Jon Johansen DVD Trial Date Set

mpawlo writes: "As reported by Greplaw, the Norweigan 'Byrett' (district court) will try the Jon Johansen DVD case on December 9, 2002. The trial was supposed to take place this summer, but the court decided to postpone the trial to find a technology savvy judge. The case will be tried by one judge and a panel of two lay assessors. Jon Johansen is being prosecuted by the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit (OKOKRIM) under Norwegian Criminal Code 145(2). Johansen created DeCSS software that can enable DVD playback on Linux. It is argued that the DeCSS software is a piracy tool." Here is the Greplaw story with more links.

Comments

Jon Johansen's Age

[RickHunter]

Something interesting I noticed about the timing for this case, that struck me as odd... When Jon was arrested two years ago, he was sixteen. He was, I believe, a minor under Norwegian law, and the charges were dropped. He is now eighteen, if my math is correct, and possibly older. Is this past the age of legal majority in Norway? And if so, could this be part of the motive for delaying the trial?

After all, they probably wouldn't be able to get much of a penalty against an underaged individual who wasn't even the primary coder and who has stated many times that he wishes his code to be used as part of a DVD player. However, now that he's older, they might be able to get stiffer penalties. Or at the very least, get a black mark on his permanent record and make it much harder for him to get into a good college/university or get a good job.

Remember, Johansen is being made an example of. The MPAA is trying to say "screw with our monopoly and we'll do this to you". They, of course, want this example to be as effective as possible.

At the very least, everyone reading this article (especially those of you in Norway!) should support Johansen however possible. Donate money, organize protests, publicize his case. Make it a hot-button emotional issue. Make it clear that we just want to play DVDs, make it clear to people that the MPAA doesn't want them to import movies from another country and watch them before the approved-from-on-high release date, or buy at a cheaper price from the next country over.

Good luck to you, Jon! I remember being shocked back in 2000, when you got arrested on nothing more than the say-so of the DVD CCA for releasing a simple program that did nothing more than read data. I'm shocked that the MPAA's still persecuting you. I hope you can prove your innocence and strike a blow for the right to use generic computing technologies.

Re:Jon Johansen's Age

[Thomas A. Anderson]

Lets take this a step further in examination:

the only way this software could be used illegally is to copy a dvd into another format (say divx) and send to a friend (or no friend for that matter).

No one would use this software to make dvd's of it - the resulting image wouldn't play on a dvd.

I think this is an important distinction.

More important, however, is that *at the time* there was no other way to play dvd's on linux boxes. Nothing in us law (that i'm aware of) says that the mpaa should have control of both the media *and* the players.

My guess (hope?) is this would have never come up if they had released a linux player.

Course an even bigger issue is that fact that never before has *code* been illegal - only the wrongful use of it. I'm sad to see this change...

Good luck Jon

[Cally]

The original Slashdot story about Jon prompted me throw up a mirror on my own site, and link to it from a comment. (I'm a UK citizen resident in the UK, as is the server holding my little site.) A couple of months later I was clearing the christmas mail list backlog when I came across a legalistic document concerning deCSS. To my amazement it seemed I was a defendant ("John Doe #13") in the California case. (The 2600 case is in NYC.)

In the ensuing two and a half years I've become increasingly radicalised (in the geek sense: I had a flirtation with "IRL" politics for a few years in my late teens/early 20s and lost interest pretty thoroughly after that.) In retrospect, this event was the first time I made a small gesture of public support for the freedoms we all consider so important. The reaction to it, whilst amusing, has given me a different perspective on matters which previously seemed unconnected: the importance of the GPL, for instance, the reasons *why* the DMCA is just the tip of an iceberg...

The only moral to my anecdote is this: where's *your* mirror of deCSS? Mine's still there =)