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Johansen Trial Underway
Info is trickling in about Jon Johansen's trial In Norway, where he is accused of violating Norwegian law. Aftenposten and VG Nett have stories, and there's at least one amateur account of the trial. The trial is supposed to last a week, and I'm sure Slashdot will keep up with it, so please submit only *new* stories about it, thanks.
http://www.debian.org/~kju/decsstruth.txt
in short:
He stole the source, violated the GPL and didn't even have a linux-box.
I don't know whether it's true but it sounds convincing
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore! Where's the "War on The Entertainment Industry Axis of Evil"? Sign me up!
I'd also like to point out that we can all file "Pro Se" civil suits against the companies/individuals (once we have a list of the perpetrators), and many jurisdictions have provision for a "Public Interest" suit. Still, it'll only cost you $100 (at least that is the filing fee for Superior Court-where you can ask for any amount in damages), but it'll cost them thousands of dollars PER HOUR, per case. But I don't want to be the 'Little Red Hen', or else I'll be eating my bread alone.
After reading the article, it's interesting to note that a U.S. based company also sells a program which will burn a DVD after breaking the encryption on it.
So as long as you're a recognized company in the U.S., you can do whatever you want. To quote Austin Powers, "Yay Capitalism!"
Actually, many US Companies point to trends in Europe for what they'd like here. For example, the 1976 Copyright act was largely created so we'd be in line with the Berne Convention. Today, the laws are written to be similar to what's going on in the European Union.
State prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde claimed in an Oslo city court Monday that Jon Lech Johansen is guilty of breaching protection mechanisms in DVDs, ...
</quote>
The DVD itself is not altered. The protection mechanism that is being bypassed is in the DVD player.
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.
How about Galileo's trial?
Not really. I mean, in Galileo's trial, everyone understood the issues involved. They simply refused to believe them. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's not like Johansen is tried to prove something that people didn't believe. He may be convicted because the courts don't understand the issues. That's a different animal, I believe.
It occurs to me that having trials where the judge, prosecution, or defense are so technologically behind, how is one to get a fair trial?
Well, there are two literates/commoners that will be deciding his penalty. These are actually mentioned in a few of the articles, and they have first been screened on experience and skills, then the prosecution and defense have settled on the two now chosen.
I read a quote from one of Norway's most prominent geeks, Jon Bing, earlier today; "Johansen is actually charged for breaking into his own property", which could describe the entire case. He has never actually distributed the movies, which is the only thing that Norwegian laws actually forbid. (You *can* copy whatever you want for your own personal use, but you *can't* distribute them)
Further, whatever the judgement will be, this will not set legal precendence in Norway, as the DMCA (or something very similar) probably will be enforced shortly, thus overriding the older laws.
Jon got hold of a trade secret - the decode matrix was open and he snaffled it.
You can't patent or copyright a trade secret, since these require disclosure.
The defendant did not write the program in questing, the state hasn't got the faintest idea how a computer works, and decss is not that (technically) exciting compared to libdvdread.
Have there been any legal issues with libdvdread?
Bullshit. No company paid attention to the fact that there would be a market for a Linux/FreeBSD DVD player (or if not a market, then at least a NEED for a DVD player).
So what if he reverse-engineered the CSS algorithm? Its just a math equation, albeit complicated. The creators of the CSS algorithm must not have been ignorant of Moore's Law (processors double in speed every 18 months).
DeCSS was used for Jon to watch movies he bought on his computer. Most DVD players on windows include a DVD-Application anyway. Is using linux a crime? True, some other people can use the decrypted movie files, pipe them into the DiVX slimming machine and burn out 700 meg VCDs, but
MOST PEOPLE DONT KNOW HOW TO SET THEIR VCR CLOCKS, LET ALONE PROGRAM A COMPUTER.
I still value going to Blockbuster and renting a DVD for $4. Its a great deal for the money. DVD's are $20-30 in price, some cheaper, and its also a fair price to pay.
True, with my knowledge of DeCSS, I CAN rent a movie, watch it, Rip it overnight and burn a VCD then return it, but I dont. Id miss out on the cool featurettes that make DVDs worth the money.
All math equations and computer code are free speech. Especially the GPL. Just let the kid be free.
I used to believe that judges were frequently incompetent. Then I finally decided that there couldn't be that many incompetent judges. This leaves a few choices:
1) many judges have a known track record, and the da is able to manipulate which judge will hear which case.
2) many judges have been corrupted.
3) most defense lawyers are incompetent relative to most district attorneys.
4) some combination of the above
5) ??? (somthing I haven't thought of)
E.g., consider the case which declared that corporations were people. This is a totally absurd assertion, but it has been a "fact" for over a century. It is the source of much that is wrong with the US, and it traces back to one court decision involving a railway company in California during the latter half of the 1800's. If I decide that this is because of corruption, then either every supreme court since then has been corrupt, of the legal system has no means of correcting errors. If I decide that it's because of incompetence, then...
And I'm *SURE* not going to decide that it's a sensible decision.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Similarly, "the judges, the lawyers, the politicians, etc. don't have a fucking clue about technology and yet they are regularly passing summary judgement on it and destroying people's lives over issues they don't even come close to understanding." Hmmm, I wonder which is more dangerous, abusive, irresponsible, and totally reprehensible behavior?
I find it unlikely that 'GUI' and 'GNU/Linux' were the only technical terms that arose. If the prosecutor understood but didn't question the others, why these? Declan McCullagh's suggesting that the prosecutor didn't know was likely prompted by more than a simple, "Please explain for the court what a GUI is." On the other hand, 'GUI' is found pretty early on when picking up the jargon, even thumbing through a 'Computers for Absolute Dummies'...
Ah, screw it. This account is second hand from someone who admittedly doesn't know the language particularly well. Let's wait until we get the actual transcript translated by someone able to read it.
Dyolf Knip
Did you ever write code? Did you test that code? Did you test the code by throwing in unexpected parameters and seeing how the system behaved?
Maybe we ought to the same with the legal system. Take a thousand white people and a thousand black people of varying economic levels and throw them into the system. Knowing full well that every single one of them are innocent I wonder how many will come out of the system and how many will end up in jail or on death row?
As it is now. If you are 100% absolutely innocent the best thing that can happen to you if you are arrested is that you will go broke, lose your job, and lose your family and friends. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you will die. The US legal system is horrible that way. Once you are in it you are fucked royally.
War is necrophilia.