Copyright Law

Pirate Bay Co-Founder Demands a ?Fair Trial?

By soulxtc

Notes that Judge was a member of same group as plaintiffs, and that Jim Keyzer, the Chief Swedish police investigator in the preliminary investigation of the BitTorrent tracker site became an employee of Warner Bros soon afterwards.

Peter Sunde, aka Brokep, one of the four co-founders of Swedish BitTorrent tracker site the Pirate Bay, has written a new blog post demanding that he and the other defendants recently found guilty for the site’s alleged facilitation of copyright infringement receive a "fair trial," nothing more.

"Due to the past weeks findings on the biased judge we've all demanded a fair trial. That means doing a re-trial," he writes. "Or a re-#spectrial, that is!"

The judge in the trial, Judge Tomas Norström, is an active member of several pro-copyright groups that lobby for more stringent copyright protection and enforcement laws. Several of the entertainment industry plaintiffs, the lead attorney for the IFPI in particular, in The Pirate Bay case are also members of one them, the Swedish Association of Copyright.

"But that's not all," adds Sunde.

He also wants a new police investigation considering that Jim Keyzer, the Chief Swedish police investigator in the preliminary investigation against the Pirate Bay, was hired by two of the entertainment industry plaintiffs after his work had ended.

"We're thinking of demanding a new police investigation," continues Sunde. "There's been too much questions marks regarding both the trial and the police investigation. The police officer, Jim Keyzer, knew that he had a well paid job at not just one but two of the companies that had filed charges against us, after a well done police investigation. Lots of stuff that where to our advantage was not included in the investigations outcome."

Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse.

Peter says there’s no doubt Keyzer was compromised in the case, even if he tries to make the same "I’m a professional" argument that Judge Norström did.

"The first time I met Jim Keyzer and got questioned by him, he actually already knew about his new job."

All Sunde wants is a "fair trial," and it’s disappointing to see him have such a tough time getting one in a country so seemingly enlightened and progressive as is Sweden. The fact that the lead investigator alone ended up on the payroll of two people he was investigating the claims of should be enough to get a new trial, let alone the presiding judge being an active member of a group dedicated explicitly to achieving the demands of the plaintiffs in the case.

"Too many people have ties to our opponents and has been proven to be on the pay-roll or promised to become employed in the future," furthers Sunde. "We want everything to be in the eye of the public so that we can get help to see that everything is correct. We need to trust the system but the system needs to be transparent enough so we can trust it."

A fair trial shouldn’t be too much to ask for should it?

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on May 13, 2009 (boomark / email).