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Johansen Prosecutors Appeal
kmitnick writes "Jon Johansen will be back in court, tried again in an appeals court, because Hollywood knows better than the Norwegian legal system." Norway's legal system is different than the U.S.; the government can appeal a loss in a criminal case.
In Europe you can't buy the judge or impress the jury to get the verdict you wanted.
Old but sane legal system.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Have these people not heard of the words "fair use"?
with legal fees.
... keep trying to convict somebody until their money runs out and they can't pay for lawyers. Try..try .try and try again law some judge has to agree with us ...
I'm just glad the guy has support.
*sigh*
The Motion Picture Association of America, representing major Hollywood studios like Walt Disney Co., Universal Studios and Warner Bros, filed the complaint against Johansen at Norway's Economic Crime Unit.
The group estimates that piracy costs the U.S. motion picture industry $3.0 billion annually in lost sales.
When are the MPAA and the RIAA going to realize that while they may be losing money, is isn't close to that magnitude?
Even if we couldn't download the movies and music, we wouldn't be buying the CDs or DVDs in those numbers. Out of every 100 albums or movies you download (the general "you"), how many would you have bought if you couldn't download them? 10? 5? 1? If it's only 1, or 1% of the movies you download, then that $3.0 billion figure is only $30 million. Which is pennies in a multi-billion dollar industry.
It's amazing how the game isn't "How much money are we losing," but rather "How much money would we have lost in this incredibly unrealistic circumstance?"
Yeah? We'll see when "Return of The King" comes out in December :)
An appeal isn't a second trial. It's a legal body reviewing the case and evidence to see if everything was kosher. If not then there's a retrial. Double jeopardy comes in when you're under the case where one court ruled innocent and another rules guilty. Which one takes precedence and under what jurisdictions.
Take the US criminal and civil court system. OJ was found not guilty of murder by the state but found guilty in civil court. He was essentially tried twice for the same event but for different charges...
A ramble on my part but I guess this is how lawyers make money.
The situation that made the double jeopardy clause seem so important to the framers of the US Constitution was that oppressive governments can and do repeatedly prosecute people until they reach the verdict they wanted. Because the government has unlimited resources to accomplish this, compared to those of any defendant, the situation is fundamentally unfair. But what's important to know about doctrines against double jeopardy is that they are not written into government documents just because some wise pre-industrial politician thought it would be a good idea, but because they were already absolutely sick and tired of seeing the exact same means of oppression being used against them. It was an issue that people were willing to kill or die over, and not some absract ideal that would be nice to have.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Norway's legal system is different than the U.S.
But protection from double jeopardy is still part of Norwegian law. Read the article to see why this occuring. Before any Merikins start pontificating about our venerated and very good, but also deeply flawed legal system, remember that you can be tried twice for the same charge in the States as well. Hung juries, witness tampering, lawyer misconduct etc. cause subsequent trials to occur. I don't know the statistics on how many 2nd and third trials result in acquittal, but a egg rots when left out in the sun. It is best to not face a jury too often.
If you are acquitted of a crime and subsequently admit that "yes" you actually did it, you can be hauled in for perjury if you attested in court that you did not do it (read this: never testify on your own behalf), and believe you me, if an Attorney General can figure a way to hang a Federal charge on you for the same crime or an attendant one, they will. Sure this isn't exactly the same as double jeopardy, but if you piss off the right/wrong prosecutor, they will get you no matter what. And you will be put on the hardest bitch cellblock in whatever state you live in. All prosecutors have to do to people is threaten them with "Brushy Mountain" here in Tennessee and people fold like lawnchairs. The very protocol for picking prosecutors requires that they keep their hearts in jars buried under fencepost on an uncle's farm. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way. Criminals need to be pursued and convicted.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
It's amazingly disappointing to see governments, previously mandated towards protecting the people, instead going out of their way towards protecting potential profits of major corporations.
The losses screamed about under the dark moniker of piracy are merely missed opportunities for revenue. Are profits down? Yes, but they're still profits, not losses. And just because they're down, Hollywood studios and recording companies think they can enlist the powers-that-be to get them back up.
And sadly, they're right.
Because allowing prosecutors to appeal gives the government a way to harass opponents with years of trials and the massive legal fees associated with said trials. Some governments might even keep a defendent imprisoned until appeals are exhausted.
Look at this BS:
Norwegian Teenager to Face Retrial for Film Piracy
Calling what Jon did "piracy" is a bit of a stretch isn't it? He wrote a program that reads the format of DVDs. Amazing that a news organization would use this expression.
acquitted by an Oslo court in January of charges of theft
No shit! Since there was no "theft", not even Mickey-Mouse Monopoly Money Copyright "theft"!
The group estimates that piracy costs the U.S. motion picture industry $3.0 billion annually in lost sales.
What does this have to do with Jon? How much did Jon lose from this stupid case, which has nothing to do with the MPAA's imaginary loses?
Johansen has become a symbol for hackers worldwide who say making software such as his -- called DeCSS -- is an act of intellectual freedom rather than theft.
Uh, hello, WRITING SOFTWARE is an act of creation, not of theft. Can't these people read the illogical statements they write?
There is no specific legislation in Norway to protect digital content, but Johansen's program has been criminalized in the United States under the Digital Copyright Millennium Act.
What, you mean Norway doesn't have copyright law? Yeah right. Laws like the DMCA don't protect *content* they protect *access methods* which "protect" content. They are "paracopyright" laws like one author has written.
I wish they would write the story and tell the truth: DVD-Jon wrote a program that lets you load DVDs into your computer. THAT'S ALL.
The evolution of Piracy:
What's next on the list I wonder?? Piracy == the crime of not preventing copyright infringement when you see it happening. Or maybe Piracy == not buying the latest Britnee CD.
FUCK I can't wait for this copyright nonesense to sort itself out.
The US has the worlds by far highest porison population, both in numbers and percentage. I haven't seen any numbers recently, but it's on the order of 10 times as much as an average EU nation.
So the firmly rooted conviction among many Americans that their system gives better protection to the accused, because of the technical implementation of their double jeopardy rule seems very misguided, and more of parroting what hey were told in school than based on actual knowledge of the issues.
The reality is that in the US you are far more likely to be thrown in jail for far longer times than in the rest of the free world, "Land of the Free" rhetoric notwithstanding.