The four men sentenced to a year in prison and fined $3.6 million after being found guilty of assisting copyright infringement should be given a new trial because the Judge was biased, a court heard on Monday. The lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, one of the four founders of the Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker, said that Judge Tomas Norstrom’s affiliation with groups for copyright protection should have disqualified him.
“Tomas Norstrom was biased during the trial … Secondly, he neglected to inform the defendants and their lawyers of the facts that constituted the bias,” defense lawyer Per Samuelson said in the document, obtained by Reuters. The court of appeal now must decide whether to send the case back to District Court.
Judge Norstrom is a member of The Swedish Association for Copyright and a board member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property. Peter Danowsky, A board member of The Swedish Association for Copyright, represented the film and music industries in the trial. Lundstrom’s lawyer last week filed an appeal, asking the court of appeal to change the verdict and dismiss the prosecution and the claims for compensation
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He also said the court should turn to the European court of justice (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling.
Result for: court of justice
In a situation that should crush the credibility of the ongoing court case, it has been revealed that police officer Jim Keyzer, the “star” witness in the investigation against the The Pirate Bay was recently employed by Warner Bros, one of the companies suing the admins at TPB.
The website tpbKopit.se made the discovery yesterday after searching the officer’s Facebook profile. He has since deleted his profile but the damage is done.
Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde (brokep) added: “He [Keyzer] confirmed that he is an employee there and we can’t see it in any other way than this being the reward for a work well done from the new employer of the police, the entertainment industry”
“This is a legal outrage. Talk about biased,” Sunde continues. “Keyzer is in charge of the investigation. No matter the reasons to switch employer, this investigation has not been fair. We have felt that the investigation has concentrated on trying to locate something to point out as wrong with The Pirate Bay instead of determining if the activities of the site are unlawful or not.”
“This is pure, classic corruption,” says Rickard Falkvinge leader of the Swedish pirate party. “Big companies from foreign nations trying to affect the outcome in a Swedish Court of Justice with straightforward bribes. Now the copyright lobby is showing its true face.”
The consequences of this new revelation is that the case, and the investigation, which was started nearly 2 years ago, may have to be redone, making a huge setback for Swedish investigators.
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