Pirate Bay judge biased? Defendants set course for retrial

By Nate Lanxon on 23 April 2009, 11:17am

Just days after the Pirate Bay's epic anti-piracy trial and guilty verdict, a Swedish radio station has made some astonishing claims: that judge Tomas Norström is biased, owing to his involvement in numerous copyright-focused organisations.

Norström, P3 News reports, sits on the board of the Swedish Association for Industrial Property -- a group founded in 1908 that, according to a translation of its Swedish Web site, "promotes interest in and knowledge of industrial property protection, particularly patent rights". It has also pushed for stronger copyright law, P3 News reports.

There's more. Norström is also a member of the Swedish Association of Copyright (SFU) -- a group founded in 1954, which hosts seminars and debates, and also counts members from the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (one member of which sits on the SFU's board), the Swedish Federation of Musicians, and a movie industry lawyer.

The SFU claims its main task is "to safeguard and promote the member companies' copyrights to their films, [and] a part of this work is to educate and inform the public about copyright importance".

Interestingly, also on the board of the SFU is one Peter Danowsky, a lawyer whose emails to the IFPI have previously been published by The Pirate Bay itself.

In response, Norström said, "I have not felt that I am biased because of those commitments." Defendant Peter Sunde's legal representative in the trial, Peter Althin, unsurprisingly disagrees, saying the judge's commitments to these organisations constitute a conflict of interests. They will demand a re-trial.

Sunde's thoughts on the matter? "Oh, how I love the smell of victory in the morning."