Copyright Law

3 Judge Panel to Determine if Pirate Bay Trial Judge Biased

By soulxtc

Replace Judge Ulrika Ihrfelt, a member of same pro-copyright group as original judge, Judge Tomas Norström, as it considers whether guilty verdict should be revisited for lack of impartiality.

The Swedish Court of Appeals has decided to replace the judge that was scheduled to hear Swedish BitTorrent tracker site the Pirate Bay’s appeal of its recent guilty verdict for the facilitation of copyright infringement with a new 3 judge panel.

“The information may be mentioned that none of these are or have been members of any of the groups present in the case,” writes the court in a press release.

It will replace Judge Ulrika Ihrfelt since she had been a member of the same pro-copyright group as was the presiding judge, Judge Tomas Norström, as well as several of the entertainment industry’s lawyers, which is what made the conviction seem biased to many.

Peter Sunde, one of the Pirate Bay admins convicted, has already done a but of digging into the backgrounds of the 3 new judges and has found that they too have associations with the entertainment industry lawyers that could perhaps call their impartiality into question.

Judge Anders Eka, for example, sits on the board of the “Research Center for Media Rights” alongside Monique and Peter Danowsky, layers representing the entertainment industry in the case against the Pirate Bay.

“Note: Not any of OUR lawyers are on that board,” notes Sunde. “But two of the opponents lawyers in the same board. Together with two of their main helpers.”

He adds: “and I have only just started to google for the people.. it took me longer time to write this blog post than to find the information. How come noone else does this?”

Good question Peter.

He keeps asking for a fair trial, nothing more, but all he seems to get is more entertainment industry-tainted govt officials.

I mean the case became a “spectrial” long ago when it was reported 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.

It seems only natural to have judges finish what Keyzer started.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on May 22, 2009 (boomark / email).