Pirate Bay en route to retrial?

Tomas Norström under heavy fire by microphones
from all over the globe.

The Swedish radio channel P3 revealed information regarding Tomas Norström, judge in the Pirate Bay trial and his multiple conflicts of interest (bias) in regards to organisations that he takes part of, such as the Swedish Association Of Copyright, where he is a member together with people like Henrik Pontén and Monique Wadsten. Multiple articles have already been published regarding the topic, with DN (Swedish/English link) and Torrentfreak providing good coverage on the subject.

My thoughts
I’ll keep myself plain and simple – I have no idea how he thought he would get away with this. This is such a debated and infected trial and he should have stepped down without hesitation. Although he might argue that this did not affect his judgement (which he does) the wide masses of disgruntled file sharers and Pirate Bay sympathizers disagree. I’d hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but I find it somewhat strange that all this surfaced shortly after the trial.

And now…
…depending on what the Hovrätt decides, the entire affair might be eligible for a retrial. We’ll see how this develops.

In other news…
Thank you for these “Improv Everywhere”-videos, Per. They really cheered me up!

On The Pirate Bay verdict

The bay lives on, for now.

People who know me are familiar with my strong interest in file sharing, copyright law and the moral consequences involved. Therefore I feel almost obligated to write up a my opinion on the verdict that surfaced att 11AM today – sentencing the four accused – guilty, giving them one year in prison each and a collective fine of 30 000 000 swedish crowns.

I followed the trial almost every day through the live webcasts from the courtroom, and was often appalled at the low standard of technical knowledge throughout the course of it. Not only that – according to me the prosecutor failed to show that they had financial gain from the ads displayed, something the judge disagreed on and stated increased the penalty.

But as my friend Eva (Original Swedish / Translated English) points out, this trial does not mean the end and will most likely be appealed shortly. Experts speculate that the final verdict from the Swedish supreme court will be clear in no less than five years time.

In other news…
Fun trivia #1: I forgot to write the “In other news…” section when I first posted this, here’s some fun trivia to rectify it!

Fun trivia #2: Just played Mahjong for the first time, quite an interesting concept and game, look forward to many nights sweating, staring angrily at the other players!

I visited the trial on the last day briefly and you’ll find a few of the pictures I took in the gallery below!