Pirate Bay Appeal Judge Faces Ban, Works For Spotify

Ignoring your views on The Pirate Bay for a moment, you have to wonder what could lead to such many conflicts of interest. Is it really that common in Sweden for law professionals to be so tightly involved with the entertainment industry?

The main police investigator was working for Warner Brothers.

The first judge, Tomas Norström was a member of the Swedish Copyright Association. Three of the plantiffs lawyers are members of this same organisation. Norström is also on the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property which means he has strong enough views/influences on copyright to actively participate in an anti-piracy organisation that interacts with the entertainment industry i.e. plantiffs. These connections were undisclosed.

One of the original three allocated lay judges to the first trial was a member of a composers' association actively involved in advocating further copyright protection. Fortunately he excused himself from the trial.

The board to review the alleged bias of Tomas Norström was originally meant to include judge Ulrika Ihrfelt who was also a member of the Swedish Copyright Association. It is claimed that all Swedish copyright practicing lawyers have membership to this association but because of the potential conflict she was removed from the bias investigation. She is now the judge in charge of the appeal. However, it would appear that as the membership was back in 2005, and passive membership in this organisation is at least common for copyright lawyers, bias is not an issue with judge Ulrika Ihrfelt.

One of the three allocated lay judges to the retrial is also an employee at Spotify, who are a paid peer-to-peer music service that includes the major music labels (plaintiffs) as shareholders.

On an unrelated note, one of the titles The Pirate Bay are being charged with distributing is World of Warcraft, which is absolutely useless without a purchased cd key and subscription.

This is just a total legal farce.

I am fully behind prosecuting them - or rather challenging their tenacity - in court (because I believe they do a lot of more harm in the campaign to bring digital media into this century)..

But dammit you do this properly, by the book and get it really really really right. And if you lose then you lose, deal with it.

You don't make martyrs out of them.