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Pirate Bay Retrial Denied, Judge Declared Unbiased
bonch writes "A Swedish court has ruled that the judge in the PirateBay trial is unbiased and there will be no retrial. Stockholm District Court defended the judge's membership in copyright organizations as a necessity to 'keep up with developments in the field' and that merely endorsing the idea of copyright law was not grounds for a mistrial. The defendants must now rely on the appeal process, while one defendant has written on his Twitter account that the PirateBay will also be suing Sweden for human rights violations."
I would not be so sure. They are appealing to the EU Human Rights court thepiratebay.org which is also here echr.coe.int Also they are being asked to appear in Court in Netherlands, which the official mail got lost so they ( Brein Foundation sent tweets twitter.com inviting them to court. Oh and just for the record this waas submitted to /. earlier just some anti copyright people modded submissions down so it would not get posted.
that that court is biased too.
So someone needs to investigate on them.
Until you reach the very top of the shitpile.
Which most likely is sitting invisibly above the government. (I mean lobby groups.)
I say: Vote for the Pirate Party!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
We might be reading more into this membership thing than is needed. One justification for membership put forward was "in order to keep current on the issues." If this membership is part of ongoing professional education, then I am not so sure it is inappropriate. However, it would be a lot more telling to learn what percentage of judges eligible to hear this case is a member of such an organization? If it is more than 50%, then I have to lean in favor of the justification. If it is less, then I certainly have my doubts... and if it is 10% or less, I smell a rat.
heh, it was illegal when they went to trial, yes, because they made the laws to make it illegal so they could take them to trial.
How we know is more important than what we know.
To claim that this caused no bias is a disgrace on the Swedish judicial system. It's hogwash. The Litmus Test here is: If there was no bias involved then this should have been declared in the first minute of trial and allowed for any objections at that time. To hide it through the entire trial and as best they could afterwards until the defendants were able to dig it up shrieks of the fix being in and the trial being nothing but show. I'm left to wonder how the prosecution actually managed to keep straight faces throughout all of this since they surely had to have known.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The problem with supporting the Pirate Bay is that it still runs counter to the position that you have outlined (and to which I myself subscribe, except for your point #2). Specifically, most copyrighted works that are being distributed via TPB against copyright owners' will are distributed without any regard to the terms. In general, you see torrents for new movies, games etc immediately on the day of release, or a few days afterwards. Unless you believe that "reasonable term" for copyright is about an hour, TPB model thus runs against your point #1, at least when it comes to software (and not audiovisual works).
Can you point out exactly what Swedish laws they broke?
The (currently standing) decision on their case specifically lists Swedish laws that they broke. IIRC, it boils down to knowingly aiding copyright infringement - reason been that they have been repeatedly told, by copyright owners (or their legal representatives), that specific torrents they host are for material which is not authorized for distribution in such a way, and refused to take those torrents down. Thus, from the moment they were notified and refused to do anything, they share responsibility for any damages that resulted from that distribution (if any - since not all works claimed to be copyrighted were such). I believe the case decision had specifically listed torrents for which the above holds true.
Um, most /.ers
You've spoken to all of them have you? I remember seeing stats that barely 1% of us even comment, let alone express their opinion on copyright laws.
would be for a 10 year copyright
Which will grow 10 years every 10 years, retroactively.
with mandatory registration
That will be eliminated the first time someone claims they "forgot" to register, like it was back when we had mandatory registration.
decriminalization of personal file sharing
Woah! When did personal file sharing become criminalized? Shit, I better flush my burnt DVDs!!
and clauses that allow non-commercial use of a product if it is abandoned.
Why only non-commercial? The whole point of copyright is to financially encourage valuable activities that people would otherwise not do. If the original publisher no longer wants to publish the work and I think I can make some money publishing the work, then clearly there are people who want copies and are willing to pay for them, so why not encourage me to serve that need? Why reserve that right to someone who doesn't want it anymore?
Most /.ers
yeah, cause you know..
oppose criminalization of personal file sharing
I imagine a world where file sharing is illegal and actually enforced will be the end of personal computing.
long copyright such as the totally ridiculous life + 70 years
But.. but.. I did some work 20 years ago and my great grandchildren might have to get a job!!
the ability for things to be lost when they are abandoned
"lost" is the extreme.. how about just "rare". It's really quite sad that a book that has been in print only 5 years is so hard to get. These days I go to Amazon and click through the long list of secondhand book sellers (who, btw, the copyright owners would love to stamp out!) and eventually find one that will mail me the product for almost the same cost of new. It's a travesty.
and oppose unreasonable penalties for infringement (such as only $50 or $100 a song, not $80000).
"Penalties".. what a puritan idea. It's like we're too gutless to make this a crime and its clear that no actual damage has been done, so let's "punish" them by giving *more* money to the greedy bastards who want life+70 years for a work they couldn't even be bothered publishing 5 years after creation.
You only need to look at a story where for-profit infringement to take place to see the majority condemns their actions.
Again, you live in this fantasy where us bored minority of commenting users somehow represent the silent majority.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Chapter 23, Section 4 of the Swedish criminal code states that if an offense can result in a prison term, and if you're complicit in the act, then you'll be held liable, too.
It's a pretty common concept that's found in legal systems all over the world, including that of the US.
I'm not sure why you mentioned that there's no copyrighted material hosted on TPB. It sounds like either you're confused about what they were convicted for, or (even worse) you're trying to throw up a straw man.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
What are the point of laws at all, when a judge can declare
"I can't see which law of this country you've broken but I'm going to find you guilty because of pressure from corporate entities / governments in *other* countries, and my own personal conviction that the law here *should* be changed".
Surely a judge has to apply the law "as is", not "as he thinks it should be".
And that for me is the real argument, regardless of how you feel about what the Pirate Bay actually did, and how much they made from it (or didn't).