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DVD-films are stored on a medium which is prone become damaged. For that reason, it is very different to copy a movie from a book or a periodical, it says in the verdict.

The court also makes clear that a prohibition against copying as printed on the film cover will limit consumer's legitimate rights as granted by section 12 of the copyright code.

"This practice can be compared to private legislation, and can disturb the balance between interests that the law builds upon," said the judge.

This is good, especially the last paragraph. Apparently, the verdict makes it clear that the film industry is infringing on people's rights, not the other way around. It also makes it clear that any "you owe us your first-born" licenses or restrictions is null and void, and even ought to raise some eyebrows with legislators. It makes it clear that the entertainment industry is trying to take legislator's jobs away from them, by themselves setting all the rules. That ought to make legislators slightly upset, I would assume...

The prosecutor in the DVD-Jon case had to get help from an expert judge to explain what an algorithm is. Here (Norwegian only). The newspaper where I first read this (The biggest in Norway) explains that an algorithm is a "mathematical concept". They used this article to demonstrate the the case was very technically complicated...

Sadly, not all news are for nerds... :)

The Xbox version won't be out until 2004. EB has a tendency to literally make release dates up out of thin air (they've given numerous dates for Duke Nukem Forever, for example) but in this case they seem to be basing the date on this old article. For those who don't read Norwegian the article states that Vivendi's Norwegian branch announced that the release date was pushed back to mid-November, and presumably EB just guessed "mid-November" meant the 19th. Valve almost immediately denied that the game was delayed and they've reiterated the September 30 date several times since then. Again, the Xbox version won't be out this year at all.

Unfortunatly the article is in norvegian.

(He _was_ using an unoriginal battery too)

Appearantly the explosion was powerful enough to make shrapnel put marks in the ceiling :) however he threw the phone on the floor when it started smoking, so noone was hurt.

Exactly what I was taking into consideration when I wrote this article for my employer. I read up on the subject, watched the KLAS-TV broadcasts and concluded that this was probably some promotion deal for their video deal.

However, I also understood that if someone would cough up USD 10 000, they would do it. That's why I wrote the article.

You know, some bands do this themselves.. And they DO break out of college circuits. Why, the crazy little girls even offer some of their music for free! They must be cray-zee, since the only way to make money is through a middleman. I guess that's why they earn less than an artist signed on a large label. Oh, wait. They earn more . (Per CD sold, since they are their own promotor, record label and publisher). But they must suck, right? It must be ultra commercial music? Well, you can always download it and make up your own mind... At least the critics love them.

You know, some bands do this themselves.. And they DO break out of college circuits. Why, the crazy little girls even offer some of their music for free! They must be cray-zee, since the only way to make money is through a middleman. I guess that's why they earn less than an artist signed on a large label. Oh, wait. They earn more . (Per CD sold, since they are their own promotor, record label and publisher). But they must suck, right? It must be ultra commercial music? Well, you can always download it and make up your own mind... At least the critics love them.

Article

Text:

OSLO DISTRICT COURT (VG Nett) - There's nothing in the CSS-license stopping license holders from making a DVD player for Linux, says John Hoy, President and COO of the DVD Copy Control Association.

Tips en venn om denne saken! - Se dagens mest populære tips!

Få nyhetene om The trial against Jon Johansen først - abonnér på VG Nett Nyhetsbrev!
Trykk her!
In the penal trial against DVD-Jon, the case reached John Hoy, President and COO of DVD CCA Thursday morning. DVD CCA and Motion Pictures Association are the offended parts in the trial.

- I am calling from Oslo District Court, can you please call back us? Was the message on John Hoy's answering machine this morning. And when pohne contact finally was established between Oslo and Phoenix, Arizona, a statment on what Jon Johansen broke into followed.

Clear demand

Content Scrambling System (CSS) is made up of an encryption part and a license part. An encryption of DVD movies was, according to Hoy's statement, a clear demand from the film industry for accepting a high-quality format like DVD.

- All DVD movies would be a perfect copy, Hoy explained via interpreter.

A central point in the defense case of attorney Halvor Manshaus is that there was no DVD player for Linux in 1999.

- A company that recieves a CSS license can use the technology in any operating system, Hoy said to prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde.

- If someone wants to make a player for Linux, there's nothing in the license stopping that, he added later on.

Interested in timing

Manshaus was interested in the point of time for DVD CCAs taking over of the responsibility for handing out of CSS-licenses.

- We handed out licenses from the latter part of September 1999, and became the sole entity or publisher of CSS licenses from mid December 1999, Hoy said.

Manshaus made no point of the fact that this after DVD-Jon made the decryption tool DeCSS available mid September 1999.

Another interesting topic Manshaus touched in his examination was wether any clauses on region control existed in the license agreement between DVD CCA and the manufacturers of DVD players.

Would not comment

Hoy was read the clause in the definition list describing what is copy protection means in the CSS license agreement. The encryption part is not mentioned specifically there, and Hoy did not want to comment on what DVD CCA recognizes as the legal definition of copy protection and Manshaus finished off his questioning.

- I can't get himto answer the question, Manshaus said.

Before Hoy testified by phone, DVD-Jon was asked to go into detail on some of his answers from earlier in the trial. Prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde was mostly occupied by stating dates for the turn of events in autumn 1999, whil the defense was busy leveling out negative statements about the Linux community, that DVD-Jon was quoted with in September 1999.

According to the norwegian law professor Jon Bing, the outcome of this court is of historical intrest only:

http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=995988

The reason for this is that after DVD-Jon was accused, the EU has got the EUCD/Infosoc directive wich is the european equvialence to DMCA.

According to Verdens Gang (VG) (in norwegian), the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit claims that the creators of DeCSS are organized criminals, because "DeCSS written for, and can only be used to copy DVD movies."

From what I've read, it seems that they are currently discussing wether or not CSS is a copy protection or not, and the fact that Johansen didn't break any laws when he wrote the GUI for DeCSS. As you know, some german guys did the hard work, and Johansen is taking the kicks.

I'll keep you posted

-skurk

According to Verdens Gang (VG) (in norwegian), the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit claims that the creators of DeCSS are organized criminals, because "DeCSS written for, and can only be used to copy DVD movies."

From what I've read, it seems that they are currently discussing wether or not CSS is a copy protection or not, and the fact that Johansen didn't break any laws when he wrote the GUI for DeCSS. As you know, some german guys did the hard work, and Johansen is taking the kicks.

I'll keep you posted

-skurk

Anyhoo, I guess it isn't just daftness that bring people into this kind of scam. Some get so focused on the prize, they never connect with their reason... In the linked story, a German buisnessman also attended meetings with the nigerian scammers, but realzied what was going on and left the meeting. The Norwegians weren't actually fooled for a lot of money, but rather used in a check fraud. This guy acutally had some 10 million dollars, because he cashed the false chack from the nigerians. Unfortunlately, he transfered most of the money to an account abroad and the he and the nigerians were caught.

So, don't let the greed rule ya!

Woohoo, you got quoted in norways biggest newspaper, isn't that just an amazing honor?

They almost manged to get your point too :)

http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=3282130

However, there's something called time pressure. I mostly work in the Internet section of the paper, and we have a constant time pressure. Always. So when a body is suddenly discovered time is of the essence, spelling is not. In addition, the paper edition has an incredible spellchecking system written by a mathematical guru (The system is called TANSA, if you want to know) that picks up spelling errors, name errors, grammatical errors, syntax errors (:) etc. We don't have that. And the Word spellcheck does not find my kind of errors, obscure grammatical errors and names spelt wrong.

So it all boils down to priorites. Sometimes I can take the time to read the document (Usually this is worthless, if you want to discover errors, have someone else to read it), other times those 120 seconds can mean the difference getting mentioned on national TV and being the one to refer to other news sources. Spelling is the last thing on my mind in the latter cases.

I found this story in a norwegian newspaper this morning. I've not seen it mentioned on any english pages yet though. The Company webpages are still rather non-functional, but I guess some info should appear there soon. :)

It might be worth noting that VG Nett has the same story here.

Interesting thing is, that here in Norway, some of the 'evidence' in a poison murder case was that his web history (Gathered from his OWN computer, thankfully) showed up searches for 'murder', 'Thallium' (a strong poison), 'identify', 'traceability' and 'tissue'.

The article can be found here (Norwegian only)

I just want to congratulate you .. you're now officially commented in a Norwegian Newspaper (probably just on the web, but anyways) .. its the largest newspaper in norway (when counting readers, both online and offline) ..

Enjoy your nick, otherwise surrounded by norwegian text (and yes, they translated your post): here..

Congrats :-)

I actually wrote an article about this last spring in Norway's largest news website. You can find it here. I also got some statements on the subject from the now bankrupt "Magcom" mobile phone manufacturer... :)

...and according to this Norwegian tabloid newspaper that is just what's in store...

I don't get it. A part of my job is to moderate the chatroom at Norway's biggest newssite, and it's fairly OK. It gets a bit boring, and you see a lot of strange opinions, but overall I have to say that I was surprised that the chatters stayed so well on topic and had sensible things to say. Here's the link to the site.
Of course, even if the tolerance for radical opinions is high, sometimes we have to delete racist remarks, etc.

The problem? The trains wouldn't move an inch.

The solution? Set the onboard clocks back one month.

The manufacturer of the trains, ADtranz in Germany, say they're not sure exactly what caused the problem, but they're suspecting leap year trouble.

I guess no one saw that one coming. ;-)

Gunnar

--

This story says (in norwegian) that a new type of trains, that was put into service in Norway the year 2000, couldn't manage the date 31.12.00. The trains simply stopped in their tracks. The train company had to turn the date back a month on all the trains to get them to work.

How many dozens of oekokrim-email addys isn't it up here? It won't help! It's the film-industry that went against him and the other two who made this programme. The technology wasn't even invented by these 3 guys, Jon even challenge the media now by saying he can show them how to copy the film to the disc without using the ** program. It's not about copyright or breaking the laws, just about playing the film from where you want to, really.

For Norwegian readers, the Norwegian paper Dagbladet actually wrote a more "true" article about the case than most of the other Norwegian papers.. you can find it at http://www.dagbladet.no/nyhe ter/2000/01/26/190256.html . For those of you who want to sign the petition against the treatment of him, go to http://www.nytt.no/dvd . He (Jon Johansen) is also available for asking a question or two on the Norwegian paper VG's page, Thursday 27.01 at 5 pm Norwegian time (gmt +1): http://interaktiv.vg.no/CGI/in tervju/intervju/jonjoh . Send in a question if you feel like it. I feel mostly everything is said. And wish for the best.

What I also is a bit proud of, is that the government of Norway is actually reacting to this case in the Parliament. Erik Solheim from the Norwegian party SV asked in the questioning-hour about the rules we have for the Internet and our policy. The Minister of Culture said she couldn't answer to this case because it is still under investigation. At least, the government knows about it by now.

Laerk [you can find me at EFnet, #ultimat]

Seriously, I am *so* tired of all of the kids here. Be a bit serious people. Myself, I am Norwegian, and I've seen all the junk the press has written here - made me be uncertain about what I thought first. But I know now.

How many dozens of oekokrim-email addys isn't it up here? It won't help! It's the film-industry that went against him and the other two who made this programme. The technology wasn't even invented by these 3 guys, Jon even challenge the media now by saying he can show them how to copy the film to the disc without using the ** program. It's not about copyright or breaking the laws, just about playing the film from where you want to, really.

For Norwegian readers, the Norwegian paper Dagbladet actually wrote a more "true" article about the case than most of the other Norwegian papers.. you can find it at http://www.dagbladet.no/nyhe ter/2000/01/26/190256.html . For those of you who want to sign the petition against the treatment of him, go to http://www.nytt.no/dvd . He (Jon Johansen) is also available for asking a question or two on the Norwegian paper VG's page, Thursday 27.01 at 5 pm Norwegian time (gmt +1): http://interaktiv.vg.no/CGI/in tervju/intervju/jonjoh . Send in a question if you feel like it. I feel mostly everything is said. And wish for the best.

What I also is a bit proud of, is that the government of Norway is actually reacting to this case in the Parliament. Erik Solheim from the Norwegian party SV asked in the questioning-hour about the rules we have for the Internet and our policy. The Minister of Culture said she couldn't answer to this case because it is still under investigation. At least, the government knows about it by now.

Laerk [you can find me at EFnet, #ultimat]

In a new article on vg.no, professor Jon Bing at the Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law has some interesting comments.

The 16-year old has probably thought that he was playing around with innocent things when he broke the DVD code. But as the entertainment industry sees this, he has driven an 18-wheeler up to the front of a record store, and said "Now I'm emptying the store!"

Bing thinks that even though the intention was never to create a copy of the DVD, there are still copyright laws and laws that can be used against Jon Johansen and his father Per.

Bing continues: American courts can also claim juristiction in this matter, as the plaintiff can say that they have been hurt in their home market.

The article goes on to show the "nerd support", and cite /. news for nerds as an example of a site where hundreds of nerds.

The stupidos at MCA dont have any rigth to do this since they dident took a copyrigth and their stupid DVD code! Can somebody go tell them that!!!!! Norwegian news story here!

Well, it's all over the news in Norway. The biggest nation wide distributed newspaper even has an article mentioning /. and "lots of people showing support and making contributions towards his legal fees". This is the second article about the case on the said newspaper's website. Mr R.

Aftenposten has two articles in Norwegian, and a short summary in English

Dagbladet also carries the story, but doesn't have an English version. They do however have pictures of Winona Ryder and Claudia Schiffer in rather daring dresses, so it's not all bad.

The Norway Post seems to be napping, which is a pity since it's an English-language paper.

Verdens Gang carries the story, again in Norwegian only, but "Jon (16) arrestert" doesn't require much translation.

Stavanger Aftenblad carries it as their lead story.

CNN Norge have it too but it hasn't made it back to CNN HQ yet.

I want to rant about the whole DVD thing (DVDs suck! DVDs suck!!) but I'll save that for another day.

Aftenposten has two articles in Norwegian, and a short summary in English

Dagbladet also carries the story, but doesn't have an English version. They do however have pictures of Winona Ryder and Claudia Schiffer in rather daring dresses, so it's not all bad.

The Norway Post seems to be napping, which is a pity since it's an English-language paper.

Verdens Gang carries the story, again in Norwegian only, but "Jon (16) arrestert" doesn't require much translation.

Stavanger Aftenblad carries it as their lead story.

CNN Norge have it too but it hasn't made it back to CNN HQ yet.

I want to rant about the whole DVD thing (DVDs suck! DVDs suck!!) but I'll save that for another day.

http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=5 712180

Translation of this article is also coming up.

A belated Y2K bug hit NSB december 31. The trains just would not start - not really unusual for Norwegian trains, but now the dumb fucks at NSB claims it has to do with Y2K. Here's a link for those of you who understand Norwegian.