The Swedish Justice Ombudsman’s (JO) investigation of the the Pirate Bay server raid has been completed, and although it hasn’t found any evidence of wrongdoing, they do find a few “irregularities.”
The Justice Ombudsman (JO) found that overall the raid was lawful, that despite rumors that the MPAA, IFPI, and the American embassy had unduly pressured Swedish authorities to act against the Pirate Bay, no evidence could be found that authorities acted unlawfully.
The report does confirm however, that the IFPI, MPAA and the American embassy had contacted the current Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström and the Secretary of State Dan Eliasson about doing something in regards to the Pirate Bay’s blatant disregard for copyright infringement. But, it also concluded that the lobbying carried out by the organization was “an accepted part of the political decision-making process”.
Secretary of State Dan Eliasson replied to their requests by noting:
(a)ccording to the Swedish constitution, it is not possible for the Government or the Ministry to intervene in a specific case. I can however assure you that I follow closely the actions taken by the police and the prosecutors in respect of copyrights infringements on the Internet and I will not, if necessary, hesitate to initiate further measures to improve their effectiveness.
The real “irregularities” it turns out, are not because of undue pressure by the US govt or media lobbying corporations but, concern the actual server confiscations by the police.
When the web hotel PRQ and The Pirate Bay were raided almost every server in the place was confiscated. There were total of 186 servers that were confiscated from PRQ’s server rooms, causing a large number of companies unrelated to the Pirate Bay to be shut down and essentially locked out from their livelihood.
The Justice Ombudsman found that in this aspect the police could’ve returned the confiscated servers that were unrelated to the Pirate Bay much sooner than the week it took them to do so.
The police and the prosecutor were charged for official misconduct, but none of the charges led to an investigation. The judge came to the conclusion that during the circumstances it was justified to confiscate all of the servers.
The Swedish Pirate Party’s leader, Rickard Falkvinge, takes umbrage with the report’s conclusions and says that “I find it astonishing that the JO’s investigation leaves out everything that was a flagrant violation of the constitution.”
Unsatisfied with the report’s conclusions, the Pirate Party is apparently considering taking the case to the European Court of Justice.
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Well it would appear that they are spending quite a bit of money defending this maybe thats where the buy an island fund went legal fees.
If they can win in the ECJ then it will benifit all of Europe and the industry will have to stop using draconian strong-arm tactics. But if they loose…….
They will not win in the ECJ. Their best bet was on the lower courts which try harder to follow constitutional reasonability and common sense for the rights of individual citizens. If this option is exhausted then the Higher courts (which are governed more by politics money and big business then by concern or the will of the people) then they will have to improvise like they did previously and switch servers and country’s and make the stiff but very slow arm of “supposed” Justice follow them.
Honestly the hand of Justice is governed by fear. The populous fears this “hand” but the populous has “on occasion” has risen up and caused this hand to tremble.