Pirate Bay Judge Linked With Copyright Lobby, Faces Accusations of Bias
Caronte22 — Thu, 04/23/2009 - 17:11
Tomas Norström, the judge who sentenced the Pirate Bay Four, was recently outed as a member of two copyright advocacy organizations, prompting rumblings about a mistrial.
Some Swedish attorneys believe that Norström's membership of the Swedish Copyright Association and the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (where he is a board member) represent a full-on conflict of interest, a charge that, naturally, he denies. I won't pretend to know whether or not these accusations constitute full-on shenanigans (legal term!) under Swedish law, but the fact that a juror on the case was dismissed for membership in the same organizations should raise a few eyebrows.
So, there's a little conspiracy to mix in with your boiling indignation. Enjoy
All these cases seem more
cromi — Sat, 04/25/2009 - 01:26All these cases seem more like they are trying to set a message. The pirate bay seems to be just one of the many. Its like when they sued the man with an account on a website with the torrent issue. And they won. 1st of all you just ruined someones life. 2nd of all even with the account there was not enough evidence to try a person in the first place. I cant remember exactly what happened with the case but it caused some strife. Speaking of this case though. Why would the swedes want to get rid of a torrent site. Really i cant think of any motivation for themselves except for lawyers getting attention in the public,mainly reason the american DA would at least. I cant think of anything they would need through doing this, main exports being swiss army knives, volvos and bank accounts.
this annoys me about as much as jack thompson, even if he is trying to make games less violent for a good cause he is going about it the wrong way. And the octomom, i dont really think i need to extrapulate on this.
Want to blame someone for this. Blame Bill Gates, of course if you blame him you also have to thank him for giving us windows. Then again vista is pretty bad in itself. Well thank him for the modern pc.
The Chronicles of the Annoying Lawsuits.
cromi — Sat, 04/25/2009 - 02:05http://prod1.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=49547369
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/riaa-jury-finds.html
I'm not worried
Torvo — Fri, 04/24/2009 - 11:50TPB has great lawyers, and even the independent experts from the U.S. and elsewhere whose opinion pieces I've been following seem to agree that there's nothing illegal about what TPB and other BitTorrent trackers are doing.
The best comparison I've heard is that TPB = Google with attitude. Since the law is largely blind to things like attitude ("I killed the bitch and I'm not sorry" vs. "I don't see how what I did was wrong"), a TPB conviction would open up the floodgates to begin suing anyone who aggregates and helps you find information on the internet.
"TPB has great lawyers, and
starstalker — Fri, 04/24/2009 - 18:59"TPB has great lawyers, and even the independent experts from the U.S. and elsewhere whose opinion pieces I've been following seem to agree that there's nothing illegal about what TPB and other BitTorrent trackers are doing."
--in their home country
The giant problem I have with this is the US trying to enforce our laws on another country. I'm not into pirating, I'm really not, but the larger consequences of this could be huge. Imagine if North Korea asked the US to charge and arrest US citizens in the US for voicing their opinions online? The fact that one soverign country can almost force another sovereighn country to do what they want is very, very disturbing. Yes, if the Pirate bay were hosted in the US, it would be illegal. But its not, its hosted in Sweden, where they did not appear (IANAL) to breaking any laws.
A social studies teacher told
cromi — Sat, 04/25/2009 - 02:18A social studies teacher told me to think of all governments, well our government. And then put them in terms of a 5 year old or some lesser extent.. N. korea couldnt tell us to do that because thats just stupid. But we can tell or influence the swedes because our objective is more important than theres is. Its like this your 5, and you hit a ball through your neighbors window. You have been told again and again not to go into any house without your parents so your get your mate who lives there( the swedes) to go and get the ball. In this case its the commercial sector of our country. We are not directly influencing the other company. and we are probably restricted from directly trying them without violating some treaty. So they are going to use the other government to get to them without being involved. 1. they get their influence. 2. If this trial fails then they have no real legal connection to it.
When I found out the judge
pulga — Fri, 04/24/2009 - 06:41When I found out the judge was a member of the copyright party, I wondered how they were able to try the case without someone calling shenanigans. Then I realized the Pirate Bay's autorney was just waiting to lose the case to call shenanigans.
That actually makes a lot of
Karli — Fri, 04/24/2009 - 12:20That actually makes a lot of sense. It's a pretty brilliant move to wait until the ruling has been finalized to shed light on the scandal...
I've been watching the headlines about TPB since I finally started legimitately torrenting (can you say streaming movies using the wireless router from the computer to the xbox 360 to the new HD-TV!).
I found the one year sentences a bit odd; they seemed pretty tame all things considering. Should be interesting to see how all this pans out.
definatly
moriella — Thu, 04/23/2009 - 23:20I call shenanigins!! He should have recused himself.