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Judge In Pirate Bay Trial Biased
maglo writes "The judge who handed down the harsh sentence to the four accused in the The Pirate Bay trial was biased, writes Sveriges Radio (Sweden Public Radio): sr.se (swedish). Google translation. The judge is member of two copyright lobby organizations, something he shares with several of the prosecutor attorneys (Monique Wadsted, Henrik Pontén and Peter Danowsky). The organizations in question are Svenska Föreningen för Upphovsrätt (SFU) and Svenska föreningen för industriellt rättsskydd (SFIR)."
If Swedish isn't your native language, this article might prove more useful:
Pirate Bay Judge Accused of Bias
Because I'm sure TPB's lawyers can.
If the allegations are true, they should easily win an appeal... assuming the rest of the judicial system is not so corrupt... allegedly, of course.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
If they knew about the judge before hand. If they did perhaps (in typical TPB fashion) they went through the trial knowing damn well they were going to use this to get out of it
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I move for a bad court thingie!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Aren't Judges supposed to remove themselves from a case if there is a known conflict of interest or an arguable bias? Don't they get in trouble for presiding over cases with this bias?
Maybe someone with a background in law can answer this? Google didn't seem to want to give any definitive answers. Then again, maybe the laws in Sweden are different?
Occam's Razor says that they probably do have at least a little bit of bias if they are interested enough to join a group that lobbies the government.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Here's a link to the story in the Wall Street Journal.
Damn. Just who are the pirates in this case?
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Not just a group that lobbies, a group that lobbies together with the prosecution!
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Looks like the Swedish court system is rotten. Next thing you know, couple of judges will open a private juvenile detention facility, rule the government detention facility to be inadequate, harshly punish all juveniles appearing before them to long detentions, send them to their own private detention facility, bill the government for millions of dollars, and whoop it up in some Caribbean island. Nah. The Swedes better look up at the American Judicial System (TM), The Best Justice Money Can Buy.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
How is a judge even allowed to belong to such an organization? A judge who does, and who believes what he is doing, will be the definition of activist judge. Judges aren't supposed to have their own agendas. They're there to execute the law and therefore ostensibly the will of the people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
lawyers/judges are often memebers of many many organisations, it doesn't mean they have the same rabid bias of an apple fanboy of /.
Membership is one thing. The judge is on the board of directors! That's just a wee bit stronger connection than fanboy.
That would be like allowing Steve Jobs preside over MS's trial.
bias or not, I think its interesting that he, possible the only judge in Sweden that is a member of both these organizations got to be the judge in this case.
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
Several experts in Sweden are calling for a re-trial with another judge.
It's somewhat embarrassing. The judge says that he made the call that his participation in "intellectual property groups" (upphovsrättsföreningar) did not bias him.
When the trial started a nämndeman (assistant to the judge) was dismissed because he was considered biased due to his profession as a composer.
It sure will be interesting to see how this one plays out. One might assert that the judge made a huge mistake by taking the case and thus wasting a tremendous amount of time and energy for both sides. Rather moronic for a judge, who should be able to see this type of conflicts.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
he joins lots of organisations so he has another piece of paper to hang on the wall.
I bet THAT was heard a lot in Nuremberg 60 years ago.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
bias or not, I think its interesting that he, possible the only judge in Sweden that is a member of both these organizations got to be the judge in this case.
i-n-t-e-r-e-s-t-i-n-g....Hrm, you have a funny way of spelling "corruption"...
Occam's Razor is that the simplest answer is true,
Sorry, but no. Occam's Razor says that the explanation of a phenomena should make as few assumptions as possible. In no way does this translate to "the simplest answer is true" because in many cases the simplest answer isn't true.
The ones with shallower pockets and fewer friends in high places. Obviously.
...cleared the search warrant towards TPB +3 years ago, I wonder if that was properly handled, from the articles here in sweden it seems he took the warrant-request from APB and just signed it and added "take anything you find interesting" and let them have at it.
Lawyer Peter Althin, representing the Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde calls for retrial
There have been a series of interesting events surrounding the extended Pirate Bay process. It started with PRQ (the web hotel hosting TPB) being illegally raided, and to add the icing on that cake, the minister in charge acting in violation of the Swedish constitution by directly ordering law enforcement (see New Technology's "Was the Raid a Judicial Scandal?" [in Swedish]). Then the FRA and IPRED bills passed in direct defiance of election promises and popular opinion folding to foreign pressure, as was the trial itself. It is hardly surprising that it turned out that the judge was cherry picked. The judge, Thomas NorstrÃm, argued that "My view has been that these activities do not constitute a conflict of interest," and he was not swayed in his judgement by involvement with copyright protection groups.
There was great surprise over the April 17th ruling. Even the legal experts that expected a conviction were taken aback by the prison sentence and the size of the compensatory fine.
The current debate on Swedish technical boards is one of conspiracy theories. Swedes are generally relatively hesitant of suggesting conspiracies, but this one reeks of collusion.
The former Chief Prosecutor Sven-Erik Alhem says (in Swedish) that this will hurt the international renown of Swedish courts as well as damage domestic belief in judicial neutrality and safety.
Also interesting is the public statement from the Pirate Party which calls this "Corruption and miscarriage of justice" and "The copyright lobby has really managed to bring corruption to Sweden".
This may turn out to be a huge inconvenience for the copyright organisations and for the ruling coalition.
Of the two organizations, only one appears to be problematic.
SFU is basically an organization for people who want to keep up to date with IP law. Of course you'll find judges here, and RIAA/etc. will of course get their lawyers from here - after all, if you go into an IP-related trial, you want someone with knowledge in IP to represent you.
SFIR is more problematic, as they state as one of their purposes is to "contribute" to the evolution of IP rights in Sweden and world wide. What kind of evolution is unsaid - it need not be copyright extensions, and I think a lot of the final decision in regards to the bias will depend on just what SFIR does.
So much for the bias of the judge. What will happen with TPB, then? Well, they may (or may not) get a new trial. But so far there has been no argument as to that the verdict shows signs of bias in finding them guilty. That is, biased as the judge may be, the verdict is unlikely to change. Maybe the fine will be reduced, but I doubt that, given that Carl (the old guy) is a multimillionaire and can pay the 30 megaSEK. (As a side note, the younger TPB guys were probably right in saying that they wouldn't pay the fine: The old guy will.)
The prosecution got a guilty verdict without actually managing to prove any wrongdoing due to severe incompetence and lack of knowledge.
It was pretty clear something was odd about the decision, whether the TPB guys were right or wrong is irrelevant when the prosecution are unable to actually prove any wrongdoing.
You can't legitimately get a guilty verdict if you haven't proven that they're guilty of doing something illegal, accusations alone aren't enough.
The interesting thing now will be to see what happens as a result of this revelation. It's probably worth pointing out that this conspiracy almost certainly goes deeper - the first judge due to judge their trial was removed due to conflict of interest IIRC and this is his replacement, so the real question has to be who is responsible for repeatedly ensuring the judges presiding over this case have strong music industry/pro-copyright lobby links? Who in Sweden determines which judge should oversee a particular case?
The official term for the others are privateers...
But since Sweden is not a part of the same judicial tradition as the US, this has no bearing on the TPB trial. In Sweden, you are pretty much guaranteed a second trial at a higher level, unless it is a question of a small-time crime (or the case is very simple). This being a high profile trial, making an appeal to the second level was a given, even before the trial started.
If the second level court decides the judge was biased, they will order a re-trial at the first level - which will then be followed be an appeals process. The reason the lawyers may not go through with a re-trial, is that it will only mean another trial that won't add anything of interest. Since this is a very special trial, the Supreme Court may take the case too - or order a re-trial at the second level. So a re-trial at the first level may not be worth it, we were probably looking at 3 or 4 trials anyway.
IANAL, but my cousin is a judge here in Sweden.
Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
Occam's Razor is that the simplest answer is true,
Occam's Razor says that the explanation of a phenomena should make as few assumptions as possible.
Yadda yadda, Occam's Toothbrush says that the simplest definition is true.
You just got troll'd!
Generally, the public you refer to doesn't care one bit about copyright cases or law. Only the corporations and people like Paul McCartney or Elton John (who have a vested interest in keeping new artists out) support stronger copyright laws. There is little division in the public's opinion.
Agreed, this judge should never have been on this case.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
There's no way TPB's lawyers were in the dark about this.
But now, they get to turn this into a(n even bigger) circus and it will be thrown out due to the judge being extremely biased and having worked with the plaintiff before.
Meanwhile, they just managed to get the support of the entire country against the corrupt Judge and local version of the RIAA, and the next Judge will be on best behavior -- and since they haven't done anything illegal, that means they'll get off scott free.
Brilliantly played, Pirates. Brilliantly played.
The problem is that the judge is part of several organizations that are clearly against the accused.
So? If the judge was a member of Swedish Citizens Against Drunk Driving, and he was presiding over the trial of a guy that killed somebody while driving drunk, would that make his personal interest in reducing the crime of drunk driving somehow wrong, or prejudicial? I mean, driving drunk is naughty. Being a member of a group that says, "Driving drunk is naughty" doesn't prevent you from being objective about the facts in a trial that's determining if someone was doing the naughty thing. Likewise, being a member of an organization that says, "Ripping off artists is naughty, and setting up web sites specifically to help do that on a massive scale is also naughty," doesn't mean you can't be objective about the finding of facts in a given case about whether or not a particular person/people were actually doing so or not.
Should every judge who supports an organization aimed at reducing heroin use through prevention and the punishment of pushers and traffickers be considered incapable of weighing in on whether or not a given person is a heroin dealer? Should a judge who - among many, many other professional affiliations - considers it important to cut down on fraud in the judicial system and thus supports a bar association sub-group aimed at integrity in the practice of law recuse himself from the trial of a lawyer that's been defrauding his clients? Why? It's rational to support such interests if you're in that profession, but you only want judges that don't support it to judge such cases?
It's likewise rational to support copyrights, and to discourage the wholesale ripping off of artists. Why would you want a judge who doesn't get that to be involved in such a trial?
More importantly, do you consider yourself rational enough to be a member of a jury in such a case? Do you know anyone who supports the EFF? Should they be considered too corrupt and biased to be a juror on such a case? Why?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There is nothing wrong with judges being members of legal organizations.
However, Justice must not only be done, but it must also be _seen_ to be done.
So even if a judge is impartial, he must also appear to most that he is impartial.
Thus a judge should recuse himself from a case if he has "interests" in it, even if he would actually be objective and impartial.
For example, if a judge's relative was being charged for murder, a good judge would not handle the case even if he knew he would be able to be objective and impartial. Because any verdict would be tainted.