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.

Comments

Type of Judicial System

[airrage]

What type of judicial system do they implore: either the English Common Law (presumed guilty) or the German way (guilty, and must prove innocence)?

Do they have the death penalty?

Re:Type of Judicial System

[travail_jgd]

I kinda doubt they are going to execute him. I don't even think the MPAA would encourage that.

Not unless they could get the movie rights for cheap!

(Yes, I'm joking.)

Re:Type of Judicial System

[CrazyDuke]

As long as its not American:

"Guilty by reason of pissed corporation."

Re:Type of Judicial System

[Syre]

Countries are not allowed into the EU unless they eliminate the death penalty.

This is why Turkey recently eliminated theirs... to help them qualify for entry.

Re:Type of Judicial System

[Lagrange5]

From WORLD FACTBOOK OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS -- NORWAY:

excerpt 1:

PROSECUTORIAL AND JUDICIAL PROCESS

1. Rights of the accused.

*Rights of the accused. The rights of the accused are described in the Criminal Procedures Act. The accused must be informed of the nature of the charge(s) brought against him or her upon being arrested and attending court for the first time. The accused must also be given the chance to refute the grounds on which the charge is based. (Criminal Procedures Act, Sect.90,92,171).
Although the accused has a general right to attend court proceedings and to summon and examine witnesses, the court can order him or her to leave the courtroom while a witness is being examined "if there is special reason to fear that an unreserved statement will not otherwise be made." The accused must be informed subsequently of the proceedings that occurred in his or her absence. In special circumstances, such as if national security interests are at stake, the accused may be entirely excluded from the proceedings. (Criminal Procedures Act, Sect. 135,245).
The court's verdict must be communicated to the accused as soon as possible, along with information on rights of appeal. Court judgements and orders are to be accompanied by reasons. (Criminal Procedures Act, Sect.39-41,43,52).
The accused has the right to bring appeals against court verdicts, both on questions of fact and questions of law. There are, however, several limitations on the exercise of this right. For example, appeals to the Supreme Court, which is the highest judicial body, can only take place if permitted by the Court's Appeals Selection Committee (Kjoeremlsutvalget). Moreover, the general rule is that such appeals can only be based on alleged errors of law. In other words, the Supreme Court is unable to try questions of evidence related to the issue of guilt. (Administration of Justice in Norway, 1980: 65-66; Criminal Procedures Act, as amended new Chapt 23, Sect. 323, 1993).
The accused do not have the right to have their cases tried by jury. As a basic rule, however, appeals from verdicts reached by the court of first instance on cases concerning felonies punishable by more than 6 years' imprisonment are dealt with by the High Court (Lagmannsrett). In these cases, there is a jury (lagrett) present to decide the question of guilt. (Criminal Procedures Act, new Chapt 24, as amended, 1993).

*Assistance to the accused. As a general rule, the accused is entitled to the assistance of defense counsel of his or her choice during all stages of the judicial process. The accused is also provided with the free assistance of defense counsel, chosen by the court, during the main court hearing. There are several exceptions to the latter rule, such as if the case involves a
certain minor offense, like driving under the influence of alcohol, or when the accused has made an unreserved confession. However, these exceptions apply only in cases tried by the City or District Court. (Criminal Procedures Act, Sect. 94,96,100,107,262).

***

excerpt 2:

PENALTIES AND SENTENCING

2. Types of penalties.

*Death penalty. There is no death penalty.

New stories only!

[Anonvmous Coward]

"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."

The same could be asked of the editors.. ;)

Asinine

[cioxx]

To Blockquoth the journal:

Jon contacting Nomad, who'd written a decryptor but no front-end or keys; Jon blagging a copy of this and promissing not to circulate it; Jon writing a GUI for it [prosecutor asking what a GUI is - pardon ? - yes, really, the counsel didn't appear to know]

Classy. This is the reason why he won't get a fair trial, regardless of the outcome. The prosecution, judges, etc. don't have a fucking clue about technology and yet they are presiding over it.

Same thing goes on in the States. I don't buy the whole "technology is in it's infancy" bullshit. There are tons out out of work sysadmins. Give them books, let them take the bar exam and proceed to become a prosecutor. Everyone wins.

Re:Asinine

[poot_rootbeer]

No, the prosecutor is asking what a GUI is because he needs to ensure that everyone present in the courtroom is using the same terminology. It has to go into the transcript, or the first thing that will come up in appeal is "They were using a different definition of GUI than we were."

If out-of-work sysadmins want to become prosecutors, they can go ahead and enroll at law school. It takes more to become a lawyer than reading a few books and taking an exam, though.

To paraphrase someone, "the nerds, geeks, etc. don't have a fucking clue about the legal system and yet they are trying offer commentary about it.

Re:Asinine

[Dyolf Knip]

"the nerds, geeks, etc. don't have a fucking clue about the legal system and yet they are trying offer commentary about it."

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.

CNN even picked it up!

[quantumparadox]

CNN's interpretation of the beginning of the trial is here.

Amazingly the CNN story isn't actually 100% biased.

Making a case out of him using Linux

[MoonFog]

I watched the news on norwegian televison just 30 minutes ago. They said the prosecution actually made a huge case out of the fact that Johansen was a Linux users, saying Linux is popular among hackers
Here's another article.
Also, here's a statement from Electronic Frontier Norway (EFN) on the matter

Re:Making a case out of him using Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

The more you know (on anything), the more you realize how terrible the news media is. It's disturbing when you see how things are wrong/misreported/overblown on something you know, and then consider that the same thing is going on with the things you don't know as much about.

Is Johansen a saint

[nutshell42]

An interesting link which was posted in the heise-forum:

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

That is NOT the American system.

[DAldredge]

The American system is "Guilty by reason of lesser bank account balance"

False dichotomy

[Robin Hood]

Huh. From an earlier Aftenposten article entitled "'DVD Jon' declares his innocence" (http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article.j html?articleID=452751), I found this quote:

Some view Johansen as a hero, while others view him as the entertainment industry's worst nightmare.

Um... What about both? Do they have a problem with that concept? :-)

So what...

[Pedrito]

So he goes to jail for a couple of years. It'll probably teach him to be a better member of society and not to do such criminal things as try to view copyrighted material on open source operating systems.

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?

Is this something new to computers? Are there cases in the past (like 20+ years ago) where technology or something else causing a major lack of understanding, has caused difficulties in providing fair trials?

Prosecutor got the charge wrong

[tomhudson]

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.

Historical intrest only

[lkstrand]

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.

Funny reason for a trial

[Old Wolf]

The story says:

Info is trickling in about Jon Johansen's trial In Norway, where he is accused of violating Norwegian law.

Unusual accusation for a court to make..

A Norwegians two cents.

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all the law thats used to prosecute Jon was written to prevent people reading other peoples mail, it has a small bit about obtaining illeagal access to other peoples data, but the courts in Norway have earlier ruled that that dvds goes under the laws of music and film, not data. The laws that have to do with music and film in Norway gives the user very wide rights. You can even copy music and film from "close friends and family" legaly.

As long as the crime isn't done in the purpose of gaining money, the law thats used to prosecute him has a highest possible punisment of 6 months.

To sum up, the prosecution has a paper-thin case, and it is my view that they only prosecute because of all the attention, and if the judge isn't incompetent Jon will surley win. But judges sometimes are :(.

(pardon my english)

There's been too much work put into it...

[Kjella]

They can't admit to having spent three years basicly finding out "Doh! He didn't do anything illegal", certainly not in such an international case with lots of media attention. Økokrim (the department handeling serious economic crimes) is on crack anyway. They're the ones that among other things wanted to ban anonymous email because it made people so hard to track. Not to mention no form of anonymous surfing, so webcafes would be forced to record IDs and more.

Kinda reminds me of the latest "doping-scandal" in Norway. Our biggest commercial TV station had been working for over a year trying to dig up sensational news about doping among norwegian top athletes. They didn't really have anything to go on but aired it anyway, and the program was picked apart as a bunch of loose rumors and false information, plus some very bad journalism. The executives ended up holding a press conference disavow the whole program, and cashed out 700,000$+ "voluntarily" to try to undo the damage.

Kjella

Re:It seems that neither sides understands

[villoks]

Oh well.

Unfortunately most of lawyers don't read Slasdot or any other tech-education site (it really is a problem, for example the Law School in Helsinki University had 2-3 voluntary short courses on these topics and most of students didn't take them.)

About reverge engineering, yes, it is allowed under quite strict circumstances, the EU-directive (Council Directive 91/250/EEC, it's the same in Norway and Germany) sets a 6 step test for decompilation:

Article 6
Decompilation

1. The authorization of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of Article 4 (a) and (b) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:

(a) these acts are performed by the licensee or by another person having a right to use a copy of a program, or on their behalf by a person authorized to to so;

(b) the information necessary to achieve interoperability has not previously been readily available to the persons referred to in subparagraph (a); and (c) these acts are confined to the parts of the original program which are necessary to achieve interoperability.

2. The provisions of paragraph 1 shall not permit the information obtained through its application:

(a) to be used for goals other than to achieve the interoperability of the independently created computer program;

(b) to be given to others, except when necessary for the interoperability of the independently created computer program; or (c) to be used for the development, production or marketing of a computer program substantially similar in its expression, or for any other act which infringes copyright.

In this case the it's not clear if the information was readily available (from DVDCCA,NDA + price could make it possible to at least argue otherwise) and also it's unclear whether the reverge engineered software was legally bought or not..

Ville
Electronic Frontier Finland

Re:You have no right to a free software DVD player

[echo]

the CSS encryption system is NOT under a patent, it is a TRADE SECRET.

Once a trade secret is discovered, you have no legal recourse, oh, except of course for the DMCA in the US.

stories have it wrong

[Warpedcow]

I read articles about this on CNN and newsweek (just look at google news for links right now). They all have it wrong. They claim he created software that can be used to illegally _duplicate_ a DVD. WRONG! DeCSS just lets you _PLAY_ a DVD not copy it. They should be prosecuting for allowing people to illegally play DVDs (that sounds rather silly, doesn't it?... maybe thats why they keep saying copy copy copy everywhere)

DeCSS has nothing to do with copying.

-Dave