

Pirate Bay Retrial Denied - ALee
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/pirate-bay-retrial-denied/

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buugs
Does this remove the option to appeal? From my knowledge a retrial is the same
court based on circumstances to be unfair while an appeal is for moving up the
court system. This article seems to use the words otherwise, maybe the swedish
court system is different.

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sp332
Although they have reached the limit of the Swedish system, they are
continuing to escalate their case by taking it to the European Court of Human
Rights. [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/pirate-
bay-r...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/pirate-bay-retrial-
denied-judge-declared-unbiased.ars)

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lucumo
It doesn't say anything about the possibility of appeal of the original
verdict. Just that the decision of the "bias-judge" can't be appealed. (And
apparently, they're going to fight that in the European courts.)

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stse
correct, both parties have appealed the previous verdict, and there will be at
least one other trial. If the court would have found the judge bias they would
have had to retake the previous trial.

Edit: The Local is a good source for English news about Sweden:
<http://www.thelocal.se/20280/20090625/>

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paul9290
This goes to show that copyfight is going to win and we will be paying for
their content and or consume it legally. We were doing so before p2p came
along and we'll do so again.

An unpopular opinion in these parts, but just look at the last ten years of
tech and copyright. Copyright has always won in the end. This industry (tech)
though has thankfully forced their hand and copyright is now offering good
alternatives to piracy that are legal (hulu, youtube music vids, etc).

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weavejester
Putting aside arguments as to the morality of copyright infringement, I'm
surprised you think that the pro-copyright lobby will win. The odds are hugely
stacked against them.

The content industry has a large amount of financial and legal backing, but
the pirates are backed by technological progress. As bandwidth increases, it
becomes faster to download material, and easier to hide your activities from
prying eyes.

The content industry has enough problems with piracy now; how do you think
it'll fare in the next decade when there's enough bandwidth to run anonymous
P2P networks at decent speeds?

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lucumo
If what you're saying is true, then it will not be a victory in the sense of A
defeats B, it will be one where the world is changed. If pirates win, the
whole industry as it is now will disappear and a revenue model will win.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing, I'll leave up to you. But it seems
likely that if the pirates win, both the industry _and_ the pirates will
disappear...

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Raphael_Amiard
>Whether this is a good or a bad thing, I'll leave up to you. But it seems
likely that if the pirates win, both the industry _and_ the pirates will
disappear...

Pirates will disappear as pirates, they will still be there as music sharers.

The meaning of your post is not very clear to me, i don't know if you mean
commercially produced music will disappear. If that's what you think, it's an
incredibly short sighted view, and is not at all likely to happen, even if
music sharing is legalized across all countries in the world. Although, your
writing leaves room for interpretation, you may also be speaking about a
different economical model, in wich case i agree with you

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lucumo
_> Although, your writing leaves room for interpretation, you may also be
speaking about a different economical model, in wich case i agree with you._

We are in agreement then :-) That was what I meant to say.

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ErrantX
Im heavily divided on this. On one hand I think the court made the right
decision and that a completely unbiased judge would have found the same.

But on the other hand there is that little bit of nagging doubt that possibly
somebody (or rather a group) sneakily made sure he was given the case - which
I am dead against!!

Mixed bag all round - TBH I think an appeal is probably the best approach over
a retrial; but it has to be heard again in some form. Right now it is too much
of a hanging verdict to me.

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teilo
Whether an unbiased judge would make the same decision is irrelevant. A
retrial in a case like this should be automatic. Judges cannot be affiliated
with the Prosecution or the Defense in a trial, Period. In the US court
system, this would almost certainly have resulted in a retrial, but perhaps I
am being naive.

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tptacek
From what I'm reading, the question of whether there was an affiliation was
what the panel considered, and they decided no, because whatever affiliation
there was was simply to an organization that espoused intellectual property
and copyright laws as they existed already.

In other words, you can't be forcibly recused from a copyright trial just
because you believe copyright laws are valid in their strictest
interpretation.

