Copyright Law

Swedish Judicial System Scrutinized After Pirate Bay Trial

By DrewWilson

There were plenty online who were arguing that the judicial system in Sweden was corrupt after accusations flew over bias in both the original judge and the judges deciding the bias charge. Now, a debate is re-emerging in Sweden over whether or not judge affiliations should be checked before they tackle cases.

There are no shortage of Swedish citizens irate over what happened with the admins of The Pirate Bay during the “spectrial”. Even though the admins cannot appeal the judicial review that decided that the judge in the Pirate Bay spectrial was not biased, the story is far from over at this point in time. It seems that a debate has re-emerged where many key players in the Swedish justice system are debating whether organization affiliations should be questioned prior to a case. It’s interesting to know that this debate isn’t new, and the high profile case has re-energized that debate.

While the debate is going on, the admins of The Pirate Bay are currently considering pressing charges against Sweden in the European court of Human Rights.

“And it should also be noted that Anders Eka,” The Pirate Bay wrote in their blog, “the guy with the final decision that is not appealable, heads in an immaterial rights organisation as Peter Drowsky and Monique Wasted, the MPAA and Ifpi-lawyers. However, he does not feel that working together with the lawyers that enjoys this decision the most has an impact on his decision or that he might be biased himself…”

“Tomorrow,” they added, “we will probably file charges against the swedish legal system to the european court of human rights.”

One admin from The Pirate Bay said at one point that he simply Googled the judges for their affiliations and found them to be affiliated with pro-copyright organizations within minutes.

We haven’t yet found any formal documents that suggest that charges have been filed yet.

Still, while the trial of the Pirate Bay admins is a high profile case, that isn’t the only one fuelling anger. Another key case in the copyright debate in Sweden is also making some waves as well. According to The Local, publishers have recently tested the new anti-filesharing law by demanding that customer information be handed over from the ISP. Ephone resisted, so the Publishers took the issue to court and got the Swedish court to force the ISP to divulge the information.

Having the legal means to force an ISP to divulge customer information via an IP-address is a key step in the waves of lawsuits seen in the United States (which has seen over 35,000 lawsuits against alleged file-sharers) If that weren’t possible, the United States would not have seen all these lawsuits against file-sharers in the first place. It’s unclear whether or not waves as seen in the United States or Britain will be seen in Sweden, but this case suggests that it is now possible to sue alleged file-sharers en-mass in Sweden now.

Two court cases later and now the whole Swedish justice system is now under the gun by many. Imagine what would happen if more file-sharers receive legal threats.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on June 30, 2009 (boomark / email).