, of course. Kennedy even admitted that he doesn't know how The Pirate Bay operates but said he does know that it has no authorization from rightsholders. But the whole issue in the trial is that the site doesn't actually offer any files and so claims it needs no authorization from rightsholders. It's the end-users, the ones actually sharing the copyrighted material with one another, who would need such permission or licensing.

And so the strange spectrial rolls on.