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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?"
For example, if someone is accused of a "hate" crime at the state level and then acquitted, the government will then find some loosey goosey Federal charge which covers the same ground as the state trial. This allows them to try someone twice for the same crime under a deceptive ruse.
The root of this problem is that the 10th Amendment is not enforced. The 10th Amendment essentially says that all powers not enumerated in the Constitution are the sole realm of the individual states. As we now live, Federal law often duplicates state law, and even where it doesn't it gets its grubby hands on us through bogus use of the "commerce clause" whereby almost any human endeavor can be twisted to be interpreted as "interstate commerce".
Of course, IANAL. Everything I needed to know about the US Justice System, I learned from Judge Judy.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
'Prosecutors in January lodged an appeal, objecting to the application of the law and the presentation of evidence. '
If they object to the law, shouldn't that be debated by government reps? I don't think a judge has the authority to ignore the law.
Objection of evidence presentation should have been done at the time the evidence was introduced, shouldn't it? Just because your legal team didn't think of a 'snappy comeback' at the appropriate time isn't a reason for a 'do-over' (IMHO).
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
It's not double jeopardy because double jeopardy is getting re-prosecuted for the same crime after being prosecuted/convicted.
If you watched the movie Double Jeopardy, you would know that the heroine (played by Ashley Judd) could not be retried and convicted for the murder of her husband (who was actually still alive) because she was already convicted (wrongly) and did the time for it. This allowed her to go after him, with lethal force and without fear of repercussions, in the movie. This is (amazingly) an accurate portayal of this concept.
However, in the US your 'definition' applies as well, as far as I can tell. (I doubt it is officially called double jeopardy, however.) Only the defense is allowed to appeal a conviction; I believe if overturned on appeal, it may be able to appealed by the prosecution at that point only. I'm going off my poor memory of a law class I took last semester.
The line from the Constitution reads,Interpretation is left up to lawyers, judges, and lots of other laws, I'm sure. Sorry, but I don't feel like doing any more research on this.
The space unintentionally left unblank.
Accept the sprawling bureaucracy of social programs and the accepted social order: OK, fine.
Reject it, or fall through the cracks of it: Who needs you? Get lost.
What's more, here's a country that threw Christian "Varg" Vikernes in jail for just 21 years (a so-called "life sentence") for stabbing another guy to death -- first-degree murder, in U.S. parlance. On the other hand, this Jon guy goes to trial twice for -- what? Writing software? Go figure those priorities! "Right-wing politics -- hell no" indeed!
Breakfast served all day!
Whilst I'm aware of a few programs that use DeCSS for copying DVDs to formats such as DivX, removing the CSS, what if DeCSS was used legitimitely in a piece of software such as a DVD player that contained a binary form of the decoder and was not capable of pirating DVDs? I pose this question because I am currently developing a small Linux distro and there are some really good pieces of software around that allow the playback of DVD. I would like to include such software, but not at the expense of a court battle.
What deems DeCSS illegal (in terms of the MPAA)? If I were to (for example) compile Xine , Mplayer or Ogle with DeCSS support compiled into the programs by means of a static version of the library, the program will still play DVDs as normal, but the DeCSS code could not be used for anything else on the system because the library does not have to exist on the computer, besides inside the player itself. In doing this, am I breaking the law, or at risk of having the MPAA onto me?
I don't have a standalone DVD player, but I have a CD-ROM drive that can read DVDs. So yesterday I decided that I should get it to work so that I could watch the few DVD's I would come across.
So I installed the DVD player software that came with the drive. I had 2 DVD movies that came bundled with different stuff, not movies I wanted to watch but good enough for testing.
First problem, they were different regions so I had to search the internet for a Firmware to the drive that wouldn't increment the region change counter. It works I think, but the DVD player program still counts down.
Next problem, the DVD player program won't let me play the movie because it is copy protected and I have TV-OUT enabled. WTF, Now I do not have it enabled but my plan was to use it and watch the DVDs on my TV. So I am forced to watch them on the PC or buy some software on the internet that can bypass this.
After spending a couple of hours, I decided that DVD's were not worth the hassle for me anyway, I don't need a standalone player for the one movie I want to see every month and playing it on the PC is too much of a problem.
I am left with the feeling that they really don't want me to play their DVD's and their copyprotection attemps only works on those, like me, who are not really into it, and don't care enough about it to spend days to gain knowledge on the subject. But putting these roadblocks in the way to cripple the technology has just killed my interest in the media.
my sig
Basicly, this appeals court is reviewig his case based on the law as-is, i.e. the question of guilt. With the same interpretation of the law as last time, he should undoubtably win.
However, I'm certain the prosecution will appeal to the Supreme Court, because of the principal nature of the case. This court is deciding what the correct interpretation of the law is, which is ultimately what is in question here.
Personally, I think it works out pretty good. In the US the prosecution could make ten DMCA charges, and even if they'd get thrown out in the first court, but you'd still tie them up in court and there'd be no precedent set. Not appealing in a Norwegian court would basicly be admitting to having no case. And if they do appeal, they risk getting a precedent against them. Personally I think that's fine. The first meritful case goes up to the Supreme Court, not some posterchild case for either side.
I hope for the Supreme Court to reject the prosecutions appeal (on the ruling in this trial, which I assume DVD-Jon will win). That's about as much egg-on-face factor as you can get. And they deserve it. It's coming from the same group of geniuses that wanted to ban anonymous email.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"What are the prospects of Johansen winning a second time?"
I'd say it's almost certain. The previous aquittal was crystal clear. I think they're appealing mainly to build some strong case law.
sudo ergo sum
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The US is not really free of "double jeopardy", in a loose sense - although someone can't be tried for the _exact_ same crime more than once, the US has so many nitpicking laws on the books, that in many cases a very determined prosecutor can usually find half-a-dozen or so laws that are tangentially related to the case (but are technically "different" crimes), or laws that even a law-abiding citizen has probably violated, just to keep someone they consider "bad" in jail.
Selective enforcement of too many conflicting laws is a classic way of controlling undesirables.
First: Norway, is a small country with far less crime than USA pr. innhabitant. This makes it possible for convicted to appeal their case, and for the prosecutors to apeal the case without creating chaos because of too many cases in the highest court instances. In US, which have a much more crime, the number of appeals, from both sides, would have crippled the system.
I would say that there is a fair number of "checks and balances" in the Norwegian Court System. The prosecutors can't allways appeal, because of limited budget, they can't afford it if _all_ of their cases would go to the next court instance. And, apealing all the cases would in some way reducing their right to apeal as a special power the prosecutors have.
On the other hand: The prosecuted, in this case Jon Johansen, is covered by the state, as *all the cost of having a lawyer is paid by the state*. And in contrast to "some other countries", you don't get only those lawyers which failed to get a better paid job. After what I have heard, the "quality" of the public lawyers in USA ain't that good. You can choose any lawyer you wan't and the goverment pays. The problem is rather that some of the good lawyers are quite busy. So the problem of losing all your money because an appeal isn't that problematic. But of course there is always an uncertainty with an apeal.
Among proffesionals in the Norwegian systems i think most people think that the risk of convicting an innocent person is far smaller than in Norway compared to USA. And the implications from convicting someone falsely is far smaller than US because of not so hard "punishment".
Compared to US, Norways maximum sentence is 21 years behind bars. And most murders get away with 10-15 years, probation after 6-10. Economic crime have maximum 15 years if I remember right. And I can't remember anyone getting more than 8 years (!)(i think is was some kind of organized bankfraud). So I Jon is found guilty, he won't get more than 1 year. Maximum. As for damages or expenses he have to cover or pay back; I doubt he would get more than $10000.
I reckon that there is some US centric views on this topic. But in a hypotetical situation I would have choosen too stand in front on the Norwegian legal system, rather than the US legal system, double jeopardy or not.
[Double jeopardy or not, it aint no good if you are innocently convicted for manslaughter and sentenced to death.(or 300 years behind bars)]
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
My father in law expressed this argument to me. "Guns are protected by the constitution so that we can defend ourselves from the government should it become tyrannical"
.306 wouldn't do diddly squat to a lazer guided 2000lb chunk of steel and high explosives and that his entire gun collection would be scattered across a four state area before he managed to take out more than four of whatever government force was bothering to invade his rural county home.
He went on to say that this was why he opposed firearms registration, bullet fingerprinting, and the like. Namely that he didn't want the government to know what he had in his basement if it ever came to that.
I told him that when the UN storm troopers started going door to door rounding up the disenters they'd just call in surgical airstrikes on whatever locations offered resistance. Told him his
This is what I don't understand. Yes, -=maybe=- in 1784 or whatever firearm ownership by the populace was sufficient to overthrow the government. A bunch of people tried this around 1862 however, and it didn't go so well. You might remember it, we call it the American Civil War.
So at least since 1862 I think we've had a pretty clear demonstration that guns are used primarily for killing other citizens, not for overthrowing the government. More to the point, anyone who tries to use them to overthrow the government, or even resist the government tends to find themselves facing progressively larger guns until the government wins.
The US government spends close to 100 Billion dollars a year on guns (and gun related supplies, such as soliders, battleships, and hydrogen bombs). What can you spend? Do the math.
Killfile(TGK)
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