In April, the Pirate Bay team Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde were found guilty of assisting in copyright infringement, along with Carl Lundström, who was convicted of funding the five-year-old operation.

They each were sentenced to a year in prison and $3.8 million in fines.

Despite the ruling, the four were confident it would be at least another year before any of them would actually have to face prison or the coughing up of cash.

The verdict triggered a political backlash among Swedish youth, and the Swedish Pirate Party more than doubled in size to 40,000-plus members. Two weeks ago, the party won a seat in the European Parliament.

The Pirate Bay defendants charged Judge Tomas Norström with bias, due to his membership of the Swedish Copyright Association, and asked a court of appeal for a completely new trial with a different judge.

Today however, the door was firmly shut on The Pirate Bay. The court concluded:

“The Court of Appeal has come to the conclusion that none of the circumstances set out, individually or taken together, means that there are legitimate doubts about the judge’s impartiality in this case. There has not been any bias,” .

For now, The Pirate Bay will keep operating as usual. One of the defendants Peter Kolmisoppi Sunde has just tweeted: “The Pirate Bay will now file charges against Sweden for violation for Human Rights.

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