New turn in PirateBay case

Today the PirateBay case took a new, though not entirely unexpected, turn when it became known that the judge of the PB trial may have been severely biased due to his involvement with two copyright promoting organisations and also, as a consequence of this, being a personal acquaintance of some of the anti-piracy representatives. Sadly the ominous fact that the Pirate Bay was convicted as accessory to a supposed crime still remains oddly and ostentatiously under-discussed in mainstream media.

 

I heard about this, forget an appeal, the whole thing needs to be thrown out and restarted.

 

although reading about it the judge assures us that it had no bearing on his decision .................... well that's good enough for me
another interesting point is that the pirate bay party membership has more than doubled since the trial and elections are due in the near future. You need 100K+ votes to get elected, last election the PB got 30K I suspect this little effort has given them a much better chance of getting someone into parliament.
When will they learn, first it was napster, then kazza, now the pirate bay and the only outcome after each case was an explosion of more P2P networks, and better ways of sharing.

 

This is what we call a "second bite at the apple" tactic. It is a farce, and a common occurance in political campaigns, where one side holds onto damaging information about an opponent but doesn't release it unless they think they can't win. Had TPB won their trial, this information would not have been released. Only if they lost the trial, would they want this information to come to light to try to get public sympathy on their appeal. It would be detrimental to release this information if they won. What an amazingly convenient piece of information only to "discover" after they lost the trial. It is still unclear if the judge's affiliation has any influence on him, or what any repercussions would be. All he has shown is a predilection towards protecting intellectual property rights, which is a law in Sweden. I'm in favor of judges who want to uphold the law. That doesn't make it a bias, that makes him a good judge. Remember, had he ruled in favor of Pirate Bay, nobody but the record companies would be upset or claim bias. Beware of double standards... just because you cheered for the losing team doesn't mean the winners cheated, and accusing them of cheating is bad sportsmanship.

 

Of course the bias thing is about tactics, but you miss the important thing here. TPB was not accused of copyright infringement, like everybody seem to think. They were convicted as accessary to copyright infringement, because they index or link to copyrighted material. This isn't upholding law but rather interpreting it, since there is no law prohibiting links in Sweden. The interpretation in this case obviously has rather far-reaching consequences for Internet users in Sweden and eventually in EU. Another uncanny aspect of the outcome of the trial is that TPB are considered accessary to a crime that technically hasn't been committed, as no one has been charged with copyright infringement in connection with the case. A third issue is that according to Swedish law the severeness of the penalties has as a prerequisite that the culprits have substantially profited from their crime, but a close reading of the verdict shows that the court did not support that allegation - the big money went elsewhere. So there's good reasons to suspect bias - or cowardice - on the part of the judge.

By the way, the EU parliament voted for prolonged copyrights for record companies the other day, from 50 to 70 years. You may call it protection of intellectual property rights, but then you'll have to explain why another twenty years should be added, and why the children and grandchildren of an artist - or a producer - should be able to live off his achievement. Why is intellectual work of greater value than manual?