Pirate Bay Judge Had “Conflict of Interest,” Lawyer Calls For New Trial

A lawyer for the Pirate Bay is calling for a retrial after the judge in the case admitted to being a member of several “copyright-protection organizations.”

Judge Tomas Norstrom confirmed a report by Swedish Radio that he was a member of two groups that support copyright laws in Sweden, the Swedish Association for Copyright and the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property. But he claimed his membership in the groups didn’t create any conflict of interest, saying, “I don’t think there are any circumstances that have made me biased in this case.”

But lawyer Peter Althin, who represented Pirate Bay member Peter Sunde in the original case, disagreed with the assertion and said he was going to call for a new trial. “I will point that out in my appeal, then the Court of Appeal will decide if the district court decision should be set aside and the case revisited,” he said. Sunde himself said the report of the judge’s affiliations had turned the case into a “farce.”

A former attorney in Sweden told the BBC the judge had made an “error of judgment,” but added that a retrial was nonetheless unlikely. “The judge should have told the parties of his other engagements,” Sven-Erik Alhem said. “Had he done that then they could make a decision on whether they wanted him as a judge in their case. I’m not sure the superior court could say that this was unfair, but had he been open then it wouldn’t have been an issue.”

Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish Pirate Party, however, was harsher in his assessment, calling the lapse “corruption and judicial decay at an unforgivable level.”

“The judge in one of Sweden’s most high profile case ever is also a member of an interest organization for one side and associates with the prosecution trial lawyers in his free time? That is inexcusable corruption,” he said.

Sunde, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Carl Lundstrom of The Pirate Bay were all found guilty of violating copyright laws and sentenced to a year in prison and $4.5 million in damages. The verdict was reached despite the fact that The Pirate Bay doesn’t actually host any copyrighted material itself but simply provides links to content hosted elsewhere. The group announced its intention to appeal the verdict the day the trial ended and also said they would refuse to pay any fines levied against them regardless of the outcome.

Source: CBC