Slashdot Mirror
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 ...
...when someone who would be a star witness does the telephone equivalent of not showing up in court? I wouldn't think that this would completely blow the case against the defendant, but I would imagine that many judges wouldn't give the prosecution much slack if they pulled a stunt like that.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Incase anyone forgot, This is the guy that wrote DeCSS (The program that lets people decode dvds so they can be played in free operating systems).
More info on the trial at Google News (Wouldnt it be cool if slashdot automagicly added a google news link to stories to show all relevant links?)
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
I give this troll 1/10.
Try harder next time.
Shouldn't there be some sort of repercussions for this absence? they're wasting the legal system's time, as well as Jon's. What crap.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
No. The tenets of basic economics are hurting the legitmate consumers every time the MPAA accuses someone of stealing DVDs. The fact of the matter is that DVD piracy is almost nonexistent in North America - unlike MP3s, which can be and are downloaded and burned to CD in minutes, inexpensively. The time and cost of copying DVDs is huge in comparison. DVD piracy just isn't here on a large enough scale to warrant any price increase. Its the same reason gas prices are on the rise in every country on the planet - its making a very small number of people very, very rich.
DeCSS is, in theory, an excellent piece of coding. The problem, as is true with technologies along its lines, is that there is quite a bit of room for abuse.
I think the key here is rather than trying to put this guy away, DVD manufacturers should work with the DeCSS technology to find a happy medium. Obviously, free OS's will need some way to play DVD's, so it makes sense that the technology should expand to include these users. Just putting people on trial in hopes that all these issues will go away is ludicrous. If DVD manufacturers are worried about their products being pirated, imagine the response when the creator of DeCSS gets jailed. This isn't the way to go about it.
Of course, people who can legitimately play DVD's shouldn't exactly be going around DeCSS'ing every DVD and distributing it on Kazaa or your filesharing program of choice. Abusing the technology is just as big a problem as those trying to shut it down.
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
You may also remember me from a meeting at work -- I was the one who asked you to repeat what the group had just talked about, because my disabilities prevented me from paying attention the first time.
I work in marketing.
Yup. Should be on your nearest P2P network by the end of the week. Due to the marvel of 0-day war3z, we'll know what the verdict is before Johansen does.
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
It's because of people like him who copy DVDs that the prices for media are on the rise in practically every country on Earth.
They are? Funny, I though they were going down...
Reminder: find a new sig
Hmm,
I speak English,Spanish, Portequese, and a smattering of french. Born and bred in the US.
I would say that comment is far from the truth though. Even though Slashdot is a US based site so english the language and maybe the rest of you guys are interlopers. So why should citizens of an English Speaking country, visiting an english speaking site, be expected to speak another language? You like slashdot, so you read it in English.
I tend to disagree with that comment because with all the anti-american sentiment that floats around here that most people are foreigners(Canadians included). So I would say I good many of us speak another language.
I agree that many people in the US dont have another language when they should.
1. They dont see the necessity, as English is the dominant business language in the world. You need it for international business.
2. You go anywhere and people speak English because we are big tourists.
3.The US is not in proximity with other countries so we do not have the necessity or luck of having to learn another langauge. Europe you guys are all bordered next to each other, short hops in between, easy to travel. Easy to learn another langauge.
I think you are trolling. 45% of the US speaks spanish I beleive. We latinos are falling out the woodwork.
And most people on slashdot are fairly intelligent, including us North Americans, well traveled, and gasp, speak other languages.
We aint as dumb as you think. Course then Germans are all Nazis, Italian women are all Harry, I could go on.
Jeez
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
I can't beleve that I am replying to a troll... You really think that the Million's of dollars that the MPAA is spending on prosecuting people in other countries isn't inflating the cost of DVD's faster then the "losses" from DVD pirating? This isn't even a DVD pirating ring of criminal masterminds... THis is a smart kid that was proving to himself that such a thing could be done. He wasn't profiting from the MPAA's IP, I bet he didn't even own a DVD burner. It is the high cost entertainment and IP laywers spending endless hours figuring out who they can sue to keep their job and Porche that are driving the (already over-inflated) cost of DVDs up. Not a 16 year old kid who can reverse engineer a weak encryption scheme.
:)(smile)
When you read about Jon Johansen you shold realize that he is not a hero. Not only did tok credit for stuff other people did, he broke the GPL. http://people.debian.org/~kju//decsstruth.txt. However one thing he did not do was break norwegian law. The aternoey representing the state is even having trouble figuring out what illegal he has done. People talk about how this is important in regard to similar cases that may accure in the future. I say we found a pretty lousy guy to represent 'us'.
... because police confiscated his cell phone - thinking it was a hacking instrument??
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Come on folks, virtually everybody in Scandinavia can read and write English, who the heck did that translation? It reads like it was translated from the original Japanese into English by a unilingual Cantonese speaker then translated into Norwegian by a drunken Scotsmen, only to be translated back into English by a committee of patent attorneys.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
What Hoy is insinuating here, is that the DVD CCA has a government granted monopoly on anything CSS related. Judge Kaplan bought it, but it's simply not true. If the DVD CCA wanted a monopoly on decoding DVDs, they should have applied for a patent.
I don't know what the law is in Finland, but in the United States it is unconstitutional for the government to mix patents and copyrights.
Smattering = smatter.
English Speaking = English-speaking.
"I tend to disagree with that comment--"
You get the comment a lot, then?
"because with all the anti-american sentiment that floats around here that most people are foreigners(Canadians included)"
Oh, the prejudiced foreigners. I'm sure everyone is suitably sorry to have tread on your mighty country.
"You go anywhere and people speak English because we are big tourists."
No, they speak English because the tourists don't speak any other languages.
"The US is not in proximity with other countries so we do not have the necessity or luck of having to learn another langauge."
French. Spanish. Hawaiian.
"--bordered next to each other--Easy to learn another langauge."
Unfortunately agains common beliefs, being in motion doesn't make you learn faster.
" 45% of the US speaks spanish I beleive."
No, it's 95%. Of the latino group.
"Italian women are all Harry"
I don't even want to go there.
</tongue>
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Faen! Jeg er fra Amerika (og jeg bor i Amerika) men jeg snakke en litt av norsk!
--Joey
"3.The US is not in proximity with other countries so we do not have the necessity or luck of having to learn another langauge. Europe you guys are all bordered next to each other, short hops in between, easy to travel. Easy to learn another langauge."
/. comments are full of negative American Stereotypes. Anything that helps clarify details from different points of view will always alleviate this hostility.
Better understanding of this point right here would probably reduce some of the negative stereotypes about Americans. The US is HUGE. We're not self centered, we're overloaded with what we have. We're not geographically ignorant, we have enough to know about the US before branching out into other countries. (I couldn't point to Afghanistan on a map any more than a German could point to Kansas City.)
I realize this is off topic, but
Jeg er norsk, bor I Florida, snakker norsk og 6 andre spraak..
(I'm Norwegian and live in Florida, speaking Norwegian and 6 other languages).
The initial post in this thread is one of the causes to why USA is in more armed conflicts with other countries than any other country on this planet is. Namely arrogance!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
No taping in Norwegian courts.
TV from courts is a nasty American fenomena. And it sucks, because laywers pose more than they work, same for the prosecution.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
I've got an excerpt from the court reporter:
"Derp de derp."
"You go anywhere and people speak English because we are big tourists."
No, they speak English because the tourists don't speak any other languages.
No, it's because English is the new lingua franca. Anyone who wants to get along in international business had better learn English. Even businessmen with no customers in anglophone countries learn English, because it's the new common tongue. I once spoke with an anti-aircraft artilleryman in the Finnish military. To learn about the complex systems his unit uses, he had go to classes where they were manufactured: in Russia and France. What language do you think the classes were held in? English, of course!
This is not to say that Americans should not learn more foreign languages (I myself speak French, German and Italian), but we are often in the enviable position of being able to expect other people to learn our language. This is, of course, unfair, but it's also reality.
Your argument, to my eyes, seems to miss a key point. (If not, I apologize and let's just drop it.) It is not sufficient for a technology to have potential ethical uses.
I can think of potentially ethical uses of VX nerve gas but as I technology, I think it should be 'stifled', with extreme prejudice. Now my comparison is unfair in terms of comparing lethal agents to copying a song or video, but I'm trying to make a legitimate point: the primary usages of the technology should be ethical to pass muster... I think the Betamax case hinged on this notion of "substantial non-infringing uses" which is pretty much what I'd like to see. The DMCA, from what I can tell, kind of moves the standard from "substantial non-infringing uses of a device means its OK" to "these dozen or so very narrowly defined usage circumstances are OK but devices in general, since they can be used to infringe in broader situations, are not OK."
Which I'd agree with you sucks. I prefer what I consider the Betamax standard.
Failing that, I would like a legal protection for citizen rights to time-shift and space-shift media. And perhaps some sort of archival right, although I understand why archival rights might need some restriction to preserve streaming media usage scenarios. Still, I don't want to end up in 25 years prosecuted for training my brain to memorize movie scenes and play them back to myself for my enjoyment... (I can see it now: "Your memory cells are an infringement technology! Really? I thought that was only if I had them artificially enhanced? Can I be prosecuted under the DMCA for giving birth to kids and enabling them to pass on the lyrics of a Disney song to their friends by singing them in a playground? Infringing technology indeed!")
--LP
I am American. While most of the Slashdot crowd are fairly intelligent, American or otherwise, most Americans are idiots. Most Americans probably could not find Montana on a political map of the Unites States. They definately could not find Monaco, Andorra, or Luxemborg. We won't bother confusing the issue with places like Slovenia or Slovakia. Worse yet would be places like Chad and the Congo (would that be the Democratic Repubilic of the Congo or Republic of the Congo). Of course even I would have a hard time finding Belarus.
I am only fluent in English. I have studied a few years of other languages, but no where near fluent.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
...where they were manufactured: in Russia...
They buy their AA-weaponry from the guys they are most likely to use them at? Weird.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
hey that was pretty close ;)
--Joey
The tenets of basic economics are hurting the legitmate consumers every time someone steals DVDs.
Isn't another tenet of economics is to allow your customers to actually use the product you sell? If it weren't for DeCss open source users would have no reason to purchase DVDs.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The trial is in Europe & the person they we're calling lives in Arizona.
Yeah, and the DVD consortium is in the US, but the "offender" is in Europe. Something is wrong here.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
1. They want to recieve license fees for every dvd-capable video player in existence.
2. They want every dvd-capable video player in existence to work by their rules-- i.e., the ones that allow content producers to completely set what it is possible to do with each disc.
I agree, but think you miss the point here:
the linux community" will not truly be happy using a closed source video player-- there will always be the person upset he couldn't play dvds on his 10-year-old sparc because the "approved" propeitary player is x86 and PPC only. But much more importantly, this is a problem because open source platforms inherently empower the user.
That user has every right to be angry, as do you. The DVD consortium has, with help from a few friends, make it a crime for you to figure out how to use your own equipment or even tell others how to do the same. It's a concept that matters and should not be belittled with absurd examples like trying to make a computer that does not have an IDE interface run a DVD player. Trade secrets should have no force outside of a signed contract, and should never trump free speech. My purchasing a DVD player is not equivalent to me signing a contract. "Open" OS only empower users to the extent that they have source code. If you don't have the power to help your friends do things there will be no free code and no Open OS and you will be at the mercy of those who exploit you to maintain tools you can't use.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You mean enema?
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
It is, by far, the worlds biggest second language. If a company from Hong Kong is doing bussiness with a company in Japan, the bussiness is almost always conducted in English. Why? Well most Japanese people doesn't speak Chinese, and most Chinese people don't speak Japanese. However most of both cultures does speak English as a second language.
If you want to write something in one language that has the greatest chance of being understood by people form all across teh world, choose English.
Most people are idiots, IME.
Most Americans probably could not find Montana on a political map of the Unites States.
I think I could do that.
They definately could not find Monaco, Andorra, or Luxemborg.
Well, they wouldn't be on a map of the United States! Assuming you meant on a European map then you've picked three of the hardest (outside the Balkans) and I'd have a little trouble with that.
I'm British, BTW; I think you're being a bit hard on Americans.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
My point with a political map was that every state would be colorized.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
It reads like it was translated from the original Japanese into English by a unilingual Cantonese speaker then translated into Norwegian by a drunken Scotsmen, only to be translated back into English by a committee of patent attorneys.
It looks like you've discovered the "technology" behind Babelfish.
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
Thanks a lot for ripping off our article instead of clicking on the link. I'm sure our 10-server cluster of highly tuned servers would be slashdotted in no time. If the click ratio on the English articles go down, we'll just have to stop making the. That's no threat, that's a fact.
You know something? I am sick and tired of people claiming that they actually know something about masses of people in other countries. You don't. You don't have the slightest idea how many Americans can locate Iraq on a map. You don't have the slightest idea how many residents of Airstrip One know that Iraq, err, Oceania hasn't always been our enemy, nor do you have the slightest idea how many residents of the United States are polyglots. You know what? Neither do I. People hear a statistic about how many people in this population are ignorant of a fact the poll-taker believes everyone should know, and from this people draw absurd conclusions about the overall ignorance of an entire population!
The irresponsible parroting of statistics is a far more pervasive and detrimental social phenomenon than American ignorance or arrogance.
American's look ignorant overseas because of a simple phenomenon that is certainly not confined to the USA: Ignorant people are loudmouths. Ignorant people believe their prejudices are facts, and they give voice to every damnfool idea that comes into their heads because they do not know that they do not know anything
It would be best if you took a good look at your own attitudes and inflammatory statements before you accuse Americans as a class, as if there were a monolithic "American" opinion or personality.
I'm not proud of of my country's present administration. My overall impression is that George W. Bush may be one of the least intelligent people to hold the Presidency in many years. I understand that the world is nervous about a "cowboy" President backed by an angry population, and so am I. But remember that while this man appears popular in our polls, this is more a result of our collective outrage than an endorsement of the policies of this administration. Remember he was barely elected, and some still dispute that he was elected. In two years there will be another election, and even if he wins, in four more years he will be out.
Will we start another war? Personally, I doubt it. But let me ask you this: Would there be UN inspectors in Iraq right now if the threat had not been built to a very real level? Diplomacy sometimes has a gunboat component. So even here, while I do not personally know what our government intends, an intelligent person may draw a very different conclusion from the facts than you appear to do.
Ignorance and arrogance are clearly not confined to the United States. The fact that America weilds vast military power does, I grant you, make American ignorance and arrogance of greater import. But even here, consider that North Korea is flexing its nuclear muscles again because Pyongyang (Wow! He knows a foreign capital!) has made the reasonable calculation that we cannot build up the interational tolerance nor perhaps the military capability for two engagements a continent apart. Perhaps America is under greater constraints than you realize.
So this jejune attitude of superiority requires some additional reflection, perhaps, on both sides of the ocean.
FYI: I had roughly 15 minutes to translate this article yesterday, and no spellchecker.
Well in those circumstances, I wouldn't have done it. It looks amateurish. If you had explained at the top of the articles what the circumstances were, people wouldn't have been critical. I've done translation, and I know how difficult it is. Please don't think I was trying to be mean. I admit it was a cheap joke, but it wasn't meant to be hurtful. Humor doesn't translate well, and I apologize if I offended you.
cheers,
p.s. Thanks for posting the response instead of just leaving the negative mod. It allowed me to respond.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Yerp, it's cannibalized from Spaceballs. I read that comment, remembered the 'insta-cassettes' comment, and mutated it towards 'insta-judgements'.
Sadly, I didn't put as much effort into it as I would like to have. Most of what you see there is a copy/paste from a Geocities site. heh.
"Derp de derp."