The wrong arm of the law

24.04.2009
It seems those scurvy Swedish Pirates might not walk the plank after all -- at least, not so soon.

Turns out the judge who gave has a vested interest in punishing copyright scofflaws. Judge Thomas Norström is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association (Svenska föreningen för upphovsrätt) and sits on the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (Svenska föreningen för industriellt rättsskydd).

Other members of Svenska föreningen för upphovsrätt include . (I think I just exhausted my quota of umlauts for the rest of the year -- so much for that long essay on the use of diacritical marks in .)

TPB4 have accused the judge of having a conflict of interest and plan to ask for a mistrial.

If granted, this would hardly be the first time where the matter of whom the judge played golf and drank scotch with has had more bearing on a decision than the legal merits of a case. But the bigger issue is the courts' deep reluctance to join the rest of us here in the 21st century.

Which brings up the other copyright case stuck in my craw, Sony BMG et al v. Tenenbaum. This is the one where the record companies not only ganged up on a file-swapping college student, they also picked on his parents -- one of whom is an attorney. The Royally PO'd Tenenbaums then got Harvard law professor Charles Nesson on the case, who decided .