Pirate Bay To Judge: You're Biased, We Want A New Trial
If the lawyers can prove bias on Norstrom's part, it would constitute a conflict of interest, they said Thursday, and there's a possibility that the guilty verdict could be tossed out.
The Pirate Bay's three founders and an investor were found guilty last Friday of assisting copyright infringement. The four men were ordered to pay a collective 30 million kronor ($3.55 million) in fines and spend a year each in prison.
But on Wednesday, Sweden's Sveriges Radio reported that Norstrom is a participant in the Swedish Association of Copyright, a board member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Copyright and a member of .SE, the Internet Infrastructure Foundation.
According to Sveriges, several entertainment industry representatives who were involved in The Pirate Bay trial for the prosecution are also members of these organizations, including Monique Wadsted, who represented the movie companies.
One of the defense lawyers, Peter Althin, told Swedish newspaper The Local on Thursday that before The Pirate Bay trial began, a number of judges considered to have conflicts of interest in the trial similar to Norstrom's were removed.
"This is completely new to me," Althin said. "It is a clear case of bias."
Norstrom himself shot back, telling Sveriges Radio, "My view has been these activities do not constitute a conflict of interest."
The guilty verdict in The Pirate Bay case last week was initially viewed by antipiracy groups and recording-industry advocates as a landmark victory. But in the days following, several observers cautioned the recording industry that a stymied Pirate Bay would only be a temporary setback to illegal file sharing at best.
After all, Napster was once the first and last word in file sharing, and while it was shut down in its original incarnation more than seven years ago, illegal fire sharing has continued to explode all over the world.
For every felled Napster or Pirate Bay, there are countless others waiting to take their places. Instead of trying with increasingly futile effort to stop individual services, some argue, recording-industry executives should figure out ways to use services like The Pirate Bay to their advantage.
"Technologists see Pirate Bay as representing innovation. ... It is a very focused, very strong, unique and distinctive proposition that has caught people's eye," said Ben Perreau, CEO and co-founder of the British music news site "Gigulate," in an interview with The Guardian. "It's strange for the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represented the recording companies in the trial) to say it supports innovation when a lot of those left-field services have paved the way for the new start-ups who have played with those ideas and created legitimate businesses from them."
