The Circus Widens In Aftermath of Pirate Bay Verdict

MaulerOfEmotards sends along an in-depth followup, from the Swedish press, of our discussion the other day about the biased trial judge in the Pirate Bay case. "The turmoil concerns Tomas Norström, the presiding judge of The Pirate Bay trial, who is suspected of bias after reports surfaced of affiliation with copyright protection organizations. For this he has been reported to the appeals court (in Swedish; translation here). The circus around the judge is currently focused on three points. First, his personal affiliation with at least four copyright protection organizations, a state the potential bias of which he himself fails to see and refuses to admit. Secondly, Swedish trials use a system of several lay assessors to supervise the presiding judge. One of these, a member of an artists' interest organization, was forced by Mr. Norström to resign from the trial for potential bias. The judge's failure to see the obvious contradiction in this (translation) casts doubts on his suitability and competence. Thirdly, according to professor of judicial sociology Håkan Hydén (translation), the judge has inappropriately 'duped and influenced the lay assessors' during the trial: 'a judge that has decided that "this is something we can't allow" has little problem finding legal arguments that are difficult for assisting lay assessors to counter.'" Click the link below to read further on Professor Hydén's enumeration of "at least three strange things in a strange trial." On a related note, reader Siker adds the factoid that membership in the Pirate Party exploded 150% in the week following the verdict. The Pirate Party now surpasses in size four smaller parties in Sweden, and is closing in on a fifth. Political fallout could ensue as soon as June, when an election for EU parliament will be held.
Professor Hydén continues with enumerating "at least three strange things in a strange trial" (translation): First, that someone can be sentenced for being accessory to a crime for which there is no main culprit: "This assumes someone else having committed the crime, and no such individual exists here... the system cannot charge the real culprits or it would collapse in its entirety." It is unprecedented in Swedish judicial history to sentence only an accessory. Second, that the accessories should pay the fine for a crime committed by the main culprits, "which causes the law to contradict itself." And third, that accessories cannot be sentenced to harsher than the main culprit, which means that every downloader must be sentenced to a year's confinement. Prof. Hydén sums up by saying that to allow this kind of judgement the Swedish Parliament must first pass a bill making this kind of services illegal, which it has not done.

Comments

Slashdot

[bonch]

What a load of crap.

Having the judge be a member of copyright protection organizations isn't bias. Copyright is the law, and he's a judge...how is this a story? Hell, he might have been put on this case specifically because he knows copyright law very well. You guys need to accept this--Pirate Bay wasn't just a search engine like Google. It was also hosting the torrent tracker server that tracks the file chunks users were trading with each other. They offer the torrents, and they offer the server connecting the users, and they call themselves PirateBay...and you're defending it? You're surprised they were found guilty in court?

Nobody cares about the "Pirate Party." It's just a bunch of morons who signed up online out of spite and probably will never be heard from again.

Pirates will do whatever it takes to get their free ride back. They do as much as possible to avoid admitting guilt. You're ripping people off. You're the bad guy. You'll talk about the RIAA/MPAA until you're out of breath, you'll invent stupid justifications like piracy is "free advertising" or it's a "new business model," but it's all just a psychological justification to avoid admitting that you're guilty of doing something inethical. You never think about the people you're ripping off--the musicians, software developers, screenwriters, and so on.

The fact that Slashdot has become so militantly pro-piracy in the last decade is really disgusting. It was one thing to defend Napster, but now it's just bleedingly obvious that Slashdot is visited by a ton of selfish leeches who want to spend all day and night running Bittorrent apps, never even dreaming of paying somebody for their work. How would you like it if you were a software developer, and your boss didn't give you a paycheck one month because "information wants to be free," or "you can't 'steal' code," or some other stupid reason that pirates always give?

It's like you guys want to dig for oil forever and expect it to never run out. The piracy issue is finally coming to a head. You know it's illegal and wrong. There's no other reason you do it but that you're selfish like all humans and want something for free without paying money to its creator.

Re:Seems like the Swedish know what to do.

[bonch]

You actually think the "Pirate Party" isn't a joke and that all those new members will stick around and do something? I'm pretty sure that once all the pirates realize they have to do work, they'll quietly disappear.

Re:Seems like the Swedish know what to do.

[LVSlushdat]

>The system can sometimes be unfair, especially to >people with more unusual views
>(Communist,Libertarian etc) who feel permanently excluded.

Now, with Comrade Obama and his cronies in power, the Communists will feel right at home, and us Conservatives will join the Libertarians in feeling permanently excluded....