Blind Justice - Credit: Dan Strange on Flickr (CC BY)
It has been discovered that the judge in The Pirate Bay trial has links to the entertainment industry. A retrial is being sought.
Less than a week after the conclusion of The Pirate Bay trial, a new controversy has surfaced over the judge’s possible conflict of interests. It turns out that Judge Tomas Norström—the judge who found The Pirate Bay defendants guilty and slapped them with jail time—is currently a member of the Swedish Copyright Association, an organization that works against piracy along with a number of entertainment industry members. As a result, lawyers for the defendants have made it clear that they will push for a retrial.
The Swedish media dug up information this week revealing that Norström is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association along with Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted—individuals who represented the recording industry in The Pirate Bay trial. Additionally, Norström also sits on the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property, an advocacy group that pushes stricter copyright laws.
And these aren’t just accusations. Norström acknowledged to Sveriges Radio, as reported by The Local, that the findings are true; he just thought that it wouldn’t be a problem. “My view has been that these activities do not constitute a conflict of interest,” Norström said.
I’m not really sure this is a problem either. If there’s no money involved here, I guess it’s not. You can’t accuse a judge of bias because he agrees with the law, and wants it to be stricter.
April 23rd, 2009 at 18:54
Yes you can. Judges are supposed to take a neutral approach to a case. A judge agreeing with the current system is not a conflict of interest, but one wanting to change the system, whether to make it stricter or more lenient, is a definite bias, and is not the kind of thing I want to see in a courtroom.
Now, it is impossible to not have some sort of bias, but the court system, as your picture illustrates quite well, is supposed to operate on the principle of blind justice. Courts exist to determine what the law is, not what the law should be. Now, whether this judge tried to use the trail to legislate in his favor I cannot say, but if the allegations are true then the ruling is clearly biased.
Of course, what is important here is to ask whether he acted on such biases in the case, knowingly or otherwise. Again, I lack sufficient details to know if this is indeed what happened, and if this had anything to do with the verdict or the evaluation of the case.