Slashdot Mirror
Jon Johansen Indicted by Norwegian Authorities
phlawed writes: "This story (norwegian) states that the authorities responsible for investigating economic crime in Norway today (after 2 years of "investigation") charged JLJ for violating a law regarding computer "break-ins", commonly known as the "hacker paragraph". This is for distributing the DeCSS sourcecode. The analysis so far (by media) is that the authorities not necessarily thinks JLJ is guilty, but due to unclear wording in the relevant law they seem to think that the courts should have a look at it... It is worth noting that JLJ has *not* been charged for violating any law regarding IP, piracy or such." I've only found one story in English, which is quite vague. Hopefully the above poster is correct in summarizing the situation.
Everyone who spread DeCSS around must be a crook, right?
After all, it's not like DVDs don't work on anything other than a winblows PC is it?
Doh.
but I'd just like to see something fairly interesting on here once in a while. Who cares about this story / guy?
At first glance, one might attribute that statement to a computer-illiterate senator or to an incompetent journalist. You may be surprised, then, to find that this quote was from Ken Thompson in 1995. Yes, one of our own - a creator of the UNIX system and the command line we use every single day - condemned the antisocial activities of malicious computer users. Which leads me to ask: why aren't we listening, and where is our moral compass?
A few years ago, it was all the media's fault: the media gave much attention to antisocial criminals who happened to use computers. Nowadays, computer crime is rarely front-page news, especially in light of the recent terrorist attacks caused by the usual suspects. So what kind of notoriety, then, are these criminally insane geeks seeking? The fact of the matter is that the open source community here on Slashdot is not only tolerating illicit behavior; it is encouraging it. We are partially responsible for every Brian West, Eric Corley, Dmitri Skylarov, Ted Felten, Randal Schwartz,, and DrinkOrDie member. We are harboring criminals because we are glorifying their acts and lauding them for "civil disobedience." We are not unlike the Arabs who cheered as they watched the Twin Towers collapse on their (banned) TV sets. And like those ungrateful Arabs, we owe our prosperity to the American government and the capitalist society that so many users here seem to despise. We have become our own enemy.
We, as a community, need to stop tolerating this behavior. Instead of encouraging people like Jon Johansen by sending money to the EFF to help them keep these ingrates' lilly white asses out of jail, we need to send a strong message that computer crime is not consistent with our ethical standards. We need to lead by example - log off of Gnutella, start paying for software (even Windows), stop cracking your DVDs and eBooks "for fun," and start acting like an upstanding citizen. It is only then that the powers that be will start taking us seriously and repeal the DMCA/SSSCA/PATRIOT legislation, and start giving us our rights back. It is crystal clear that we will not get our rights back a moment before we get out of the business of producing criminals, and the first step is to stop empathizing with them.
freebsd guy
Oh look, the troll came out from under his bridge!
Really! This guy is very insightful. I've never heard this on before!
HA! Like you'd do a better job anyway, jackass!
"Repeat after me: Europe is not one country.
Of course, the EU will probably create it's own EU-wide DMCA soon bought to you by the usual suspects, but that's neither here nor there."
Europe is not one country yet. Europe does not have its own continent-wide DMCA yet. The point I was trying to make is that if Europeans do not start paying some more attention to the awful shit their own leaders do, you are all eventually going to end up living in states that are just as corporatized as the US has become, and many of you don't have nearly as many constitutionally guaranteed rights to things like freedom of religion, speech, and assembly that the US does.
I am warning the Europeans: letting Johansen be indicted like this is a very, very bad thing. It starts in Norway, it will spread out across Europe and eventually your human rights will be given away to protect the profits of multinational corporations, all in the name of protecting IP rights of corporations that cooperate to scam artists out of the rights to content they created in the first place.
I say all this because over and over again I see Europeans on the internet complaining about American companies being behind all of this, and commenting about the US government as some far reaching arm of corporate power. But I rarely see Europeans complaining about their own leaders being coerced into working against them for these corporations, most of which operate in far too many countries to really be considered American (And many of the companies involved, like Sony or Virgin were never American in the first place.). Right now you all have a very good chance make some noise and get your leaders in line. Don't blow it.
Esto es el mensaje primero?