Thursday, April 23, 2009

Ooops, they did it again (or something smells bad in Sweden)

The last few days the wires have been busy transmitting information and analysis about the recent Swedish court case that convicted Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde, who run Pirate Bay, to one year in jail for the crime of copyright infringement. However, today the same case has come to the spotlight for a different reason, showing that, once again, the moral high grounds that the music industry is claiming is actually so low that throws into doubt the reputation of a decent legal system as the Swedish.
Today it has been made public that the judge that decided the case against the Pirate Bay members is member of several organizations that either have as main goal to strengthen copyright laws and their enforcement or have as co-members some of the lawyers that represented the music industry in the case…the judge seems to have the peculiar view that belonging to organizations as the Swedish Association of Copyright alongside with Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted, who represented rights holders in the Pirate Bay trial, or the Swedish Association for Industrial Property, which pushes for a stronger copyright and has the judge as member of the board, don’t imply that he is biased and that the result of the trial should stand…however, it is clear that the words that John Kennedy, chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), used to describe the outcome of the Swedish case should be supported because the current case "will send out a message, even to kids, that what they thought was OK, isn't" as even in decent Sweden justice seems to be co-opted and tarnished by the entertainment industry…

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