Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Arghh!!!
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Cause political chaos by throwing sudden, and massive support behind a new political party. Wish Americans were capable of picking some other party aside from Republicans or Democrats.
Had the judge been an active member of the Swedish Pirate Party, worked closely with the defendants in the past, not disclosed it and handed a not guilty verdict, you can be sure the *AAs would of been all over it like flies on a pile. Mistrial, end of story.
Why is that more probable than the proposition? What are you basing your claim on?
If the Pirate Party really has that many people, and every downloader must be sentenced to at least a year's confinement, then everybody should turn themselves in and overcrowd the jails.
Time to make this judge walk the plank!
so like... slashdotting the jail eh? :)
with a little act of solidarity with the Pirate Bay (assisting in the dissemination of copyright infringing material) whilst simultaneously making a wry comment on the dastardly Copyright Cartels and all their nefarious shennanigans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvP0uwl3Q6A
(perhaps their new theme tune?)
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
RTFA. The judge is a member (actually a director in at least one case) of organisations that are lobbying to change the law, to make what Pirate Bay did illegal.
Pirate Bay's lawyer's argue that what they did was not illegal. Is the judge, who is committed to making sure it is illegal, the best person to apply the law impartially?
I'm not 'pro-piracy', although to say I'm 'anti-big media' would probably be fair. That said, copyright is not a single ideal and there are plenty of opinions on it's implementation. The groups that the judge is a member of take a view that the law should be changed to make copyright stricter - surely that presents a conflict of interests when dealing with a case that tests the limits of copyright law in the opposite direction?
As mentioned in other stories this past week, the judge was a member of some groups that have agendas, and is in a leadership position for two of them I believe. I think at least one group is, like you say, simply a means of staying on top of current issues and being aware of the law, but that is not the case for all the groups he belongs to. I'm not pro-piracy, but I'd rather the pirates win than have these big companies keep extending control over our governments.
My webcomic
It is an obvious conflict of interest when you are presiding over a case and are a member of an organization that sides strongly with one of the parties in the case.
It is generally okay to be biased toward one side due to internal beliefs. Most people do tend toward one side in contentious issues, but to openly run around and say it or promote one side (via membership in pro- organizations) is inappropriate.
Keeping works from the public domain by means of effectively infinite copyright terms is more disgusting. It's also "stealing" in the literal sense of the word, without having to twist its meaning to jive with a political agenda like the pro-copyright lobby likes to do, and is a violation of the social contract that is the sole reason copyright exists in the first place.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Exactly. This judge is essentially speeding in order to change the speed limit. Instead of judging by the current laws and waiting for the legislature to change the laws which he can enforce, he is taking matters into his own hands and changing the law himself by stretching the law to cover the situation in the way he feels it should.
The question is: is this or isn't this simply what judges do they administer verdicts? Isn't just always inherently interpretive? Is judgment a referential or creative act?
On the one side: Copyright infringers.
On the other side: Those who want to lock down personal computers and the internet, spy on same, lock down anything else which can reproduce sound or video, implement a pay-per-use system for everything, shut down DVD rental services, eliminate fair use, use lawyers to bully people (whether culpable or not), increase copyright terms to infinity less one day, etc.
Which side would you expect slashdotters to be on? You can argue there's a middle ground, but for various reasons I think there really isn't, and in any case is it really surprising getting binary thinking from a computer geek site?
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.
Uh, considering your whole post was as bad as this, I'm just surprised it didn't stay modded down.
Perhaps if you at least left out all the name-calling?
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
Neither of which are illegal under Swedish law. Under Swedish law, the ONLY people breaking the law are those downloading and uploading the pirated content.
...and those assisting them - "främjar en gärning med råd eller dåd" (for our English readers "furthers an act with advice or deed").
Which is what TPB got done for.
You never think about the people you're ripping off--the musicians, software developers, screenwriters, and so on.
Horse-carriages and automobiles my friend.
Musicians: If I can't copy their music, then neither can they. Do gigs and performances like real musicians do. There's no law that says you, as a musician, are entitled to income. It's an art, if your art sucks, if people don't like you enough to buy your cd's, you don't get paid, and you don't get to whine about it.
Software-developers: You produce tools that people use to create value. Tools that can be magically copied with no effort. If you want to make money on it, do it by implementing the tools you have created (being the creator gives you a fair head-start in this). Would you have a problem giving away hammers to people for free if you could replicate an original (which you made yourself) ad infinitum?
Screenwriters: Adjust your expectations. Just because your output-volume has risened does not mean the individuals demand will too. In every other field people know what they're buying before they buy it. Don't jump at people for wanting to know whether your work is quality or insipid trash before they decide to buy (or not buy) your product. A recent survey has shown that people who pirate movies are ten times more likely to buy movies than people who don't pirate. Don't whine if you fail.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
In 100 years, things will have settled into a two-party system.
And as far as skipping a night's sleep or a few meals goes, that's nowhere near the scale when used as torture. They don't equate. How often have you gone five days without sleep, or without food? Let us all know next week how easy it was to do.
It's well beyond that. Voluntary all-nighters involve you being in control (knowing that you could take a nap if you wanted to), eating when you want to, sitting comfortably, listening to your favourite music, drinking coffee so that you don't *want* to sleep, and perhaps most importantly, having something active to do that you are concentrating on. Sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique involves being prevented from sleep for days on end by hostile people who are shouting at you, threatening you, blasting headache-inducing noise and bright lights at you, making you move around, and ensuring that you have nothing to do or think about to take your mind off of an eternal present moment, so that in the end you are so fatigued that your willpower is destroyed. (Whether a person in that state can coherently remember and describe any useful information is another question.)