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.

Comments

Double Jeopardy

[ifreakshow]

This article makes me glad to live in a country where the government can't try you more than once for the same crime(if found not guilty).

Just imagine if special interest groups could put pressure on politicians to keep appealing cases that they lost. Scary.

Re:Double Jeopardy

[Anonymous Coward]

if the defendant thinks the court's decision is wrong, he/she can appeal...why shouldn't the prosecutors have the same possibility?
and btw, the maximum number of appeals in norway is 2 before the case reaches the supreme court (and the supreme court won't take most cases)

Re:Double Jeopardy

[fishbowl]

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.

phew

[geeber]

Good thing. Hopefully this will show that even powerful European Scoflaws can't hope to get away with trampling on the rights of those poor Hollywood executives.

All is right with the world.

Borgarting?

[HorrorIsland]

From the article:

Prosecutors, on behalf of Hollywood studies, lodged an appeal in the Borgarting appeals court in Oslo

From a google search:

When someone bogarts a joint, he or she is holding onto the marijuana cigarette a bit longer than protocol deems polite

That is, being too damn greedy. How appropriate!

When will they realize...

[themaddone]

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?"

Re:When will they realize...

[gnovos]

When are the MPAA and the RIAA going to realize that while they may be losing money, is isn't close to that magnitude? ...

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?"

Oh, I'm pretty sure that they know that already.. my question is:

When are the MPAA and the RIAA going to figure out that they are "losing" money by not having the governments of the world mandate that thier citizens buy thier product? I'm serious, after all, the logic is the same. By not forcing every American to buy at least 10 albums a year, the RIAA "loses" $50 BILLION a year! And that is America alone. Can you believe that? That is a travesty! By not having every nation on earth mandate that every man woman and child buy at leat three albums a year, they are "losing" $360 BILLION and that's EVERY SINGLE YEAR! Add piracy on top of that and we are at $363 billion. Wow, that is almost as much as the defense budget for the entire US.

Shhhhh...Ashcroft will hear you....

[cuberat]

...the government can appeal a loss in a criminal case.

One little piece of idiocy I do NOT want this country to adopt.

Double Jeopary in Norway

[NigelJohnstone]

Its not legal in Norway.

------------
1999-05-21 NOR-1999-L-53741
Act (No. 30 of 1999) to strengthen the position of human rights in Norwegian law (Human Rights Act).
Contains six sections whereby the following international human rights instruments are given force of national law to the extent that they are considered as binding on Norway: the European Council's Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, its Protocol of November 1950, its Protocols Nos. 4 (securing certain other rights and freedoms), 6 (abolition of death penalty), and 7 (furthering certain human rights and freedoms);

http://natlex.ilo.org/Scripts/natlexcgi.exe?lang =E &doc=query&ctry=NOR&llx=02

-----------

Protocol 7 from November 1950 is here:

http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/EN/Treaties/ht ml /117.htm

Article 4 - Right not to be tried or punished twice

So they adopted it into Norwegian law as part of human rights legislation.
Needs a lawyer to check it out, but what they're doing isn't just unethical and a breach of human rights. ITS NOT LEGAL EVEN IN NORWAY.

Re:Double Jeopary in Norway

[JanneM]

They aren't. This is an appeal to a higher court, not a new trial. If it works as the Swedish court (and the legal systems are pretty close), it will be a reinterpretation of already established facts, with an eye to whether the relevant law was correctly interpreted. It is not "really" whether he is guilty or not, but a trial of whether the lower court did in fact do its job properly.

For those of you still screaming "double jeopardy", don't forget (again, I'm talking about Swedish, not norwegian court practice) that if the defendant appeals, the higher court can not increase the punishment from the lower court. Only if the prosecution appeals as well (which they need a law-technical reason to do) can the appeals court ever increase the punishment.

I think I'm....

[GeneralEmergency]

.

...going to be "Hollywood-Free in 2003".

Oh...and Mr. Valenti, you can bite me.

Double Jeopardy Possible in US

[Sean Clifford]

Double jeopardy is possible in the United States. If you're accused of a crime and prosecuted under state law in the state you reside, then acquitted, you can be tried again for the same crime by the feds.

e.g. You're prosecute for LS XYZ in Louisiana, then acquitted, you can then be prosecuted under US ABC in federal court. So yeah, you can experience double jeopardy in the good ole US of A.

Re:Double Jeopardy Possible in US

[fishbowl]

"If you're accused of a crime and prosecuted under state law in the state you reside, then acquitted, you can be tried again for the same crime by the feds."

The doctrine at work is Dual Sovreignty. The State cannot try you twice for the same crime, another State cannot try you, but since the State and the Federal government both have sovreignty over you, then you are subject to separate prosecution by both governments. It was an open question but was settled by the Supreme Court in one of the first Federal prosecutions for liquor under prohibition, US v. Lanza, 260 U.S. 377 (1922).

So you can thank the War on Some Drugs for it, but it goes back much further than most people seem to realize.

Measuring Piracy losses?

[ebbomega]

From the article:

The group estimates that piracy costs the U.S. motion picture industry $3.0 billion annually in lost sales

I'd honestly like to just take a statistics University Class and have them look over the methodology of it, and get them to report any breaks in logic. Where in god's name did this team get their figures from? How do you measure something like this...

I know it's not in sales drops, because I know that last year MPAA reports that they've had excellent sales lately...

I've never seen any kind of study that actually reports how much piracy is going on around the internet, so I can only really assume that they're going on estimations. Which is ludicrous... that's like counting the number of people in Russia and estimating the world's population based on those results... It's bloody insane!

The only way I think they can possibly justify this amount of money that's being lost is
a) When the MPAA pays money to hire people to do silly estimations like this.
b) When these companies' stock goes down because they lose some court case in which they were trying to sue some guy who wrote a program for ripping DVDs.... not to mention the lawyer costs behind these lawsuits.... how much do you think they put per year into prosecuting people like this?

Would it kill people to think a little critically when reading blind statistics like this?

Re:They have no chance.

[matthewn]

I have a hard time with the notion that a legal system that allows double jeopardy is "sane." How many times does the Norwegian government get to try to fry Jon? As many as it takes? (Can someone who understands Norway's system provide a real answer to this question?)

Use the Chewbacca Defense!

[sunbane]

"Norway's legal system is different than the U.S.; the government can appeal a loss in a criminal case."

Correct, in America they'd have to file a civil lawsuit once he was found innocent and takeaway his heisman ... er... the clothes off his back.

Summary / Clearing things up.

[zokum]

Fair use in Norway:
Basically, you can make private copies of anything as long as you do not distribute them in any way. One might call it backups.

Appeal system:
You can appeal a sentence, but each time this is done the next trial is by a higher instance in the justice system. If a higher instance refuses to take on the case, the old verdict is the one that counts. There are 3 levels + the Human Rights tribunal in Haag or so.
1. Herreds/Byrett (county/city court)
2. Lagmannsretten (laymen's court)
3. Høyesterett (Supreme court)

The supreme court, (translated from http://www.mossbyrett.of.no/info/i_straff.html) cannot retry whether the accused is guilty or not. It is only there for matters og priniciples, and has more or less been abolished as an instance for appeals. So basically, you can be retried for the same crime, but only a very limited amount of times, and by significantly different courts.

Re:They have no chance.

[fobef]

Here is how it works in Sweden, which I suppose has a similar system.

All trials begin at the lowest instance.

After that the second instance can choose to accept an appeal. It is always harder to get an appeal accepted when trying to sentence someone who was declared not guilt in a lower instance.

Then there is the highest instance, which doesn't accept many cases every year, but this case most likely WILL end up there, because it is a new crime, and this is the instance which details how new, untested laws should be interpreted. If they make a clear enough innocent verdict in this case, no further "not guilty" verdicts would make it to second instance next time a person is tried for a similar crime under this law.

And no slashdot post is complete without... IANAL...

article is so misleading..

[Anonymous Coward]

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:

1. boarding a ship, killing and/or raping all on board, stealing the cargo
2. selling mass-producing conterfeit records and CDs
3. making and giving copies of a record to your friends
4. violating any aspect of a license agreement
5. doing something that might facilitate the above

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.

Criminal prosecutions invoke important . . .

[D1rtbag]

Constitutional rights, and cause a severe drain on the defendant. Imagine being wrongfully accused, and then sent up and down the legal system to try to vindicate yourself, becoming bankrupt in the process. That really would create a system where justice is what you can afford.

As a prosecutor, I have no problem with the *general* lack of ability to appeal. There are limited circumstances in which we do get another bite, but it requires special circumstances. For me, trials are fun, but for a criminal defendant the uncertainty, the court appearances, and the stigma must be quite unpleasant. I don't think I'd like to be part of a process which just beats a defendant down with government appeals until he's all out of fight, money, or both.

With the resources available to us, we (the State) can usually convict the guilty if we do our jobs right. Sometimes they get away, but that's how our justice system is set up -- the Framers wanted to have a system where we risk a few guilty individuals going free, but we minimize the risk of convicting the innocent.

In France, I believe, there is no Miranda as we know it. The police can question a suspect for 48 hours with no right to counsel. It would make my job easier, but it doesn't make it a system that I want to live under or be a part of. If it works in Norway, that's their business, but we don't need to pick up all of the bad habits of the "Old Country," just because it works for them.

Become proactive

[circusnews]

We /.ers are one of, if not the most connected community on earth. We have, what, 375,000 people who read /. every day and come from just about every nation in the world? Why then do we not take a page from actual grass roots groups and become a proactive in writing to law makers to change this garbage?

For now take a look at this letter writing guide. Over the weekend I will post a new one specific to the /. community. Maybe we can stop just complaining and start trying to fix these laws.