'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

Check Yourself

[Myriad]

There is no such thing as a "loosing side". There is such a thing as a "losing side".
Perhaps you were confused becouse "lose" is related to "loss" and "lost", each which has one 'o' and "loose" (as in your mother) rhymes with "caboose", "moose", and "goose". The only exception to this excellent rule of thumb is "choose". It isn't spelled with one 'o', is that "chose" is already a word.

Perhaps you should run your own spell checker before submitting a criticism of another. It's a good practice, because if you don't you may look a little foolish.

Re:Not supreme court

[egreB]

How hot is "abnormally" hot? I, for one, like my coffee rather warm. Any drinkable coffee (that is, warmer than about 40 degrees Celsius) is capable of giving you quite interesting skin burns. Any (relativly) hot liqiud that stays on your skin any longer than a few seconds can give you third degree burns. I've seen it. It's not particulary nice, since it involves the fact that the skin is burned away.

There is, apparently according to McDonalds, always a risk involved drinking coffee. Most people agree that coffee should be hotter than 40 degrees. If you decide to (or accidently) pour coffee over youself, to bad. Your fault. Not McDonalds. They merely sold you the coffee. There is a lot of bad things about McDonalds, but I'm giving them this one.

Drinking coffee is not among the most dangerous things to do. If you burn yourself on the oven at home, would you sue the manufacturer of the oven? Alomst all things in life involves taking riscs. Have you any idea of how dangerous it is to ride a car? Far more dangerous than airplanes, boats and trains combined. If you need, I can probably look up some information on this.

There's another reason why this couldn't happen in Norway as well - free medical attention. If you happen to get third degree burns (for example here in Bergen, where the best burn-injury(?) hospital in the northern parts of Europe is situated) an ambulance would get you to the hospital, and you'd get immediate medical care completly free of charge. There wouldn't be any medical bills to pay.

Now I'll get up and brew a nice cup of hot Java coffee (my favourite). You now, when the coffee is brewed, it's over a hundred degrees warm! Imagine spilling that over yourself! I'd sue somebody.