No, this is not about the requested appeal. This goes way beyond appeal.
It seems the judge, presiding the now already famous trial of four men maintaining The Pirate Bay, may have a certain bias. Being apparently an active member of the Swedish copyright lobby it takes not much effort to find a possible conflict in him presiding a case brought about by members of this same lobby.
By this rather blatant display of mixed and vested interests, it goes to show that, although a judge in a court of law is assumed un-biased, outside of the courtroom there is still a life which may well collide with what occurs in the cocoon of the courtroom.
In se this is not such a special point, were it not for the fact that this now will get exposed on a global scale. This is something that will normally not happen if that same judge, being a member of the golf club, decides in favour of a land claim to enable exending that clubs golf field. If that news reaches national newspapers somewhere in a regional section it may get already more than unusual attention.
If the Pirate Bay verdict however runs into a mistrial due to a conflict of interests, this may catch Sweden with it’s pants down, especially after the recent spat of regulations to discourage filesharing (in any form, even legal).
Update:
and here’s the BBC with the story. keeping it below radar will be hard now.
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