The Swedish Court of Appeals has ruled that there will be no retrial in the case of the Pirate Bay file-sharing website. Claims were made that one of the judges in the landmark copyright infringement trial was biased against the four defendants who opened the popular file-sharing site, but the Court of Appeals felt differently.
The request for a retrial came after Swedish Radio’s P3 channel learned that Tomas Norstrom, one of the judges that found the four men guilty, was a member of several copyright protection groups. These groups also included record and film industry people as their members.
There would certainly seem to be a conflict of interest concerning Norstrom, but in the appeals court ruling judge Anders Eka told the TT news agency that the judges did not agree that Norstrom was biased. Anders Eka did, however, admit that Norstrom should have informed the court that he had dealings with the copyright protection groups prior to the trial.
“The fact that he failed to shed light on this does not however mean that there was any wrongdoing during the proceedings that would require a retrial,” Anders Eka said. Norstrom didn’t have any comment for the media.
Meanwhile, the still fully-functional Pirate Bay was this week bought by Global Gaming Factory X for USD 7.8 million, with a promise to make its operations legitimate before the end of August.
Critics claim the site is doomed because over 90 percent of torrents available are not legal at the moment.
The Swedish “government” is a mere corporate proxy, wholly devoid of even a shred of legitimacy. I hope the Swedes are not so disconnected from their ancestors that they can no longer conceive of an appropriate response to corporate governance by proxy.