March 12, 2010

By By Andre Paine, London

The appeal by four defendants convicted April 2009 for their involvement with the BitTorrent tracker the Pirate Bay has been scheduled for Sept. 28.

The appeal in Stockholm has been allocated nine days of court time.

One defendant, Peter Sunde, has commented via Twitter that the timing is "political" as the appeal has been scheduled after Swedish parliamentary elections on Sept. 19.

The Pirate Party campaigns for a reform of copyright law, and if the defendants lost their appeal before an election it could conceivably boost support for the party. The Pirate Party received 7.1% of the vote in last June's European Parliament elections.

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