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Jon Johansen To Be Retried On Piracy Charges
cecil36 writes "Yahoo has the scoop on 'DVD Jon's' latest trial regarding DeCSS being used as a piracy tool. The article claims that Hollywood is losing $3 billion a year due to piracy *yawn*, but Johansen's lawyer believes the acquittal from the previous trial may be enough for him to win the case. The case is set to go again on December 2nd this year. What are the prospects of Johansen winning a second time?"
One thing to keep in mind is that when one is prosecuting a case, either in criminal terms or as a plaintiff, there are usually multiple angles to take when building one's argument. If the prosecutor chooses a different angle of attack in this new trial, it might bring new points that weren't stressed in the previous trial, which gives the defense more challenge in defending. Granted, in theory the bulk of available information should have been put forth in the previous trial, but information or points that the prosecution might have thought unnecessary could be brought to light. In the United States, the prosecution has to outline and show their case on paper before they can even begin to argue it in court, and the defense has to receive all that information, on witnesses and what they're probably going to say, on evidence, etc. I don't know if this is required in Norway or not. If it isn't, and if there are new bits and pieces of information that weren't used before, this could be a very bumpy road for the defense.
It's a damn shame that there isn't a practical way to force the hand of the prosecution. Between his age at the time he wrote DeCSS, the fact that he's already been acquited once, and the fact that this is a completely nonviolent offense that he has been accused of, I'd imagine that Norway's court would have a lot more important, and more success-likely cases to prosecute. Cases like murder, rape, even theft that are pushed back because of the state appeal of a case they already lost against a minor who simply wanted to use his computer as the new-age equivalent of a VCR, and enable others to do the same.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
The problem with hollywood's "we're losing 3 billion annually" numbers is that they are taking an estimated number of copies made each year at a price of FREE and multiplying it by the price they charge for DVDs. If they took an economics course they would realize that the demand for a movie is very elastic, meaning as the price goes up the number of movies purchased goes down. At a price of essentially zero the demand for every movie is HUGE, thus there are hundreds of thousands of downloads. If it actually cost the retail price of the DVD to download the movie then downloads would significantly drop. To find the actual amount that downloading DVDs costs hollywood you have to shift the demand curve along the supply curve until you hit the price of the retail DVDs and then you have the real number of lost DVD sales, which would be significantly less than 3 billion dollars a year because the demand for DVDs is most likely very elastic (help me out here any of you people who actually have an economics degree, what do you think the actual cost to Hollywood is? Is the demand elastic?)
However, there are people and societies that believe removing criminals from the streets is better for the greater good of the community and outweighs the dangers of innocent people being affected by their methods.
There are several logical extensions to this statement, which explain why the American legal system is (theoretically) so protective of the defendant.
First of all, the desire to see justice done often leads people to treat the law as an agent of retribution rather than of justice. Whenever a suspected murderer is acquitted, the news story includes an obligatory statement from the family saying how disappointed they are. In some cases the defendant really is quite innocent, or prosecutorial abuse of the legal system was far out of bounds.
This means that when popular attention fixes on one suspect any concept of legal "fairness" goes out the window. The need for someone to blame and punish leads to lynching by jury. Typically the poor (and/or minorities, uneducated, etc.) get hit hardest by this. They're the easiest to pick on, and the easiest to abuse in court or interrogation. By the way, 38 black residents of Tulia, TX were just freed on the basis that the entire case against them was almost certainly fabricated.
Some people would take this to extremes and seriously argue that the application of the death penalty to innocents is worth having it as a deterrent. (I'm not joking - a National Review columnist once said this, and I've heard it elsewhere.)
You have to understand that the enemy isn't necessarily the government - it's the people. Read up on the history of lynching in the South. I think the problems we're seeing with crime enforcement in general and the death penalty in particular stem from similar factors - not necessarily racism per se, but scapegoating and the violent expression of popular anger. No one cares if some poor, retarded man fries, and doesn't even bother to think about his innocence, because they're convinced (reasonably so) that it'll never happen to them.
America's system clearly isn't perfect; the legal protections defendants enjoy have not prevented many people being railroaded into long prison sentences or execution. I'd argue that we should abolish the death penalty entirely, for that matter. However, I have no respect for any legal system that places defendants at the mercy of overzealous prosecutors driven by either corporate cartels or popular sentiment. I have no opinion on Norway's society or government in general, but I can still say their legal rules suck fat cock.
Does your respect for the diversity of legal systems extend to the sharia court in Nigeria that's planning to stone a woman for adultery?