Two Travesties, One Day

Corruption and judicial decay. By Rick Falkvinge.

Get It Try It

2009-06-25: Today two things happened that can't be described as anything but travesties of justice and a total failure for the credibility of our legal system.

The first was the ruling that TPB trial magistrate Tomas Norström did not have a conflict of interest. That the magistrate is a member of a lobby organisation for the one side in the case is in other words totally OK for the Swedish legal system.

And because this is regarded as OK, the Swedish legal system has unfortunately a serious issue with corruption.

This is extremely serious, not in the least because it sends clear signals to everyone under 40 that the legal system is their unconditional enemy, no matter if they do the right thing or not.

But the magistrate who decided the conflict of interest claim has himself worked together with two of the plaintiff solicitors and two of their closest colleagues. This is truly like letting the fox guard the chicken coop. But it's instead about fundamental law and trust in the legal system.

I honestly don't know how to begin to deal with this politically. Our legal system has completely collapsed in these cases what I can see.

The other was the ruling in the Solna district court in favour of the publishing company in the first IPRED trial. So we had a trial where it was obvious for everyone under 40 that the 'evidence' actually demonstrated the following.

And the court chose to go completely with the copyright lobby. Again: this teaches citizens that the legal system is their unconditional enemy and it is absolutely not a good development.

But it's actually worse than that. They also fined the Internet providers $9000 because they questioned the evidence. This is simply disgusting. They're trying to teach people to sit the F down and shut the F up and never question accusations.

The first case is one of corruption. The second is one of judicial decay. They're both extremely serious.