[Infowarrior] - Pirate Bay Judge Exposed as Member of Pro-Copyright Groups

[Richard Forno]

Pirate Bay Judge Exposed as Member of Pro-Copyright Groups
By Wired Staff EmailApril 23, 2009 | 3:21:15 PMCategories: Yo Ho Ho

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/pirateconflict.html

One of the four men convicted in The Pirate Bay trial is seeking to  
have his guilty verdict thrown out after learning that the judge in  
the trial is a member of two pro-copyright groups, including one whose  
membership  includes entertainment industry representatives who argued  
in the case.

Stockholm district court judge, Tomas Norström told a Swedish  
newspaper that his previously-undisclosed entanglements with the  
copyright groups did not constitute a conflict of interest.

The groups include the Swedish Association of Copyright, a discussion  
forum. Henrik Pontén of the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau, Monique  
Wadsted, a motion picture industry lawyer, and Peter Danowsky from the  
recording industry's IFPI are members of the  organizations, and were  
largely responsible for pressing the case against The Pirate Bay  
before the judge.

Norström also sits on the board of the Swedish Association for the  
Protection of Industrial Property, and the Internet Infrastructure  
Foundation, which oversees the dot-se country code and advises on  
domain name disputes. Monique Wadsted is one of his colleagues at the  
foundation.

The judge's links to the groups were reported by Swedish National Radio.

Peter Althin, the lawyer who represents Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter  
Sunde, announced Thursday that he plans to demand a retrial.

"The Court of Appeal will decide if the district court decision should  
be set aside and the case revisited," Althin said on Thursday to the  
site The Local.

Last Friday Norström and three lay judges found Sunde and three other  
men guilty of contributory copyright infringement, sentenced them to a  
year in prison, and ordered them to pay damages of 30 million kronor  
($3.6 million) to entertainment companies.

"It wasn't appropriate for him to take on this case," says Eric  
Bylander, senior lecturer in procedure law at Gothenburg University.  
"There are several circumstances which individually don't constitute  
partiality, but that put together can form a quite different picture.  
It's also a matter of what signal this sends to the citizens. Anyone  
who, on reasonable grounds, can be appear biased in a case should not  
judge that case."

But Bylander says it's a toss-up as to whether the appeals court will  
find the conflict serious enough to throw out the verdict. "I don't  
think the trial will be declared a mistrial, but it's definitely a  
close call," he says.

(AP Photo/Fredrik Persson, file)