May 10th, 2009
Appeals filed in The Pirate Bay case
Pirate Bay defendant Peter Sunde’s lawyer says he will appeal his client’s conviction based on Judge Tomas Norstöm’s undisclosed ties to the copyright industry, News.com reports.
Attorney Peter Althin also says that Sunde has no liability for the alleged wrongdoing of The Pirate Bay, since he was merely a spokesman, not a principal.
The first thing the high court of justice Svea Hovrätt must decide is if the judge has had a conflict of interest. … If you are a member of an organization whose purpose is to strengthen the copyright holders’ interest together with the accusing companies in the trial, then the trust is broken, considering impartiality.
Althin also said that the prosecution’s theory of The Pirate Bay’s liability is fatally flawed. The charge was assisting copyright violation.
Pirate Bay does not encourage anybody to commit a crime. Cars can be used for speeding and drunk driving, but no car manufacturer is held responsible for that.
Hmm, that last argument would actually apply to BitTorrent, not TPB. If downloading torrents of copyright material is a crime, there can be no doubt that TPB assisted. If by that you mean provided an easy way to do it. But the real assisters were the sites that put up the torrents. Is TPB’s role sufficient to make it liable? That seems like a question of fact that the trial court decided.
If the trial court was impartial and fair. Apparently, it was not. The question is would an impartial court come to the same conclusion? The appeals court may find the judge was wrong to not disclose his ties and still find it didn’t impact the verdict.
