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"Judicial Scandal" In Pirate Bay Case
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:08 AM
from the revolving-door dept.
from the revolving-door dept.
dr_d_19 writes "Swedish media are reporting that Jim Keyzer, one of the police officers involved in investigating the Pirate Bay case, began working for Warner Bros. a few months after the investigation was finished. Peter Sunde, one of the men behind TPB, calls this a 'Judicial Scandal.' Quoting from TheLocal article: 'If the police officer is found to have entered into discussions with Warner Brothers before the end of the investigation, which took a year and a half to complete, it is possible that the prosecution will have to scrap its findings and start again.'"
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Record Labels Sue Spanish P2P Pioneer For $20M 69 comments
elguillelmo writes "Promusicae, the Spanish record industry association, has sued MP2P Technologies and its founder, P2P pioneer Pablo Soto, for $20 million, citing unfair competition. Soto is behind the recently launched Omemo, an open source social media storage platform that allows users to share files anonymously, and the MP2P protocol, among other developments. Soto announced the organization's intention to defend itself in a statement published on his blog (in Spanish, Google translation)."
TomTheGeek notes related news that Warner Brothers has admitted it employed one of the investigators in the case against the Pirate Bay founders. We discussed initial reports of this controversy last month.
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Corruption? (Score:5, Funny)
So colour me surprised...
Role reversal (Score:5, Insightful)
I was being harrassed for a long time by this cop, and he finally arrested me and roughed me up slightly. I went to the same gym as the local dealer, and he had a word with the police chief over their weekly brewskis, and the fucker left me alone after that.
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Re:Role reversal (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Interesting viewpoint you've got there (Score:5, Insightful)
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Criminal != Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who wish to control you like to conflate 'criminal' with 'wrong','immoral','evil', etc...
This assumes that the law is never wrong, when in fact, the law is often wrong.
It's a common misconception, especially in the USA.
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Re:Interesting viewpoint you've got there (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Interesting viewpoint you've got there (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A drug dealer, on the other hand, is clearly violating laws in many countries. I feel confident when I say that dealing drugs (depending on the drugs) is illegal in Sweden. From the US DOJ's World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are they [piratebay.org] "criminals"? They haven't been convicted of anything. The fact that they follow a philosophy of anti-copyright doesn't make them criminals.
And why, pray tell, do you think being a drug dealer is any different? I'm just referring to the laws and general accords we have in society. I don't think drug dealers are, for the most part, doing anything wrong.
You seem to not have made the connection that legal/illegal has nothing to do with right/wrong.
While I too personally don't see dealing in drugs as wrong, but as for other people, there is a large group that thinks it is wrong, and a large group that thinks its right. The fact people think its right or wrong does not at all change the fact drugs are illegal, both in the US (where you are talking about) and in Sweden (where every one else is talking about.)
Running a tracker also has nothing to do with righ
Re:Corruption? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Corruption? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Corruption? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Corruption? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Corruption? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Corruption? (Score:5, Funny)
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Two suspicious stories about Warner in one day? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Two suspicious stories about Warner in one day? (Score:5, Funny)
Not in Sweden!
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Re:Two suspicious stories about Warner in one day? (Score:5, Insightful)
They've recently accepted new jobs at Time-Warner.
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Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Conflicts of interests (Score:5, Insightful)
The particular aim is to stop any competition or checks and balances that might restrain the growth of their power. Conflicts of interests and corruption don't matter to them, they have their own values and own replacement values over the traditional Judeo-Christian values that built the modern world.
So a police follows old media companies rather than the good of society. To him he feels no shame because he does not believe in democracy, he believes in "Intellectual Property", a doctrine not unlike the divine right of kings. Like Tudor monarchs gave out monopolies to the nobility and enforced them with the sword, so does the new nobility.
If we really lived in a democracy, then filesharing would be legal, because more people fileshare than vote for the government [commandline.org.uk].
Re:Conflicts of interests (Score:5, Insightful)
In the East, Judeo-Christianity has never had much of an influence on society. The strongest moral and ethical influences in the East come from various forms Buddhism and Hinduism, along with Shinto and other Eastern philosophies.
In the West, most of what some might call "Christian values" or "Christian ethics" actually have their roots in Greco-Roman pagan thought. St. Augustine, Sir Thomas More, and many other shapers of modern 'Christian values' were all essentially platonists (or more precisely, neoplatonists [wikipedia.org]) In fact, one could argue that there is really no such thing as 'Judeo-Christian values' and that even many of the moralistic concepts of Judaism came straight out of another conetmporary religion, Zorastrianism.
Oh, well, mod me off topic.
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Re:Conflicts of interests (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Furthermore, Judaism didn't become monotheistic until after the development of Zorastrianism. The Hebrews, beginning before the history beginning in Genesis and the rest of the Torah, were a polytheistic culture [blogspot.com], but once they encountered outside inf
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I agree that there wasn't as much copyright litigation going on, but that's because copyright couldn't BE infringed easily back then. Printing was expensive and distribution was expensive.
However, patent infringement was rampant. Did you ever won
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All your Cops are belong to us. (Score:5, Funny)
These guys are hilarious.
Surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh it gets better (Score:5, Interesting)
For those who understand Swedish:
http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/artikel_1149973.svd [www.svd.se]
In all this mess lets have a look at the scores:
RIAA and the prosecution:
"Ministerstyre" (roughly speaking illegal manipulation of MPs )
Denial of service attacks
Illegal search and confiscation of private property
Bribing police investigators
TPB:
Assistance to commit copyright infringement ( which probably isn't even illegal in Sweden ).
Nice one.
Sorry.. got distracted... (Score:5, Funny)
I was approriately shocked and outraged until I noticed the "Hottest top ten" Sweedes of the week link.... I don't know why, but I kinda got side tracked... sorry....
P.S. Search for "The week's top ten" on the newspaper site if you want to see it.......
P.P.S I'm I the only one who noticed the link?? I thought this was
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Your [insert loved one here] gets accused of fraud by [insert evil corporation here]. They seize your [loved one]'s possessions and spead viscious lies all over the media and the internet about your [loved one]. Right after the investigation is over and your [loved one] is absolved in court (but maybe not in the court of public opinion), one of the investigating officers goes to work for [evil corporation].
Different story? Not really.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Aaah, but that is not how the police is supposed to be working. Their job is not "find evidence that supports the claims of the plaintiff", their job is "investigate the claims of the plaintiff and try to figure out what really happened". But from what I've seen of the US legal system I can understand that you're confused, after all, not calling a traffic cop "Sir" can land you in jail there...
/Mikael
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Said conflict of interest opens the witness to accusations of evidence corruption/planting, witness tampering, etc... If he's supposed to supply the evidence, and he has a vested interest in WB winning, then he can easily subvert the due process of law for his own gain by helping them.
Any defense attorney with an IQ above 20 would tear a case built on that evidence to shreds, assuming the judge is a moron and allows it in the first place.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
Changing careers is one thing, changing jobs to someone who may benefit from *evidence* you gather in a trial against someone else is clearly a conflict of interest and unlawful in most western countries that I know of. You just do not do it. In many locales (not sure about his), he could be looking at jail time depending on what comes out about his involvement, time frames, actions, etc. Too bad we don't have restrictions against lawmakers doing the same thing.
InnerWeb
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
"There's nothing wrong with the cop taking the new job..."
At least here in the U.S., the "revolving door" of government workers moving into industries they've had contact with previously is more than just common. It is corruptively common.
A huge portion of the higher-ups in the airport screening TSA was former air lines management and as a screener, I had witnessed lots of incidents where the requests and even demands of the airlines resulted in relaxing security of the airport, the flights and all the innocent uninvolved people were put into potential security compromise at the behest of the airlines.
The TSA and the FAA should be regulating the airlines, not the other way around. The same goes for anything the government is charged with regulating. When those connections exist, it should ALWAYS be considered improper.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
It's not necessarily the case that there is anything wrong with the cop taking the job. He may have done a bang-up job preparing the evidence for the prosecution. We don't know. However, I don't think that's the issue at hand. The ex-cop needs to not merely avoid impropriety. He absolutely must avoid the appearance of impropriety. His actions and perceived honour can make or break the case based on his credibility. And now his credibility is shot.
If he's a lead detective, he absolutely cannot take a position with anyone for whom he has gathered evidence for trial. The appearance of impropriety should be enough to quash that. Further, he should have an absolute duty to relate to his commanding officer and the prosecution the offer of the position, whether the offer was during the investigation (which would result in him being removed from the investigation immediately, some sort of sanction against the petitioner, and possibly even the abandonment of the entire investigation) or afterward (which should result in sanctions against the petitioner, even if it's a slap on the wrist). If Swedish law has similar discovery rules as the U.S., the prosecution should then immediately inform the defense. And the cop cannot take the job unless the entire action is dropped with prejudice.
If he's a peon in the investigation, though, the rules are different, though not completely. Informing the lead detective (who is likely their CO) and the prosecution is still required, and their telling the defense still is likely required, depending on the law, and he can only take the position if the lead detective and the prosecution agree that they don't need any of the work he put into the investigation. Generally, this would mean that the prosecution feels confident that they can argue "inevitable discovery" and that the evidence itself could not be tainted. In this case, THEN he could take the job. Though I doubt that WB would be hiring a peon ;-)
Just my thoughts on it.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And that's the whole crux behind the affair: It might taint the investigation, because the investigator has a personal interest in a certain outcome of the case. It doesn't necessarily have to bias the investigation, but j
Re:To Quote Futurama.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:To Quote Futurama.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Little too convinient (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:scandal, in my judicial system? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is an immigration judge out here who has all but said that he became a judge so he could help keep immigrants out of this country. Judges shouldn't have an agenda.
Slightly off topic I realize, but my main point is that little things like this happen all the time, all around the country and world. They will continue to happen as well and honestly, there doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot that can be done about it.
The US Federal judges seem to be the best and most impartial. They are paid well and have liftime appointments, thus they don't have to make decisions in order to appease a public and keep their office. They can decide what is right.
The drawback is that it takes (usually) huge amounts of resources to select these people. Local governments don't have that kind of time/money.
I'd be curious to know what the judicial appointment/election status is in this case.
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Re:How about trying the case on its merits? (Score:5, Informative)
If it looks like the cop doing the investigating is on the take, its not unreasonable he'd suppress evidence that proves innocence while collecting all evidence that determines guilt. Sorta like how the police officer was said to have planted the bloody glove on OJ's property. It makes it difficult to get a guilty verdict so the case would either be thrown out directly or through the Jury bringing reasonable doubt into the equation.
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Re:You know what the thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether those two people are man and wife in bed, or two people connected only by a bittorrent, they still have a right to privacy.
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