Key witness in upcoming trial against the world's largest BitTorrent tracker site may no be so objective after.The upcoming trial against The Pirate Bay just grew weaker with a new report that Jim Keyzer, the Chief police investigator in the preliminary investigation against it, is now an employee of Warner Bros. Keyzer had a leading role in the prosecution against The Pirate Bay and is expected to be a key witness in the upcoming trial. Being a police investigator he would have been expected to be a credible and impartial witness. But, now new information reveals that the 39 year-old investigator isn't such an objective professional after all. For apparently since March 16 of this year he has been employed by Warner Bros, one of the plaintiffs in the prosecution against The Pirate Bay. Keyzer himself confirmed the information but refused to reveal what his position within the company is.
Keyzer was also heading an investigation where The Pirate Bay sued some of the mayor media corporations for data trespassing. Raising even more questions of impartiality is that that case was recently closed by him for lack of evidence. The discovery was made yesterday by the blog kopit.se, which discovered that Keyzer had changed the employer listed on his Facebook profile to Warner Bros. The Pirate Bay decided to call him up and inquire about it, at which time he confirmed that he is an employee there, thereby raising doubts about his impartiality in all investigations related to The Pirate Bay. "We can't see it in any other way than this being the reward for a work well done from the new employer of the police - the entertainment industry," said Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay.
"Their legitimacy has hit rock bottom," says Magnus Eriksson of copyright critics Piratbyrån (Bureau for Piracy). "This is a legal outrage." Sunde continues:
In a partial response, Monique Wadsted, lawyer at MAQS law firm, which is representing Hollywood in the case against The Pirate Bay, says that "I suppose this is Warner Bros way of expressing how they feel about the good work Jim Keyzer has done. But nothing inappropriate has been going on during the preliminary investigation." In a posting on Sunde's blog today, he further details the story by pointing out that IDG news talked to the Swedish prosecutor Håkan Roswall about what this development means for his case. According to him, this isn't out of the ordinary and is not without precedence. But, as Sunde notes, it does certainly bring up questions about the kind of access Keyzer had to details of their life and how it could be made available to his new employer. He writes:
For a country that so prides itself on being a bastion of freedom and fairness for all of its citizens, it should be disturbing to all that the Chief police investigator can be employed by the very people who's claims he is investigating. What hopes can a defendant have in receiving a fair trial in such conditions? As The Pirate Bay points out, "How nice of Hollywood to come up with yet another unbiased voice to tell us the truth...About time to investigate the investigators!" They might be right. |
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According to Peter Athlin, Sunde's lawyer, the consequence of the information could be that the investigation has to be remade. If the trial wasn't already just a political theatre, this clearly shows that this is not a fair and balanced trial. The copyright industry stands no chance in an objective legal judgment and therefore have to cheat their way forward. 
