Just a small clarificaton: the Norwegian police does not use weapons except in special cases and use have to be authorized by the local policechief. Raiding the home of a 16 year old is more like showing up at the door saying "Hello, we're from the police and have a warrant to search your house."
Don't fall into the movie industry's propaganda and think that every raid involves blackclad men with machineguns ropejumping though windows:-)
One of the most frequent argument for why DeCSS is a Good Thing is that Linux people have no DVD decoder available.
DeCSS is a Win32 program to copy the DVD file to the HD. It cannot be used to play DVD on Linux. This argument is thus void when defending Jon Johansen
DeCSS source code can be used to produce players for Linux though. But it is still not a good reason for DeCSS.
And it is my understanding that quality is lost too. (Not sure about that, can anyone confirm/debunk?)
Several people have said that reverse engineering is legal in Norway.
Yes, it is,
within certain limits. You can reverse engineer something to "establish the ideas and principles that are the base for the different parts of the program" (Norwegian Copyright Law 39h, third section - Lov om opphavsrett til åndsverk m.v. 39h - tredje ledd).
The fifth section of this law also says that these rights cannot be revoked by an agreement => any licence agreement cannot restrain this right.
Now, this part of the law does not grant you the right to reverse engineer a program and then rip the entire decoding scheme.
39i however gives you the right to "produce a copy of the computerprogram code and translate the code when this is neccesary to obtain the information to obtain functional compliance with a selfdeveloped program and other programs"
But the point here is "functional complicance" (no: funksjonelt samvirke). DeCSS is not ment to function with any of the programs that they ripped the decrypting scheme from.
Also in 39i, second section it states that this is prohibited for
"other means than to make possible functional compilance"
that it cannot be "passed on to others, except when this is nessecary to make functional compliance possible"
and (this is an important point) it "cannot be used to develop, produce or market a computer program that largely corresponds to the original program in shape, or for any other action that violates the copyright for the program"
DeCSS is meant to preform the same function as the Xing decoder that they reverse engineered so 39i does not apply either.
So: reverse engineering the Xing decoder to make and distribute DeCSS is not allowed in Norwegian copyright law (for a full text of the law concerning computerprograms and databases look at Lovdata's page.
Now, before a bunch of other laymans lawyers like me pounce on me and say that you have to reverse engineer the Xing Decoder to ensure functional compilance with their DVD player under Linux: The law is about functioning with the program you reverse engineer. Thus I can reverse engineer Word to obtain the knowledge to make a program that functions with Word. Not to make another Word processor.
Jon Johansen did not write the decoding part for DeCSS, therefore they have nothing on him.
True, he did not write the decoding, only the interface, but what he did do was to distibute DeCSS (which is a program violating copyright law). This is what they can nail him on.
Unfortunatly, the copyright law does not provide for much slack when it comes to agruing points like "but information should be free" and "they want to limit my choice of OS". And JJ going out in the media saying things like "we won't respect that" probably won't help him.
The Norwegian goverment is suing JJ on it's own.
False. A Norwegian lawyer went to the police and "pressed charges" (no: leverte anmeldelse). The police are obligated to look into the matter (just like they have to do when you say "so and so stole my car" - without any ohter comparisation). The police discuss it with legal personell and if they have reasonable suspicion that something illegal has taken place the first this they do is to sieze evidence. There goes computers and anything else that might be of value. Including different means to discover the identity of the other people involved.
So the fact is that yes, the Norwegian goverment is suing Jon Johansen, but not on it's own. It's is following up a report by another citizen (the lawyer)
Let me finish by saying that I think it stinks that you can't use DVD's on Linux, but this is because no one bothered to develop one legaly.
If someone want to chew me out for this they can either respond here or send an email to DVD@henriksen.no (last alternative ensures the quickest reply)
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No. It's a perfect example why we need SysAdmins that know what security means.
Don't fall into the movie industry's propaganda and think that every raid involves blackclad men with machineguns ropejumping though windows :-)
--
Glenn
One of the most frequent argument for why DeCSS is a Good Thing is that Linux people have no DVD decoder available.
Several people have said that reverse engineering is legal in Norway.
So: reverse engineering the Xing decoder to make and distribute DeCSS is not allowed in Norwegian copyright law (for a full text of the law concerning computerprograms and databases look at Lovdata's page.Now, before a bunch of other laymans lawyers like me pounce on me and say that you have to reverse engineer the Xing Decoder to ensure functional compilance with their DVD player under Linux: The law is about functioning with the program you reverse engineer. Thus I can reverse engineer Word to obtain the knowledge to make a program that functions with Word. Not to make another Word processor.
Jon Johansen did not write the decoding part for DeCSS, therefore they have nothing on him.
The Norwegian goverment is suing JJ on it's own.
Let me finish by saying that I think it stinks that you can't use DVD's on Linux, but this is because no one bothered to develop one legaly.
If someone want to chew me out for this they can either respond here or send an email to DVD@henriksen.no (last alternative ensures the quickest reply)
- Glenn