'DVD Jon' Acquitted On All Counts in DeCSS Case

benh57 writes "Jon Johansen, the author of DeCSS, has been acquitted on all charges by the Norwegian Supreme Court.' Johansen and his defense attorney Halvor Manshaus won on all counts, with the Oslo court ruling that Johansen did nothing wrong when he helped cracked the code on a DVD that was his own personal property.'" Here's Aftenposten's story, in English. Read on below for some more links, and please post others in the comments. Update: 01/07 14:02 GMT by T : Reader Torstein Grotnes writes with a correction: The court which cleared Johansen is not Norway's Supreme Court, but rather "the 'tingrett' which is two steps below 'supreme court' level."

Here's John Leyden's story at the Register about the ruling.

LarsBT links to this Reuters newsflash and points out that since Johansen's arrest, "Norway has introduced legislation similar to the European Unions directive on copyright [pdf], making it illegal to circumvent any copyright protection - making it highly unlikely that he would be found not guilty under these new rules."

An anonymous reader writes with some background (or do a search on Slashdot for DeCSS ;)): "Read the DVD-Jon lawsuit story here and here" and notes that "'the prosecution decided to charge Johansen with a data break-in, rather than handle the matter as a copyright case.' The court said that DeCSS could be used both legally and illegally and referred to similar cases outside the computing industry. The court said it was difficult to conclude on Johansen's intentions with DeCSS, but there was no conclusive evidence."

Comments

Norway

[muyuubyou]

Thank God this guys is norwegian and didn't drop by the USA.

I wonder what happened if he was american

Sklyarov anyone?

Re:Norway

[Floyd Turbo]

I certainly agree that Adobe should pay, and pay heavily, for the harm they did to Sklyarov and Elcomsoft.

The same should apply to the harm that the MPAA did to Johansen.

Of course...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

This simply shows that at least in Norway decrypting a DVD is not data theft. OTOH, since the prosecution did not try to charge him with copyright circumvention we still have no ruling on the matter.

Victory

[E-Rock-23]

And somewhere, echoing through the mountains of Norway, the Hallilujia Chorus is heard...

Score one for the good guys. This counts as a big win for Linux users, as we now have a case to cite. While that might not mean much here in the United States, it is a shininhg example that not all circumvention software is intended for use in pirating.

It also marks a major slap in the face for the MPAA, who needs one at the moment. They've been throwing their weight around too much the last few years, and it's about time they got put in their place. Now, all we need is a similar precident here in the US, and our rights to do what we want (privately, of course) with things that we buy will be ever the slightest bit safer.

I happen to have the DeCSS code (and no, I won't send it along, so don't ask). I haven't compiled it yet. I kept it around in the event that my DVD ROM would go to hell (which it did), so that I could boot into Linux and simply watch my DVDs. I wasn't going to rip them, burn them and ship them off to my friends. I was just going to watch them. Now, I happened upon a DVD player for free, so I really don't need it at the moment. It's just nice to have around, just in case.

Overturning-the-EUCD-HOWTO

[infolib]

Since a lot of posts in this thread are about the European Copyright Directive (EUCD) I would like to give a brief summary:

The EUCD has been passed. This means that the member states must implement it in their national legislation. They should have done so by Dec 22 '02 but only Denmark and Greece made it. Status reports here. Norway's not a member of the EU.

The EUCD can be overturned in two ways:
1. In the European Court.
This means that somebody challenges the directive for being invalid under the EU treaty. It could be.
It's hard to get a case before the European Court, so this would probably need backing by one of the member states. This is being looked into, but it's not easy.

2. Through normal legislative process.
The EUCD article 12(1) states that "Not later than 22 December 2004" the Commission shall report on the application of the directive. Regarding article 6 (The bad one) "it shall examine in particular whether that Article confers a sufficient level of protection and whether acts which are permitted by law are being adversely affected by the use of effective technological measures [DRM]. Where necessary, in particular to ensure the functioning of the internal market ... it shall submit proposals for amendments to this Directive."

We definitely do intend to influence that report and have article 6 amended, but the entertainment industry is doing the same, so this isn't easy either.
On the other hand the directive was forged with very little public attention to article 6, so nearly all attention on the case would be in our favour.

Re:Norway, Europe & The World

[Cally]

I'm a UK citizen, and one of the "John Doe"s on the California deCSS case (#13, lucky for some) (cited for redistributing deCSS.) Congratulations to Jon, let's hope that this is the start of the Law waking up to, and acknowledging, fair use and common sense. My mirror's still up despite various nastygrams from the ISP prompted by bullying tactics by the MPAA (presumably, the complainant was anonymous but who else could it have been?) and the EUCD directive which is currently on hold for a month or two. Is it too much to hope for to wonder whether this case could lead to a rethink of the whole DMCA-like tenor that European law has been heading in of late?

Re:Norwegian laws protect what a consumer can do..

[Alomex]

The article refers to "Norwegian laws that protect what a consumer can do with his or her own property."

We need some laws like this in the United States.

Actually they do exist, hence the need for DMCA to turn them back. About a decade ago, a publishing executive told me they had never prosecuted people who photocopy books because lawyers had adviced them that property rights in the US likely allowed you to do so, and even to sell those copies so long as you didn't profit. "the last thing we need is a legal ruling making it official and unambiguously legal".

He also mentioned that in most other countries this would not be the case, but that "the US has one of the strongest personal property laws out there".