June 26th, 2009
Swedish court: Pirate Bay judge not biased
Was the judge in The Pirate Bay trial biased? After all, it turned out after the trial, although he didn’t disclose it at the time, that Judge Tomas Norstöm was a member of several pro-copyright organizations. Is that enough to earn TPB a retrial?
Absolutely not, a Swedish appeals court ruled yesterday, according to a Swedish report.
“We have reached the conclusion that we do not agree with the conflict of interest claim,” appeals court judge Anders Eka told news agency TT. “For a judge to back the principles on which this legilsation rests cannot be considered bias,” the court wrote in its ruling.
Small comfort but the panel did criticize Norström for not revealing his connections to the record labels. They should have been revealed up front so the defendants’ claims could have been dealt with (and presumably dismissed) up front.
Swedish Pirate Party member and European Parliament member Christian Engström was outraged:
This is part of a pattern. It show that the Swedish legal system is no longer to be trusted when it comes to copyright cases. It’s a travesty of justice quite simply. There are certainly problems with the laws too but this also shows that the courts are not capable of applying the laws in a correct manner. I’ve been a lay judge for seven years and I’ve never seen an indictment as bad as the Pirate Bay verdict. But that didn’t stop the court from setting ridiculous sentences.
This makes it clear that the only way to win this battle is through politics. It’s a political issue and it’s going to be decided at the general election in 2010.
