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

What?

[Telastyn]

It is a piracy tool.
It's also a tool with legitimate usage.
The question is wether the law still counts when the tool has a reasonably legitimate use.

Congrats to the Norwegians for taking the time for a fair trial by a competant judge.

Re:What?

[Cally]

It's a priacy tool.

It's funny, there's a guy with a foldout table outside my local tube station (Brixton, London, UK) selling DVDs - often of films which are still on theatrical release, or indeed have only just opened - and I'll eat my hat if deCSS was used for *any* of them. Why should a copyright infringer go to all the trouble of decrypting an MPG video file when the encrypted version will play just fine on Fred Bloggs' standard home DVD player? So someone can tie up their broadband connection for a couple of hours, uploading a ripped film to total strangers - for *free*?? Get real, these blokes want to make MONEY! They can do that selling encrypted DVDs to people owning normal players much, much more easily than trying to sell them on the net.

Re:What?

[Kwikymart]

Yah, but you can pretty much already do that with bit-for-bit copies anyway. The decryption is done entirely by the player itself (which is legal)... the output is just dumped to disk or piped to a mpeg encoding program. Though I havn't ripped any DVDs myself, I think this is the preferred method of doing things.

Links

[SkipToMyLou]

EEF information on the Jon Johansen case.

Read the indictment. in Norwegian.

Linux World interview with Johansen.

Swedish coverage of the case.

EEF campaign to free Johansen.

Old slashdot article about original indictment.

wow, irony is heavy in here...

[edrugtrader]

courtTV will be releasing the entire trial on DVD with 3 different camera angles, and a secondary audio track with commentary by the judge.

Re:wow, irony is heavy in here...

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

*sigh* DeCSS is /only/ to deencrypt the movie. DeCSS has nothing to do with regions. You can need DeCSS to watch a region "0" movie. You don't need DeCSS to watch an unencrypted region 2 movie.

DeCSS was THREE people

[Anonymous Coward]

Taken from the Greplaw link, copy pasted and formatted. Originally by "Seth Finkelstein".

As Jon Johansen put it himself in an old interview:

Jon Johansen: I'm 16 now, I was 15 when it happened ... and the encryption code wasn't in fact written by me, but written by the German member. There seems to be a bit of confusion about that part.

LinuxWorld: The other two people that you had worked with to make the player are remaining anonymous -- is that right?

Jon Johansen: Yes, that is correct.

...

LinuxWorld: Do you know why they want to remain anonymous?

Jon Johansen: They are both a lot older than me, and they are employed. So I guess they just didn't want the publicity, and they were perhaps afraid of getting fired.

Legitimate Usage

[Bonker]

It's just like the idiots who want to outlaw balacavas. Sure, they're 'terrorist masks', but if you've ever been in the cold for long enough, they're simply a necessary fact of life.

For a good deal of fair-use DVD software, DeCSS was a necessary step.

Case in point: Circumventing region restrictions. No way, no how are region restrictions in any way protected under copyright law. Neither is not playing the disk on the OS of your choice.

Even if you want to complain that he wrote code for Windows rather than Linux, here's an example from my own situation, since I use windows for media tools: For a long time, (until a firmware patch came out) my mobo would not support DMA to my DVD drive under Windows 2000. This means fairly slow access speed and jerky, out-of-sync playback in any of the good software DVD players for win32. By ripping the DVD to my harddisk, however, I can watch it at normal quality settings. Without DeCSS and rippers based on it, I wouldn't be able to do that.

Re:Legitimate Usage

[stubear]

Actually, region encoding is protected by copyright law. It falls under the distribution clause as it limits distribution in certain geographical areas of the world as per the wishes of the copyright holder.

Re:Legitimate Usage

[ShadowDrake]

If it's supposed to limit distribution, it's a remarkably ineffective way to go about it.

First, aren't there a relatively small number of regions? (8?) That doesn't make for very fine-grained control, plus, once the regions are set, you're stuck with them, so it can't be used to say "This release goes to countries A, B, and C, but this one goes to A and C and perhaps D but not B." Unless the industry knew exactly what regions would be needed for all time, this will not be a suitable solution.

Second, the region control ties it not to a specific country (could we have that technology-- perhaps, by putting a GPS in every player), but a specific set of players. If you're desperate enough to watch a Region X disc in Region Y, what stops you from importing a Region X player (and, if necessary, a compatible TV?) I believe this has been done occasionally to bridge the TV standard barrier with video tape.

Third, I may be mistaken, but isn't the region code not honoured by all players? I'm thinking some older players didn't handle it.

I feel like these people are trying to say "We locked the bank vault" when they applied duct tape and a shrinkwrap licence to the door.

Re:Instead of slammin Jon for making DVD's playabl

[edrugtrader]

it isn't just playback on linux... it is playback on linux from the harddrive... NOT the original DVD disc.

if mother teresa ran the record companies, all we would hear is shitty local bands that she gave all the airplay to cause they were 'nice boys'.

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

[rmassa]

Actually, you should be the one opening your eyes to a bigger picture.

Diluting the percieved crime is the best way to find the parties who are most culpable. The people who are at fault in this case are the ones who _pirate_ the movie and use the tool that John wrote for non-legal purposes, not those people who want to watch a dvd on their damn linux box. What this kid did was not (or should not be) illegal. What people are using his tool for is illegal. You can't imprison someone for creating something that "might" be used for illegal purposes, if their intent and wish for developing that tool was for something that should be perfectly legal. (watching a DVD that you purchased with your own money).

Diluting this issue is exactly what should be done, because we don't charge gunsmiths with murder. (Even though guns see their most widest use in killing people)

Court room transcript

[sam_handelman]

JUDGE: Would that you could render this extermination unnecessary by renouncing this method of illegal decryption!
JOHANSEN: No, Your Honor, it cannot be. I don't think much of our profession, but, contrasted with respectability, it is comparatively honest. No, Your Honor, I shall live and die a Pirate King.
(SONG -- PIRATE KING)
JOHANSEN: Oh, better far to live and die
Under the flightless bird I fly,
Than play a corporate raider's part
With a pirate head and a pirate heart.
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where pirates all are well-to-do;
But I'll be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King.
For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!
For I am a Pirate King!
SLASHDOTTERS:You are!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!
JOHANSEN:And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King.
SLASHDOTTERS:It is!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!
(Inserted to avoid lameness filter.)
Hurrah for the Pirate King!
JOHANSEN:When I sally forth to seek my prey
I help myself in a royal way.
I rip a few more flicks, it's true,
Than a well-bred hacker ought to do;
But many a hack with a first-class clone,
If he wants to call his warez his own,
Must manage somehow to get through
More lines of code than e'er I do,
For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!
For I am a Pirate King!
SLASHDOTTERS:You are!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!
JOHANSEN:And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King.
SLASHDOTTERS:It is!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!
(the lameness filter, to avoid, inserted.)
Hurrah for the Pirate King!
(exeunt.)

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 =)

Re:Distribution

[topham]

Somebody one day is going to have to explain to me why breaking a license related to Copyright is a criminal act, while breaking a contract is civil...

Oh wait, because somebody bought the legislature...

Re:At last...

[Shanep]

(it will take a while to transition my mum to Linux but it will be done for performance and stability reasons)

Ahh yes, the most excellent Mum Linux 2000. I hear it is highly compatible with most Mum's and will easily install over the old Mum OS via UCB (Universal Cerebral Bus).

Plus, it's Debian based!!! Yeah!! dpkg -i breakfast.deb !!

it's true

[commodoresloat]

How do you expect them to make a quality product if they can't earn a living selling it?

You are so right. DVD piracy is out of control, and Hollywood producers are out in the streets starving. I saw Steven Spielberg just the other day sitting on a corner wearing a $4000 suit with a sign that said "Will Direct for Food." And I saw Michael Eisner eating oysters at McCormick and Schmick's and he only ordered a $50 bottle of wine! Can you imagine? I swear I saw him wince with agony when he took the first sip. These poor poor men, and it's all the fault of you Linux zealots with your theftware on T-shirts!!

Re: Legitimate ? No second sale here

[out_to_lunch]

Bzzzt, sorry, thanks for playing. Once I've purchased a piece of copyrighted material (be it a book, cd, dvd, or something else), I'm free to distribute the one, original, legal copy I have where I like. I can send it off to my friend in Europe.

[ or ] but once sold, the person can resell it or use it anywhere in the world that they like. When I buy a paperback book in europe, and fly home with it, customs doesn't wrestle me to the ground for distribution infringment

Er - no, incorrect. USA First Sale rights only apply in the USA, unfortunately.

Levi recently took the major UK supermarket to court in the UK to prevent them buying jeans legitimately in the USA and importing them, on copyright grounds. Levi won.

The reason individuals are not prosecuted, let alone wrestled to the ground, is simply that it is uneconomic. Sad but true.

This case may well end up illuminating Norwegian law only. The access was illegal because the DVD-movies were sold with the resctrictment that the user used only autorised playback equipment. The terms visible to a consumer at the time of purchase on my region 2 copy of Lord of the Rings does not contain such a clause, even in the bit you need a magnifying glass to read.

At least the publicity should move along the process of getting Hollywood back in their pram.

Re:Distribution

[nuggz]

It may be bullshit, but there is nothing which prohibits copyright holders from limiting use of the material.

Yes, they can prohibit anything they want.
There is however no way to enforce this. I can prohibit you from wearing socks and sandals, doesn't mean I have any power for force you to comply.