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Update On The Jon Johansen Trial
nordicfrost writes "The trial against Jon Johansen goes on. Today, John Hoy of the DVD CCA was examined by phone by the defense and the prosecutor in Oslo. We have set up a page to follow the main events in the trial here, in English. The documentation of evidence, and the fact that Hoy didn't answer the phone when the court called, delayed the trial so the final proceedings may not be finished before Monday afternoon." Update: 12/12 23:50 GMT by T : This wasn't really a Science story ...
Article
Text:
OSLO DISTRICT COURT (VG Nett) - There's nothing in the CSS-license stopping license holders from making a DVD player for Linux, says John Hoy, President and COO of the DVD Copy Control Association.
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In the penal trial against DVD-Jon, the case reached John Hoy, President and COO of DVD CCA Thursday morning. DVD CCA and Motion Pictures Association are the offended parts in the trial.
- I am calling from Oslo District Court, can you please call back us? Was the message on John Hoy's answering machine this morning. And when pohne contact finally was established between Oslo and Phoenix, Arizona, a statment on what Jon Johansen broke into followed.
Clear demand
Content Scrambling System (CSS) is made up of an encryption part and a license part. An encryption of DVD movies was, according to Hoy's statement, a clear demand from the film industry for accepting a high-quality format like DVD.
- All DVD movies would be a perfect copy, Hoy explained via interpreter.
A central point in the defense case of attorney Halvor Manshaus is that there was no DVD player for Linux in 1999.
- A company that recieves a CSS license can use the technology in any operating system, Hoy said to prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde.
- If someone wants to make a player for Linux, there's nothing in the license stopping that, he added later on.
Interested in timing
Manshaus was interested in the point of time for DVD CCAs taking over of the responsibility for handing out of CSS-licenses.
- We handed out licenses from the latter part of September 1999, and became the sole entity or publisher of CSS licenses from mid December 1999, Hoy said.
Manshaus made no point of the fact that this after DVD-Jon made the decryption tool DeCSS available mid September 1999.
Another interesting topic Manshaus touched in his examination was wether any clauses on region control existed in the license agreement between DVD CCA and the manufacturers of DVD players.
Would not comment
Hoy was read the clause in the definition list describing what is copy protection means in the CSS license agreement. The encryption part is not mentioned specifically there, and Hoy did not want to comment on what DVD CCA recognizes as the legal definition of copy protection and Manshaus finished off his questioning.
- I can't get himto answer the question, Manshaus said.
Before Hoy testified by phone, DVD-Jon was asked to go into detail on some of his answers from earlier in the trial. Prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde was mostly occupied by stating dates for the turn of events in autumn 1999, whil the defense was busy leveling out negative statements about the Linux community, that DVD-Jon was quoted with in September 1999.
Why Slashdot is under attack
The world isn't designed for Slashdot readers. Fool.
I don't know who this "nordicfrost" is in person, but his home page is the index page of VG, the leading tabloid paper in Norway. Also, the link to "we have set up ... here in English" points to the same paper. I hereby assume that "nordicfrost" works for VG.
This auto-slashdotting appears the day after several Norwegian papers accuse the main tabloid competitor of VG for cheating in the national "we-have-the-most-popular-web-site-in-Norway". The competitor had made a popular Norwegian game site give all its web hits to them.
Some people may think that auto-slashdotting is more of a cheat, but as the Jon Johansen case shows, what "some people" may think is not necessarily what counts. Money rule.