"The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website that indexes and tracks BitTorrent files. It bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker"[1] and is ranked as the 106th most popular website by Alexa Internet.[2] Initially established in November 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån (The Piracy Bureau), it had been operating as a separate organization since October 2004. The website is currently run by Gottfrid Svartholm (anakata) and Fredrik Neij (TiAMO).
On 31 May 2006, the website's servers, located in Stockholm, were raided by Swedish police, causing it to go offline for three days.[3] According to the Los Angeles Times, The Pirate Bay is "one of the world's largest facilitators of illegal downloading", and "the most visible member of a burgeoning international anti-copyright—or pro-piracy—movement".[4] The Pirate Bay has about 3,600,000 registered users, although registration is not necessary to download non-pornographic torrents.[5]" [Wikipedia]
The judge of the Pirate Bay indecent was Tomas Norström’s. His objectivity was questioned by defense lawyers because of his support for both national and international pro-copyright lobby groups. Although many people believe that he was bias, Norström disagrees, “My view has been that these activities do not constitute a conflict of interest.” Questions of a re-trial quickly emerged. The District Court of Stockholm confronted the Appeal Court, saying they didn't believe that Norström was biased. The prosecution said the 4 defendants were "assisting in making copyright content available" and asked for millions in retributions.Kerstin Sjoden reported.
"A win-win situation. That’s what author Anders Rydell, who wrote a book about the Swedish piracy movement, calls the pending verdict in The Pirate Bay trial, due in on Friday. Four men associated with the defiant BitTorrent tracking site are on trial for contributory copyright infringement.
If they win, it will be a sign that file sharing is not illegal. If they lose, they’ll be martyrs."The thing is...i feel personal experiences, beliefs, and interests are almost always going to effect a judges ruling, even if it is subconscious. I can't imagine feeling very strongly about something and ruling against it in a completely fair manner. Say you are a judge and you are a father to a young girl. In a trial against a deranged pedophile, can you imagine letting them walk your streets because there was not "enough" evidence because the bastard was smart about it? Personally, i could never be a judge, because i care to much about people and would get too involved.
They were found guilty and ruled $3,620,000 to pay in reparation without a re-trail.
"On 30 June 2009, Swedish advertising company Global Gaming Factory X AB announced its intention to buy the site for 7.8 million USD. The transaction is planned to take place in August 2009. The Pirate Bay founders stated that the profits from the sale would be placed in an offshore account where it would be used to fund projects pertaining to 'freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openness of the internet'."
So tell me... is there such thing as an unbiased opinion? Is it possible for judges to completely put aside their beliefs to determine the ruling of a case? Could you do it?
"I can't imagine feeling very strongly about something and ruling against it in a completely fair manner."
ReplyDeleteI guess a positivist might say something like, as long as the law is clearly defined, putting one's personal feelings aside shouldn't be impossible. The analogy you sometimes hear refers to sports: it doesn't matter whose side the ref is on, the line demarcating the field of play is clear and if you step over it, you are out.
The value of making the law clear is that it allows judges to put their personal feelings aside more easily.
As to your other point,
"In a trial against a deranged pedophile, can you imagine letting them walk your streets because there was not "enough" evidence because the bastard was smart about it?"
The point of the trial is to determine guilt. Until conviction, the defendant is an alleged pedophile. This example reminds me of the "terrorists" at Guantanamo Bay. Many of these detainees never had trials to assess their guilt and, coincidentally, some of the same politicians that questioned Sonia Sotomayor's ability to follow the "rule of law," argued that these "terrorists" could not be brought to trial in the United States because they were too dangerous to risk an acquittal.
In the cases of the pedophile and the terrorist, the rule of law is meant to keep defendants innocent until proven guilty. If we allow our own biases to decide cases, don't we just sanction our prejudices as law?
I use pirate bay a lot, i'm not admitting guilt to anything, but i use it a lot. I personally feel that if you are smart enough to find an alternate means to aquire information than you are entitled through freedom to do so. As per the bias at question i can honestly say that separating oneself from a situation that needs complete neutrality by judges is an admirable but humanly impossible feat. As humans we are subject to emotion, and no one can completely deny their emotions from manipulating their actions. For a positivist, pirate bay broke the law, but what law always fails to address is the macro aspect of the crime. What crime was "actually committed" because no one was hurt, pirate bay users are experienced IT people who usually download content becuase they either need it or need to replace a damaged copy. These laws are taylored to protect the rich and keep the "regulars" paying for the same content over and over again.
ReplyDelete" If they win, it will be a sign that file sharing is not illegal. If they lose, they’ll be martyrs."
ReplyDeleteOn a non-philosophical note, I find it difficult to believe that the founders of the Pirate bay would become martyrs. The torrenting community would simply turn to another site, such as mininova, for the source of their torrents. To my knowledge, nobody has labeled Jamie Thomas-Rasset (Minnesota woman fined 1.9 million for downloading songs) a martyr.
To get back on topic though, I think that no matter how elaborate laws are, judges will eventually encounter gaps in the law. At this point, a judge's idiosyncrasies will affect the outcome of a case.
Additionally, what is a judge to do when the law contradicts itself or is in conflict? (For example, suppose that in the process of utilizing executive privilege, a president violates the citizens' right to freedom of speech.)
In an ideal world, where the law is defined with painstaking detail and never contradicts itself, then we wouldn't need judges to exercise any discretion. But in reality, a judge's biases and prejudices do come into play.
I personally think that it is possible to make an unbiased decision in situations that don’t pertain to you personally. I don’t deny that bias can play a role but it may not always be a factor. As you said a judge's decision can be affected even on a subconscious level. However in some cases what seems like bias may not actually be so. Not to say that the judges or even the law are impervious to some form of prejudice but in certain situations the greater good just so happens to fall in line with the judges’ opinion. In other words this judge may not have any prior association with pro-copyright corporations but he is still able to uphold the core features of law, i.e. not stealing. In this case in particular I feel that bias is irrelevant because regardless of whether the judge is associated to pro-copyright lobby groups, infringement is still wrong so his ruling would be the same anyway.
ReplyDelete