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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."
Everyone is quoting this wrong. The only part denied was the one based off the bias. I'm not sure how swedish law works but I'd imagine there are plenty of other ways for this be declared a mistrial. Public uproar will be a part of that too.
Also, they still have the appeal. So if they are denied appeal or judges make a bad call off the appeal it will make a serious uproar in the country.
Any guesses how long it will take before the appeal starts/decisions are made/etc?
Just in case someone jumps to conclusions...
This just means there will be no re-trial, but the Pirate Bay still has an appeal, it doesn't mean they have to pay to fine or go to jail yet. That's still far away.
Of course they'll say he was unbiased. If he was biased in this case they'll have to review ALL the previous cases to make sure that he wasn't influenced for those.It was the only call they could make.
Now I might not agree with their decision but I expect they also know it has a good chance of going forward at appeal and so therefore do not need to address this now.
Violation of due process is violation of human rights.
Sounds very much like the Right to a fair trial is being violated -- which specifically is mentioned in the Council of Europe's "Convention on Human Rights" in 3.6 article 6.
So no, they are not being pussies.
Please post. thanks.
"Judge Bauregard P Burnside today justified his membership in the KKK saying, 'I have to keep up on current civil rights developments.'"
The fact that the defendant in this case is The Pirate Bay doesn't change the fact that they deserve a fair trial.
If you were on trial for marijuana possession but the judge was a member of dozens of groups with names such as "Stop Drugs Now", "Weed Killed My Son", "Christians for a Drug Free America" etc etc, regularly received kickbacks from commercially-run prisons (who cater specifically to drugs-related incarcerations) and frequently accepted donations from government anti-legalization lobbyists, would you consider yourself likely to receive a fair trial?
Therefore, following on from this, would you therefore say that your constitutionally protected right to a fair trial was being infringed? Would it not be a huge stretch to also say that these rights should exist to all people- become one of these so-called "human rights"?
Granted, it's not on the same level as militia machinegunning unarmed villages, but the right to a fair trial is still what I would consider a basic human right.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
FTA
(But Eka and the other judges concluded that simply endorsing the principles of copyright law was no grounds for disqualification in a trial; copyright was written into Swedish law, and judges can't be called "biased" simply because they support existing laws.
"The Court of Appeal has come to the conclusion that none of the circumstances set out, individually or taken together, means that there are legitimate doubts about the judge's impartiality in this case. There has not been any bias," concluded the court. The decision cannot be appealed")
Imagine the hideous analogies we can come up with. Judge A belongs to the bar association. Can he rule on lawyer misconduct? I am playing devil's advocate here and like I said I don't agree with the decision. I hope they win their appeal but I think human rights violation is a tad overboard. They still have their appeal.
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.
This is what you get for buying Ikea.
and judges can't be called "biased" simply because they support existing laws.
Excuse me. A judge may determine whether a law has been broken, he may set a punishment if it is proven that the law is broken, but if he supports or disapproves of a law he is biased. A judge may be in favor of all laws being enforced, but any specific law no.
Why bother
Note that the judge B (Anders Eka) deciding if judge A was biased was himself a member of a pro-copyright group. The whole thing is disgusting.
http://blog.brokep.com/2009/05/20/google-is-your-friend/
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."
Slahsdot is pretty consistently in favor of the general concept of copyright. It frequently (and still pretty consistently) opposes particular details in some implementations.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
A false dichotomy is an old debating trick where one party says, "well, you oppose X, and therefore you must be for Y!" It's called "false" because the world really doesn't work that way. There are many different options.
You are employing a false dichotomy here. Opposition to the current copyright regime is not synonymous with the abolition of copyright. Many of us, instead, feel that copyright needs to be reformed, not abolished:
These changes will maintain the spirit and essential utility of copyright law while curbing the abuses of the past half-century. Reform will restore copyright to the status of a fair social contract that rewards creativity without smothering it.
Um, most /.ers would be for a 10 year copyright with mandatory registration, decriminalization of personal file sharing, and clauses that allow non-commercial use of a product if it is abandoned. Most /.ers oppose criminalization of personal file sharing, long copyright such as the totally ridiculous life + 70 years, the ability for things to be lost when they are abandoned and oppose unreasonable penalties for infringement (such as only $50 or $100 a song, not $80000). You only need to look at a story where for-profit infringement to take place to see the majority condemns their actions.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
This case was about what responsibility TPB has relating to how their service was used to break copyright law, specifically Videos. So it seams very important what the Judges opinion is of the role of copyright law in protecting large content owners. Obviously a judge who showed interest in supporting a expansion of copyright law would have more interest in setting this precedent. His interest in the manner would not have been so worrying in the case of determining actual infringement, this case was more about how far that law should extend. Infringement seams clear cut in this case, just not who can be held responsible for the infringement.
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.
They were found guilty of assisting in making copyrighted materials available.
Except as swedish law was *always* applied before, you had to actually charge the people who *made* the materials available. You were not allowed to charge just the accessories. Thus, the charges and subsequent conviction push the law past where it was allowed to previously apply.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
So why are Slashdotters constantly opposed to copyright and in favor of piracy except in GPL violation articles?
Are you too boneheaded to understand that Slashdotters may not all think in the same way? That one subset of Slashdotters may support piracy, and another subset may support the GPL. It's a pretty simple concept actually, I'm surprised that you don't understand it, unless you are a troll of course.
DMCA won't allow you to copy personal DVDs right? Otherwise it was a marvelous troll.
The obvious problem here is that the TPB guys didn't upload anything (at least that wasn't shown to be the case), and they clearly explained that it was the user's responsibility. If you want something taken off TPB, you should contact the person who put it there.
They were wrong.
And before you say that TPB should comply with any and all takedown requests, that sounds kind of crazy to me. If they were to do that, then anyone could make any claim about any content on TPB and have it taken down, even if the content was completely legal in every way.
If I understand this correctly, you only have to comply with requests that can be reasonably expected to be true (i.e. originating from the copyright holder or his legal representative, and the material in the torrent likely being what it is claimed to be). In any case, you are free to not comply without any investigation, but in that case you take responsibility for the content.
As for how to make it reasonable - well, DMCA safe harbor clause actually does just that. It gives a safe harbor to third-party content distributors - and TPB would qualify - if they take down things upon request. However, the user who posted the content can provide contact information to be notified when the takedown happens. At that point, the user can challenge the takedown - essentially, make a counter-claim that his content is not infringing on the copyright of original claimaint - and then the provider can legally bring the content back online. Now it's between copyright holder and the user who posted the content - if they still disagree, they can take it to the court, but content provider is not involved in that anymore, fulfilling all his obligations. That sounds quite reasonable.