LINK LAW: PIRATE BAY Lawyer to Demand Retrial; Judge Admits Conflict...

[SteveHardeman]

One of the top stories on Drudge. Sorry if it already went around.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Pirate...8682.html?.v=2

STOCKHOLM (AP) -- A defense lawyer in the Pirate Bay file-sharing case said Thursday he will demand a retrial after the judge admitted he was a member of copyright protection organizations.

A Stockholm court last week convicted four men behind the notorious Web site of helping others commit copyright violations and gave them one-year prison sentences.

They also were ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) to entertainment companies, including Warner Bros., Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.

Peter Althin, who represented Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde in the case, said he would request a retrial after Judge Tomas Norstrom confirmed Swedish Radio reports that he was a member of two Swedish copyright groups.

Althin said that constituted a conflict of interest, especially considering that three people who represented the entertainment industry during the trial also held membership in one of the organizations.

"This is completely new to me. It is reasonable that we should have known about this before," Althin told The Associated Press. "It is a clear case of bias."

With an estimated 22 million users, The Pirate Bay has become the entertainment industry's enemy No. 1 after successful court actions against file-swapping sites such as Grokster and Kazaa.

All defendants said they would appeal the district court's verdict on Friday. The request for a retrial would likely be included in the appeal, Althin said.

Norstrom acknowledged to Swedish Radio that he was a member of The Swedish Association for Copyright, as well as a board member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property. He also said he has worked alongside Monica Wadsted, who represented the American movie industry in the trial, to solve disputes related to Internet domain names. However, he rejected that there was any conflict of interests.

"I don't think there are any circumstances that have made me biased in this case," he said.

Sunde -- the Pirate Bay spokesman -- called the judge's links to the copyright groups "quite remarkable," and told AP the case had turned into a "farce."

[FreeHugeMovies]

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