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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?"
Just set the evil bit for any content decoded by DeCSS.
beating a dead horse. The RIAA and their possie have enormous patience and wallets. If they don't get what they want this year then they'll do it again next year and so on.
I bet they loose a lot more from making bad movies.
internet like monkeys'
DeCSS is a terrorist tool and should be stopped. We cannot allow people to terrorize the MPAA members (who are all poor and starving) like this.
Go get em PATRIOT act, watching Men In Black II without paying for it or ever having intention of paying for it in the first place is a serious crime. (to yourself! ever SEEN that POS?)
That's a great concept! The idea that he can use what he bought in a fair manner.... this is an interesting concept, one that we should try here in the US! Since he's using it in a manner that is fair to him, we should call it the fair use act! Imagine the possibilities!
"kids -- 30 seconds of joy, 30 years of suffering" -- this kid wrote a few pages worth of code years ago when he was 16. And since then his life has been spent enduring lawsuits by huge industry firms from another country. but that won't keep me from trying to create beauty with code.
Why not go after the ones distributing the illegal media, instead of someone who just made a tool inteded for legal use...?? Its like suing knife makers for being the cause of murders!
We possibly shouldn't be surprised that Norway is one of them: underneath the clean and friendly image, Scandinavian states have a history of social control, significant right-wing politics, and social repression of dissident groups. Just like us, in fact.
Norway is a far cry from the USA, but like EU, we're eagerly learning.
Sadly enough, USA have a big karmic responsibility to the world of being a role-model, and is failing horribly.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Have a look at the way the Norwegian justice system works before you make this kind of comment. The initial trial was in a lower court, both prosecution and defendants may appeal to a higher court.
You may not like it, but this is the way the Norwegian systems works, and has worked for a long time.
So "DVD Jon" is being charged with creating software which allowed the copying of DVD's. So why aren't the people who created VCR's being charged as they allow copying of films as well. Ok so I will say that yes I'm sure this makes pirating a bit easier but if you've ever looked a DeCSS it just providers a framwork that 99.9% of people couldn't use. It wasn't until people starting writing GUI/CLI DVD rippers that it became possible. Should they go after them?
All in all hes been proven innocent once and will be again
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
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...
I don't think that Hollywood and the movie studios care so much about the outcome of the trial as long as the process is scaring the shit out of other potential code writers.
The goal of the process is not "justice" (Whatever that word means in the US of A) but to make an example out of John. "Hey, if you mess with us we will keep you tied up in legal problems for 10 years, guilty or not!"
The whole thing isn't exactly giving a good image of the USA as the "land of the free and brave" but rather something like the "rich and blinded by power".
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
What does he expect. If you go sailing around the carribean, stealing gold from the spaniards while waving a cutlass and crying "shiver me timbers", you can expect the authorities to try you on piracy charges. The sooner we send this scourge of the seaways to Davy Jones' locker, the better. Hang him from the yard arm, I say!
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
1) Smith&Wesson, Colt, Heckler&Koch all have products that enable, for example, car-jacking, armed robbery and murder.
2) GM, Ford have products that enable many people to commit actual crimes and subsequently escape into other jurisdictions.
3) Numerous beer, wine and liquor manufacturers have products that cause many deaths, often when combined with items 1 & 2 listed above.
Call it flamebait, or troll if you like, I don't care. No, the above don't relate to the DMCA - so what? They're just as ridiculous as retrying someone who was acquitted, and that's all my examples are intended to show.
Jon was acquitted - what on earth could the MPAA produce as evidence that wasn't produced last time around? Not much, I suspect. If a firearms manufacturer can say "we just produce guns, we don't kill people with them" and get away with it, why can't Jon say "I'm legally watching DVDs I already own" and be safe from this modern Inquisition? I sincerely hope that the Norwegian courts are able to hand off Jon's defence expenses to the MPAA. If not, he should be considering suing the MPAA for libel, slander, defamation of character, loss of earnings, etc.
This post is a comment on the stupidity of the DMCA and the MPAA and has nothing to do the Gulf War or gun control. (In case you're interested, I firmly believe that gun control means hitting your intended target first time, not squeezing off a few rounds and calling whatever you hit the target...)
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?)
One has to wonder how much of that 3 billion is attributed to lawyer fees.
Social control - yes
Right-wing politics - hell no! Socialist influences more like.
Repression of dissident groups - no again
in GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUSegmentation fault
It's not a 'new trial', but a 'retrial'. Just as the defendant can appeal to a higher court, so can the prosecutors. Mind you, had the defendant appealed, it would have been more or less automaticly accepted, the prosecution must prove that something was wrong with the forst trial; that the judge used the law wrong, that evidence was overlooked or that there was some technicaly that wasn't right.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
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?
'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...
As I've pointed out elsewhere, I'll bring out again that Norway does have something similar to US double jeopardy protection, however the protection is against retrial, not appeal. This is what is normal in legal systems not based on English common law. Appeals in Norway always happen to a higher court, and there are only three levels in the court system. The Supreme Court refuses most request for appeals, and the next level down usually only hear complaints about procedure or application of law and usually put substantial weight on the evidence and findings of the lower court.
As such, the burden of an appeals case is significantly lower than it would have been in a retrial. It's certainly not non-existant, but it's still lower.
Generally, though, looking at prison population in percentage of population compared to reported crime, it would seem that the Norwegian legal system is far less likely to convict you of anything. Add to that that Norwegian law imposes a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison followed by up to 10 years of regular check ins with the police, a sentence which is usually only used for multiple homicide cases or similar extensive violent crimes. And most crimes have legal maximum sentences that are much, much lower.
What you're left with is a legal system that I'd argue places lower burdens on a defendant overall: You may find that an aquittal get appealed, but you risk less (a significantly lower sentence, and significantly better conditions in prison), and it will likely take more to get a conviction even in the lower court.
Our right wing parties always complain about this, and want our legal system to become more like the US legal system in order to put more people behind bars... In Norway wanting to be "tough on crime" translates directly into wanting to copy the US.
Your point about Nigeria is good, but I'd like to point out there that the Sharia courts point to significant ethnic problems in Nigeria, which is divided pretty evenly between christians and muslims. Sharia courts in the muslim north only apply to muslims. Even so, the federal legal system has made it clear that it considers much of Sharia law to violate federal law, and the federal government has made it clear that anyone sentenced under Sharia law to a punishment not supported by the federal legal system can appeal and expect their sentences to be overturned more or less automatically in the higher court.
The problem faced by Obasanjo (the Nigerian president), though, is that Nigeria is just a few years away from it last period of military dictatorship, ethnic problems have caused significant clashes in the north (between christians and muslims), and ethnic unrest in the south west has placed a large part of Nigeria's oil production in jeopardy, while corruption is still widespread. In a situation like that, he hardly have the power base to address the problem of the Sharia courts - in the last election, the muslim north was an important area for him (despite being christian himself).
Obviously none of that diminish the problem of the sharia courts, but it should give some insight in why they're tolerated - the federal government is still way to weak to take the chance of another uprising or military coup.
First, even IF he gets convicted, the case will have absolutely no bearing on any federal or state law in the United States. No court in this country will recognize Norwegian law.
Second, though I know little about the Norwegian court system, an appeal usually focuses primarily on whether or not the law was correctly applied in the previous case. If that's how things work over there, there's a good chance the ruling will uphold the judgment of the lower court.
Third, if my experiences in US Courts are any guide, foreign companies/corporations/groups tend not to fare so well against a local defendant.
I might be totally wrong about those last two points, but I hope everyone in the US doesn't freak out too much. It's not going to have any bearing on what happens here. And beside the point, the genie (DeCSS) is already out of the bottle. They're just trying to frighten people out of using it.
IAAL
Add to that that considerable weight will be given by the court to the judgement from the lower court, and the party who lost in the lower court starts at a significant disadvantage in the appeal court.
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.
Please do some more reading: In all criminal cases in Norway, the government has to pick up the defendant's legal costs, irrespective of which lawyer he chooses to represent himself.
This means that even in an obviously lopsided case like this (really the MPAA vs Jon J), the stronger party cannot add cripling economic burdens on top of the onus of being forced to show up in court.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
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?
OK.Jon Johansen made the GUI + some subsystem to break the CSS DVD encryption. Mind you, he got these codes from a German fellow, he did not get the codes himself.
In current Norwegian copyright law, you are entitled to make a copy of a copyrighted work for personal use (Åndsverkloven 12, 1st section. This does not apply to computer programs or databases.). Jons program does not facilitate the copying of the DVD, just the reading the contents. He also argued that DeCSS could be used for making backups of the DVD.
Jon argues that he made DeCSS to view the contents of the DVD on this Linux computer. The prosecution argues that he mocks Linux and was a BSD-guy at the time of DeCSS. Anyway, the DeCSS program first appeared on Windows.
The prosecution wanted to nail Jon on the paragraph 145 of the Norwegian penal code. It says that (summary) "anyone gaining illegal access to locked data, also computer data can be punished with jail for a maximum of six months". Note the "illegal" part here. The judge ruled that Jon had only gained access with DeCSS to data HE had bought. It was his copy of the work in question so he had a right to access it. He did not distribute any illegal copies, and he did not gain unlawful access to the DVD although his program might be used for that.
Disclaimer: IAANLS (I am a Norwegian law student)
The Supreme Court refuses most request for appeals, and the next level down usually only hear complaints about procedure or application of law and usually put substantial weight on the evidence and findings of the lower court.
...
In this particular case the proceedings of the lower court (the Tingrett) were audiotaped - I don't know whether the video feed into the press room was also taped.
The verdict (in Norwegian) says quite
clearly that Johansen had done almost exactly what the prosecution claimed he had - but that this was not a crime according to Norwegian law.
I have big problems seeing how the appeals court (lagmannsretten) could twist the law to make it a crime. On the other hand, it's a jury court, and if the prosecution experts can manage to brainwash the lay people on the bench
In fact, you could just send the raw DVD data over a network to a remote site *now*, and burn a copy, and to heck with the idea of CSS anyway: a bit-for-bit copy is identical: let your DVD player DeCSS the contents for you with legal chips.
Not with a "normal" DVD burner: they can't write the keys to the appropriate track, it seems. The CSS keys are stored in a special area, which cannot even be read with normal DVD drives directly: you have to go through a cryptographic dance with the hardware (css_auth) before you can read that track. Consumer-type DVD recorders cannot write to that track, and ISTR it's not writable on standard blanks either - you need a special "mastering" recorder and blank. Since those recorders are aimed at movie studios, and priced accordingly, with the blanks costing more than pre-recorded DVDs, that idea is pretty much a non-starter for piracy: it's cheaper to buy legit copies in a store!
Then ...the region codes supposedly stop that from happening, given that most of the large scale piracy actually occurs in China, and no one would ever think to bring a Region 1 or a region-free DVD player into China, and none of those DVD's could ever make it back to the U.S., right?
Region coding does strike me as pretty dumb. Apart from the extra costs - instead of making one "English" version, to sell in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK and Ireland, you have to make and distribute "North America - English" (US/Canada), "Europe - English" (UK/Ireland), "Asia/Pacific - English" (NZ/Australia)...
(Thanks to national censorship, you have to make separate UK versions anyway, with modified artwork to feature the government's censor-approval certificate, but hopefully that will die soon.)
While I am of two minds on the gun-control debate, this snippet of text caught my eye. It's important to realize that our founders considered this one of the MOST BASIC rights that must be guaranteed.
Specifically, they wanted to ensure that the public had the means necessary to overthrow the government established by the Constitution, in the event that it didn't work out as they had hoped. If, for instance, the democratic process was subverted in some way, We The People were expected to take up our arms and restore proper government.
The fact that such a provision is essentially meaningless in an era of billion dollar war machines is a topic for another debate. If only Ben Franklin were still around to help us out with thorny issues like this... *sigh*
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
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
I don't know about anyone else, but when I read stories about retrials after acquittals, it makes me REALLY glad the U.S. Constitution prohibits Double Jeopardy (and not the round in the television show either).
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Trial, Trial, Trial again.