Pirate bay trial appeal

Every field has its professional organizations, and the District Court argued that this was no different. Eka didn't fully agree. In today's announcement, he made clear that the judge should have disclosed his memberships up front. His memberships also showed "a commitment to issues of intellectual property that to some extent can be said to be in the rightsholders' interests.

But Eka and the other judges concluded that simply endorsing the principles of copyright law was no grounds for disqualification in a trial; copyright was written into Swedish law, and judges can't be called "biased" simply because they support existing laws.

There has not been any bias," concluded the court. The defendants were charged with facilitating copyright infringement. In denying the appeal, the court conceded that Judge Norstrom should have declared from the outset he was a member of the copyright groups, according to reports.

The verdict has emboldened copyright authorities to crack down on torrent sites, and file sharing in Sweden has dropped. The Pirate Bay, with more than 20 million users, keeps operating as usual, despite the convictions.

The four remain free. It was not immediatly clear what were their legal options following Thursday's decision. The Pirate Bay saga took another twist Tuesday as one of the appellate judges set to hear the appeal of the co-founders' criminal copyright convictions was removed over concerns of bias. The Swedish judge in question, Fredrik Niemela, owns an unstated number of stock options in the music streaming service, Spotify, which has content deals with members of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Oddly, the content industry asked the Svea Court of Appeal to remove Niemela from the three-judge panel ahead of next month's hearing. The industry said it wanted to ensure a fair hearing for the co-founders of the 5-year-old site who were convicted and sentenced to a year in jail for facilitating copyright infringement.

The industry, however, fought calls for a mistrial amid allegations of judicial misconduct at the trial level. The latest development comes as the fate of the co-founders remain in a liberty-limbo of sorts following their April convictions for running the world's most notorious BitTorrent tracker.