Back to topic for a short moment:
This is a big thing over here as well it seems. I mean I found more articles about it on local newspaper then of the recent plane crash.
Anyway half of the charges are dropped, evidence are weak and there is one very important factor that lobbyists in USA have forgotten:
Sweden has for the latest 60 years been the biggest anti-USA country in western Europe. Just mentioning the raid on piratebay as a result from the pressure of companies based in USA will wake up nationalistic feelings of the jury members. That means if they make clear hints on why this case was brought up to begin with, they may indirectly make the jury feel that this is USA vs Sweden thing in which case they will not be found guilty.
Also this may be the breaking point for the Pirate party and all of it's supporters to press for less surveillance and more freedom on the internet. That is of course if they are found not guilty, which will be the result unless all jury members are bribed by the MPAA.
Sorry for being so late... seems like it was ages since the last time I visited the forums. Unfortunetly for your argument, Sweden does not have the jury-system but instead one or a number of judges and/or politicians (depending on which instance (supreme court, what not-court) politicians I think are only in the lowest instance), I am not sure how many there is in the TPB-trail, there seems to be one talking all the time listening to the recordings though...
I must say that the accusation is absolutly bullocks! "Providing means to commit copy-right infringement" (or whatever it is)... come on!! because of the media attention, all major news-channels and magazines as well as hundreds of blogs have commited this crime seing that they have informed thier readers, whatchers, listeners about the Pirate Bay as well as Mininova, YouTube and all other means of receiving copy-righted material that have been mentioned in the trails(QED). What they want to do is illegalize INTERNET, since they want to make links illegal...
I would be very supriced if Hollywood won this one but then again Sweden is going too hell with all the new laws that are passing (If there allready is a thread about this I apologise):
FRA- Försvarets Radio Anstalt (The defence radio centre //free translation)
This defence power has reasently received power to check all information trafic crossing the Swedish borders which in practice means that all e-mails that anyone sends within or into Sweden (since most servers lie outside of Sweden) will be checked no matter if there is any suspision of crime or not, this that I am writing right now will in fact be checked, just to make sure I am not a terrorist in alliance with Al´Quaida plotting an attack on the Swedish government (they will have fun with that sentance ;P ). This law was voted through with only about half (if even that) the parlament present for the voting.
IPRED (I don't know what it stands for)
This will start to go on a trail period on April 1 (God I hope it's an April's fool joke).
What it does is to give single companies' authority that the Swedish police does not have!
It allows companies to force the ISP (Internet service providers) to give away information about who is written to a sertain IP-address (in order to catch illegal downloaders), after they have this information they will send (seen from cases from other countries) a letter saying that you should pay 0.80 of the work you have "stolen" plus an extra fee of the same sum... They are on the other hand kind enough to blackmail yu saying that if you pay within 10 days you will only have to pay half of the sum... after this they have the right to make a search of your home and confiscate all computers, harddrives, mp3-players etc. but even if they can't find anything it is your responsibility to PROVE YOURSELF INNOCENT IN THE COART OF LAW. If you loose they can even force you to pay for an adverticement where you say that you have been charged for illegal downloading!!! Remember that they don't even take into consideration who was using the IP-address at the time.
All this is reason for why every Swedish citizen should join and vote for PiratPartiet (the Pirate Party) first of all for the EU-parlament election in aprox. 70 days and also for the Swedish election in 2010. More information on
http://www.piratpartiet.se/ If you look under "International" there is information in varius languages.
//BETAmember (PP)
