DeCSS: Jon Johansen Retrial Begins

JPMH writes "Jon Johansen is back on trial for DeCSS. Despite the acquittal back in January, the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit (OKOKRIM) is allowed to bring his case back before an enlarged panel of judges. The retrial begins today."

Comments

Re:Pay the piper.

[KrispyKringle]

Right. And I wouldn't be able to watch DVD's I have legally purchased, on a machine I legally own, on a DVD-ROM which came with a royalty-paid, licensed version of a CSS descrambler, without running an operating system which I don't like but for which I have a fully paid, legal license to.

In other words, nobody is hurt, financially, by me using Linux and DeCSS instead of Windows and WinDVD. I've paid all my licenses, including my Microsoft tax (actually, I got a free license from a site-license, but somebody paid it, which is really all that matters).

I'm thinking you were trolling, but I wanted to bring this up anyway.

Norwegian courts

[Lucky_Norseman]

Norway has a two-phase court system.

If either party disagree with the verdict at the lower court they can appeal and get a new trial with more judges (and depending on the type of crime, either a jury or a panel of judges)

New Rule For Disclosure

[LaCosaNostradamus]

These court cases should illustrate to Mr. Johansen and rest of us:

If you're going to crack open the schemes of the corporate overlords, do so anonymously.

Wby we have "double jeopardy" in Norway (long)

[Kjella]

Yes, the prosecution can appeal a decision in the Norwegian court system. Note that this isn't a new trial, it's an appeals process. But I think we and the USA has a completely different understanding of how the justice system should work, and why double jeopardy should/shouldn't exist. I'll try to explain:

In the American system, it's all about finding the one trial that'll get them acquitted, be it that the jury that is so biased, incompetent, stupid, subjective, easily influenced, prejudicial, scared of sending innocents to jail or otherwise inept that they can't manage to find a man guilty even when the evidence should have been sufficient. Or through lack of experience on part of the judge and the prosecution, making the legal proceedings be of an inadequate quality.

I guess the reasoning is that if one jury is able to see reasonable doubt, there is reasonable doubt. In theory, it sounds like sound legal thinking. However, I can think of so many other reasons why one specific jury may find reasonable doubt where there is none. In the US, that seems to be acceptable, but I think most other places it'd be seen as a flaw, if the evidence was in fact sufficient (another matter altogether if the evidence is insufficient, both of us use "innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt").

In Norway, and I might add in quite a few other countries, we instead realize that trials are not perfect, and that judgements may be too excessive. This can go both in favor as well as disfavor of the defendant, and in extremes leading to aquitting those that by the evidence should have been guilty, and also in some cases sentencing the innocent. In particular, I'm thinking about sentences that get overturned in a higher court, though technically you're not sentenced until the judgement is final.

Instead, we base our legal system on competence. A higher court, with more/better educated judges, a full jury, is considered to be more competent, and so a more accurate instrument of justice than a lower one. That is, that a higher court will make less incorrect decisions, putting more guilty in jail, and freeing more innocents.

Now ask yourself this: If you were checking if a product was inside a specification, would you use one fairly accurate measurement, or many less accurate ones and reject it if one is outside the acceptable limits? I think the Norwegian system works great, it's just that some laws are completely nutty and sentences are overall too low. But that's a completely different discussion...

Kjella