KDE doesn't require GNU or Linux, it requires QT (which usually implies X11) X/QT/KDE is more accurate
I suppose you mean KDE/Qt/X (we list the components top-down). However, you normally don't list what the software/requires/, but what makes your configuration distinct. Whether you are running Solaris, FreeBSD or Debian, you will be running KDE/Qt/X, so to make a distinction you would call it KDE/Solaris, KDE/FreeBSD or KDE/GNU/Linux. This distinction is obviously useless for most practical needs, so you can probably stick with just calling it "KDE".
However his die hard views seem strange. If Linus calls his kernel Linux and not gnuLinux then its called Linux.
You are confused, my friend. There is no debate regarding the name of the kernel; it is Linux. However, when you combine the kernel with the GNU C library and the other parts from GNU which makes a UNIX-like system (bash, ls, gcc etc.) you are running GNU/Linux, (or Linux, whichever you prefer).
do you just type it, or actually say "I use gnu linux"
I say I use Debian. If I talk to someone who doesn't know what Debian is, I say I use a free (Norwegian has a separate word for free as in freedom) operating system including Linux, called Debian. Otherwise I say the name of the specific software I am talking about ("I'm having problems configuring XFree86", "KDE uses a long time to load", "I can't use BSD without the GNU toolchain", "Linux lacks support for my sound card") where other people would just say Linux.
Instead, I'll use CD Baby [cdbaby.com] and get songs for approximately the same price, but at CD-quality,
This is untrue in some way: music on CD's generally have been mixed by a professional sound engineer, and thus has excellent quality. I listened to quite a few songs in the "Electronic" section on CD Baby, and all of them sounded very half-assed. People who enjoy underground electronica will not likely enjoy any of this.
It's a plane! It's a bird! It's a flying vibrator!
Why were those people always so amazed to see a plane or a bird?
Re:The Real Human Genome Project
on
Genome Surprise
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· Score: 1
Humans are extremely complex, but as we go about our 'very' important lives, it's humbling to know that on the surface, we do not contain many more genes than some other 'lesser' forms of life on this planet.
To use the term "broadband" (or rather, "bredbånd") in advertising your internet service, the connection must be fast enough to use modern multimedia technologies in real time, the mark currently being set by the ability to watch live video streams of "good" quality.
Best places to live in the world (according to the UN):
1. Norway 2. Australia 3. Canada 4. Sweden 5. Belgium 6. United States 7. Iceland 8. Netherlands 9. Japan 10. Finland 11. Switzerland 12. Luxembourg 13. France 14. UK 15. Denmark 16. Austria 17. Germany 18. Ireland 19. New Zealand 20. Italy
Note that the resizer cannot defrag, yet, so it can only shrink NTFS partitions by the amount of free space you have.
If you want to shrink it by more than the amount of free space, you would have to erase files, not defrag them. What is more likely, is that you cannot shrink it by more than the amount of continuous free space at the end of the filesystem.
If you mean how fast GCC can compile stuff, then it's probably not the fastest compiler in this world. Hopefully precompiled headers support will change this.
If you ever tried compiling applications with GCC on a system withough GNU libc, you would have noticed how important the header sizes are. Compiling applications in e.g. FreeBSD, which uses a small and non-portable C library, is way faster than in Debian or Red Hat.
Hopefully gcc and Watcom can feed off each other and both products will improve.
As far as I know, the copyright for the code needs to be handed over to FSF it it is to be used in the GNU compiler collection. I don't think that's very likely to happen. (This has nothing to do with license compatibilities, but rather FSF's policy)
Re:Australia hasn't had paper money for 10 years!
on
Cashless Society
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· Score: 1
Between 1992 and 1996, the Bank progressively introduced a new series of notes to replace the original decimal notes, which were first issued in 1966. The new notes are printed on polymer (plastic) substrate instead of traditional paper.
From the website: Between 1992 and 1996, the Bank progressively introduced a new series of notes to replace the original decimal notes, which were first issued in 1966. The new notes are printed on polymer (plastic) substrate instead of traditional paper.
I wish that it would take off in more places so that I didn't have the urge to execute the five idiots who decide to pay for their milk with a check at the supermarket.
Ever since most bank terminals in the city got connected via ISDN, I've wished that the credit/debit cards took off in more places so that I didn't have the urge to execute the five idiots who decide to pay for their milk with cash at the supermarket.
Jon Lech Johansen, born November 18, 1983, lives in Agmond Boltsvei 62. He is unmarried and has no children. He works as software developer and earns NOK 35 000 gross per month. He has no fortune.
By charges presented by the Norwegian economic crime unit's state attorney member the 10th of May 2002, changed under the main negotiations, is he placed under charges at Oslo district court for violation of
The criminal law 145 second by third and fourth phrase
For by unrightfully having broken a protection or by similar means having unrightfully acquired access to data that is stored or transferred electronically or by other technical means and by having caused damage by acquiring or using such unrightful knowledge or by having aided this.
The basis is the following chain of events or cooperation in this
In the period September 1999 to 24th of January 2000, via Internet from residence in Lardal, Jon Lech Johansen participated in the breaking of the technical protection system Content Scrambling System ("CSS"), licensed by DVD Copy Control Association Inc, to protect DVD-movies produced by Motion Pictures Association against copying. A DVD-movie is a movie that is stored electronically on a DVD-disc. Based on knowledge about a secret algorithm and player keys incorporated into CSS, did Jon Lech Johansen make the Windows program DeCSS. By using DeCSS an unencrypted copy of the DVD-film is produced. Jon Lech Johansen used DeCSS on his own DVD-movies, and he spread DeCSS several times in different versions via Internet in the said period. By the described circumstances Jon Lech Johansen acquired unrightful access to the secret key repository in CSS. Further did Jon Lech Johansen break the copy protection on the DVD-movies and acquired himself and others access to the DVD-discs in an unprotected condition. The access was unrightful because the DVD-movies were sold with the condition that the user would utilize authorized playback equipment and respect the copy protection. The acquiring of the movies in unprotect condition has caused damage because the right holders no longer has protection against unrightful spreading of the movies.
The main negotiations were held in Oslo Tinghus 9th to 16th of December 2002. The defendant met accompanied by his defender. The defendant testified and pleaded not guilty in accordance to the charges.
The court received testimonies from five witnesses, and there were held documentation as shown in the court book. Further were the program DeCSS demonstrated.
Prosecutor made the following claim:
Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is in correspondence with the charges sentenced to jail in 90 (ninety) days, which is made conditional with a parole of 2 (two) years, in accordance to the criminal law 52 following
Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is sentenced to handle the withdrawal of one PC-cabinet Pentium III 500 MHz (withdrawal A-2), in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase. 8 CD-ROMS containing miscellaneous unlicensed software (withdrawal A-4-7), in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase.
Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is sentenced to carry the costs of this trial with 10 000 (ten thousand) NOK.
Defender made the following claim:
Jon Lech Johansen is found innocent.
The court's commentaries
The case's background While taking under consideration the strong needs for evidence in the criminal court, including that any reasonable doubt should come to the defendant's advantage, the court finds the following actual background for the case proved: 4th of January 2000 Motion Pictures Association, hereafter called MPA, and DVD Copy Control Association Inc, hereafter called DVD CCA, reported Jon Lech Johansen to the Norwegian economic crime unit for violating the criminal law 145 second phrase. The background for the report is that Jon Lech Johansen had participated in the development of the computer program DeCSS.
MPA collects several of the large movie companies in USA. The organization was one of those who took the initiative to the work that lead to the foundation of the DVD CCA. DVD CCA was founded to prevent pirate copying of DVD movies. The DVD technology is described in the expert report delivered by Stige Frode Mjolsnes and Hakon Styri 18th of September 2000 after assignment from the Norwegian economic crime unit. From page 6 in the report the following is quoted:
"DVD is a technological extension of the compact disc (CD), and has the same external dimensions as this. The storage capacity for a DVD is significantly larger than for the compact disc. DVD is used as a digital storage medium both in the entertainment industry (music, video, games) and in the computer industry (software, databases etc)."
From page 7 in the report the following is quoted:
"DVD-video is an 'application' of DVD-ROM which among other things conditions that the information on the disc is structured in a specific way."
President John Hoy in DVD CCA testified during the main negotiations that because a DVD-video has a technology that stores information digitally, and not in analog, will this lead to the possibility of it being copied without loss of quality. The movie companies were obviously worried that the development of the DVD technology would lead to significant copying and distribution of movies without the producers of the movie receiving payment. He has further testified that the companies the stood behind the development of the DVD technology wished to tie themselves to the movie industry to have something to sell. A compromise between the movie producers and the DVD producers were the development of the Content Scrambling System, hereafter called CSS. On a question from the prosecutor did Hoy confirm that CSS came as a consequence of a demand from the movie industry.
From page 13 in Mjolsnes' and Styri's report the following is quoted:
"CSS is a technological measure that utilizes cryptographical methods to protect digital information stored on a DVD disc in accordance to the DVD video standard."
The court bases its decision on this explanation of what CSS is.
From page 15 and 16 in Mjolsnes' and Styri's report the following is quoted:
"The fundamental problem a right holder and a publisher of intellectual works is presented with is how to practice control with his copyrights at the same time as copies of the works is to be distributed.
(Emphasis) By distributing a work in an encrypted condition the distributor will limit the distribution of the work to those who know the decryption key. (Emphasis end)
We could try to make a technical obstruction such that the receiver cannot distribute the decryption key to others. This copy protection of decryption keys is a central point in CSS. Anyway will this not be sufficient. The receiver of course has the rightful claim to use (watch and listen to) the contents. Therefore it is also necessary to prevent technical copying of the contents while it is being decrypted and is presented in 'plain text'.
A normal solution concept consists of making the user dependent on a decoder or playback device do watch and listen to the digital content. A precondition that has to be satisfied is that there must not be any way to 'tap' the playback device for the contents that it presents in plain text for the user, otherwise this can be copied and distributed.
Further does this solution condition that the decoder/playback device itself is secured against copying. This can be done by encapsulating the decryption key in a tampering safe way, such that the secret key can neither be read nor modified nor circumvented by any physical or logical means. This will imply that the playback unit is secured against copying, essentially because the decryption key (and possible secreted algorithms) cannot be read out.
A CSS implementation that utilizes tampering safe hardware decoder and playback devices will be able to satisfy the above mentioned requirements. A CSS implementation that utilizes software-only decoder and playback devices would not likely satisfy any of these requirements. The protection is at least a lot weaker than what could have been done in electronical chipsets."
In conclusion does CSS make it neccesary for the buyer of a DVD-disc to have a special equipment that can decrypt DVD movies. The equipment can either consist of a DVD player in the shape of a so-called "brownware box", hardware, that is connected to a TV-apparatus for playback of the movie or a computer program, software, that is installed in a PC so that the DVD disc can be played back on PC. In a PC the DVD disc is placed in a DVD drive that communicates via a data bus with a DVD player in the form of a computer program.
A DVD disc with CSS encrypted material contains a disc key encrypted with a selection of approximately 400 so-called player keys. A DVD player must contain at least one of these player keys if a DVD movie is to be playable in unencrypted form. Producers of DVD players must therefore know at least one of the player keys in order to be able to produce a DVD player that is supposed to play encrypted DVD movies.
CSS consists of several forms of protection in form of codes or keys that is layered on top of each other. The title keys are used to encrypt the actual movie. Thereafter the title key is encrypted with a disc key. The disc key is encrypted with a selection of the approximately 400 player keys. A DVD player that knows at least one of the player keys can decrypt the disc key and with this key the title key can be decrypted so that the disc's contents can be watched/listened to in unencrypted form.
All those who wants to produce such a DVD player can apply for a license for this and thus get access to one or more player keys. The license is controlled by DVD CCA. The precondition for getting a license is that the license taker keeps secrecy about the player keys and that they are protected in the DVD player so that the buyer of a DVD player shall not get access to the player keys. We refer to Hoy's testimony during the main negotiations.
Not all producers of software accepts such conditions, for instance an amount of producers of programs under the operating system Linux. The background is that many programs that are made under Linux has open source code, meaning that everybody should be able to see how the program is built. The motive for this is that anyone who wants to modify computer software under Linux should have full access to this. By this reason there was no DVD player under the operating system Linux fall 1999. We refer to Johansens own explanation and that no evidence is presented that contradicts this explanation on this point.
In addition the the encryption CSS consists of an authentication that is supposed to prevent DVD movies with CSS protection from being played back on the DVD players that are not produced under license from DVD CCA. The authentication implies that the DVD drive with the DVD disc and the player accepts each other and that the DVD player gets access to the DVD disc's contents.
Further does the CSS contain a regional playback control. The world is divided into different zones where for instance USA is region 1 and Europe and parts of Asia is region 2. A DVD disc contains information about which region it's bought in and shall only be possible to play back on a DVD player bought in the same region.
The development of DeCSS
Johansen has explained that he during the fall 1999 wished to be able to play back DVD movies under the operating system Linux.
Through several chatting channels on the Internet Johansen made contact with other people having the same interests as him. The conversations on the chatting channels are either performed "openly" with all those who are logged on or "in private" between two persons. One of the most important chatting channel services for our case is IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Johansen was during the fall 1999 operator on the chatting channels PCDVD. Johansen's nick name on the chatting channels was "MultiAGP".
On page 326 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log that shows a conversation held 11th of September 1999 between Johansen and a person calling himself "mdx". It's clear from the printout that Johansen and "mdx" discussed how one could find the decryption algorithm in CSS by finding a DVD player that does not have or has low protection of player keys. On page 328 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of a conversation held 22th of September 1999 on IRC between Johansen and "mdx". It's clear from the printout that a person calling himself "the nomad" has program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS. It's further clear from the printout that "mdx" sent this program code to Johansen. This is also confirmed by Johansen's explanation during the main negotiations. Johansen has further explained that "the nomad" found the decryption algorithm in CSS by reverse engineering of a DVD player of the brand Xing. This is also clear from the conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" on IRC 24th of September 1999 quoted on page 393 in the actual excerpt.
Johansen has further explained that program code for the authentication algorithm in CSS was publicized on the news group Livid on the Internet. Livid is a news group for persons interested in development of software under the operating system Linux. Johansen could under the main negotiations not remember how he got program code to the authentication algorithm. There is however not presented any evidence that Johansen participated in the development of this program code and the court therefore bases its decision on that Johansen fetched or received this after the work after it was completed. Johansen has explained that he later came to know that a person by the name Derek Fawcus had ascertained program code for the authentication algorithm in CSS.
The court consider proven that DeCSS makes a unencrypted copy of an encrypted movie and puts this on the computer's harddisc. We refer to earlier special investigator in Okokrim Svein Yngvar Willassen's explanation, as well as the demonstation of the program that was performed during the main negotiations. This corresponds to Johansen's explanation.
On page 393 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log with a conversation from the 24th of September 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad". It is clear from the printout that Johansen had made a CSS decryption program by using "the nomad"'s program code for the decryption algorithm and that he had made a GUI (Graphical User Interface), that is a user interface that makes the program easier to use. It is further clear from the same page of the printout that Johansen asked "the nomad" to test the program. Johanse further asked "the nomad" if he could publish the program, something "the nomad" accepted.
Johansen has explaind that DeCSS was tested in the period before the program was realeased on the Internet. Johansen has further explained that there was made several versions of DeCSS. Willassen has explained that there was found several versions of DeCSS during the search in Johansen's home. The court therefore bases its decision on that several versions of DeCSS were made. Johansen is however not sure which version was distributed on the Internet. The court does not find this decisive for the case.
Johansen has explained that he the 6th of October 1999 either put out a link or put DeCSS directly on his home page on the Internet. The same day he sent a message to Livid that is quoted on page 20 in the actual excerpt. In the message Johansen explained that DeCSS is a CSS decryptor that works with the movie "The Matrix", something a similar program, "DoDs speedripper", doesn't. Johansen further explained that the program works under the operating systems Win98 and Win2k. Thereafter he explained where the program could be fetched on the Internet.
On page 450 in the actual excerpth there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log with a conversation from the 6th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad". It is clear that Johansen made a mistake "uploaded the source". The court bases its decision on that they were talking about the source code for DeCSS that was made available on the Internet. The court further bases its decision on that this was an error from Johansens side, and refers to that he wrote to "the nomad" that he would try to get those who had downloaded it to erase it. Johansen has explained that he removed the source code from the Internet. The cause was that the didn't want DVD CCA to pull back Xing-keys so that DeCSS would stop working. The court bases its decision on that Johansen withdrew the sourcecode from Internet a short time after it was distributed.
The 25th of October 1999 the source code for DeCSS was made available on Livid. The poster of the source code was anonymous. On page 501 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an IRC log showing a conversation between "the nomad" and Johansen the 25th of October 1999. It's clear from the printout that Johansen is annoyed by the fact that somemone posted the source for DeCSS. Johansen has explained that it was unfortunate that the source code was made available, because the source code contained player keys from the Xing player. DVD CCA could thus have reacted by withdrawing player keys. The court bases its decision on that it wasn't Johansen who publicized the source code for DeCSS at this time.
Johansen has however explained that he made the source code for DeCSS available on the Internet at a later time because the source code was then already available.
Johansen has explained that before the development of DeCSS, there existed programs for decryption of DVD movies. On of these programs are the abovementioned "Speedripper". The program was developed by a group who called themselves "Drink or Die" (DoD). According to Johansen this program didn't work on some movies, among others "The Matrix".
Disclosure of player keys
On page 537 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 7th of October 1999 from a person by the name Brian Demsky to Johansen. It's clear from the e-mail that Demsky downloaded DeCSS and that he has made a program to find the approximately 400 player keys. The purpose was to avoid that DeCSS would stop working if DVD CCA should revoke some of the player keys. This is confirmed by Johansen during the main negotiations.
On page 538 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of the reply from Johansen to Demsky the same day. Johansen wrote that this was good news and thet there is interst for this.
In the program code for the decryptino algorithm that Johansen received from "the nomad" there's at least one player key. On page 459 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an IRC log that shows a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" the 8th of October 1999, ie. after DeCSS was made publicly available on the Internet. It's clear from that log that Johansen first at this stage realised how the player keys work. It's further clear from the log that Johansen sent player keys that he had got from Demsky to "the nomad". It's further clear that "the nomad" tested several of the player keys and that Johansen were to forward the test results to Demsky. Johansen has explained during the main negotiations that he cannot remember whether he participated in the actual testing himself, but that he forwardet player keys and test results between Demsky and "the nomad". From the log it cannot be drawn any safe conclusins with regard to whether Johansen himself participated in the testing of player keys. The court does however not find this decisive for the case because it is clear that Johansen was the contact between Demsky and "the nomad".
On page 553 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an e-mail from 9th of October 199 from Demsky to Johansen. It's clear from the e-mail that Demsky had found approximately 400 player keys and that he sent them to Johansen.
After a while it was known in the media that CSS was broken. On page 674 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an article on the Internet in November 1999 where Johansen is presented as spokesperson of the group MoRE (Masters of Reverse Engineering), the group who broke CSS. Johansen has explained that his father was conatected by attorney Erik Tondel who on behalf of MPA asked that Johansen removed DeCSS from the Internet. Johansen followed the adviced from attorney Tondel and removed DeCSS from the Internet. Johansen has further explained that he uploaded DeCSS to the Internet again the following weekend, and that it was available until the 24th of January 2000.
Altering the charges during the main negotiations
The way the charges sounded during the start of the main negotiations was Johansen charged with having unrighfully gained access to the datas on the DVD discs. The way the charges was articulated data could both be understood as the actual movies, but also other data that is stored on a DVD disc. During the main negotiations the prosecutor changed the sentence with "did Jon Lech Johansen gain access to the secret key repository in CSS".
The defender mentioned that this is another case than the one the charges originally was about and that the case is deprecated in accordance to the criminal law 67 first phrase. The court finds that this is not another case than what the charges originally was about if the exact words of the charges are considered. The court has a certain sympathy for the defender's arguments against the fact that the prosecutor was a bit vague during the main negotiations with regard to what the charges actually are about, but either way finds that the exact words of the charges should be the basis of the court's decision.
The question of guild
The criminal law 145 first and second phrase sounds thus:
"He who unrightfully breaks letters or other closed writings or in similar ways unrightfully gains access to the contents, or acquires access to someone else's locked hidings is punished with fines or jail up to 6 months.
The same applies to he who by breaking a protection or by similar means unrightfully gains access to data or program equipment that is stored or transferred by electronical or other technical means."
If Johansen is to be convicted for violating the criminal law 145 second phrase he must therefore either himself, or by having contributed to that someone has broken a protection of by other similar means thereby acquired unrightful access to data or program equipment. Originally the criminal law 145 applied to he who "unrightfully breaks letter or other closed writings acquires access to someone else's locked hidings or aiding this". The decisions was changed by law the 16th of February 1979. Then another sentence was added in the first point, that sounded thus:
"The same applies to he who unrightfully acquires access to the contents of a closed message or writing when this regularily only is available by using special equipment for connection, playback, lighting through, reading or similar."
It's clear from NOU 1985:31 Computer crime on page 14 that the decision applied to inspection of computer stored information. On page 29 and 30 the council of crime law explains about the the need for changes in the crime law 145. From page 30 the following is quoted:
"The articulation in the decision ("closed message or writing") does not immediately lead the thought to information stored on computers, and there is reason to believe that the decision is little known among computer people. The council of crime law have therefore, without aiming for a change of meaning, given the decision a new articulation (as 145 second phrase)."
The council of crime law's suggestion for change of 145 second phrase is the decision the way it now sounds. Because the council of crime law didn't aim to change the meaning will law sources connected to the decision the way it sounded earlier still be relevant.
In Ot prp no 35 (1986-87) on page 20 and following, the department of justice explains the preconditions for punishment in 145 second phrase. On page 20 the deparment discusses the expression "breaking a protection or by similar means". From page 20 the following is quoted:
"By the fact that 'similar beans' is added, the interpretation of the precondition about breaking a protection becomes less important. The point is that 145 only shall apply to cases where the act of gaining access to data must be characterized as qualified unrightful. To break a protection is a such qualifying factor, but one can also imagine similar situations where the act of breaking into data will be so grave that 145 should be applied. Furthermore will the decision rely on a understanding where other factors of the act and the acting situation is pulled in."
It is hence the expression "unrightful" that is the central condition in the decision. The council of criminal law states one page 15 and following about the expression unrightful:
"In principle it depends on laws and agreements what data one has the right to get to know" (NOU 1985:31 Computer crime)
On the same page the council states:
"The expression 'unrightful' ties itself to the particular information and not the computer facility as such."
It is clear from the articulation, and also by articulations in the proposal, that the question about unrightful must be tied to whether a person is allowed to get access to computer stored information, not how the person gets the access.
The court therefore bases its decision on that the decision does not apply to he who in another way than the producer has required, acquires access to data he otherwise has access to. This must apply even if this happens by breaking a protection or by similar means.
Access to the movie
The court finds that he who buys a DVD movie that is produced in a legal way, has rightful access to watch the movie. Something else would apply if the DVD movie was produced by copying in violation with the copyright law, so-called pirate copying. The owner of a pirate copy will therefore not have a rightful demand to watch the movie.
As earlier mentioned the court does find it proven that DeCSS makes an unencrypted copy of an encrypted DVD movie that is put on the computers harddisc. The court therefore bases its decision that the use of DeCSS gives the user access to the movie in an unencrypted condition. The fact that such a copy is made is not decisive because the act of making a copy is not covered by the crime law 145.
The question for the courte is hence whether Johansen has used DeCSS on DVD movies that are produced in an illegal manner and therefore did not have the right to access.
On page 299 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of a chatting channel with a conversation the 9th of October 1999 between Johansen and another person calling himself "Robshot". It is clear from the printout that the Johansen has pirated copies of computer software. It is further clear from page 474 in the actual excerpt which is a printout of an IRC log from a conversation the 14th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad" that Johansen has an illegal copy of the computer program Scenarist 2.0. Johansen has however explained that he has not had illegally produced DVD movies in his posession. He has explained that he has used DeCSS on the movies "The Matrix" and "The fifth element" and that he has bought both of the films in a legal manner in stores in Oslo and Larvik, respectively. No evidence is presented that shows that Johansen has used DeCSS on illegally acquired DVD movies. The court has therefore reached the verdict that Johansen cannot be convicted for violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to his own use of DeCSS.
The next question the court has to decide upon is whether Johansen can be convicted for abetting violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase by the fact that other has gained unrightful access to DVD movies. In accordance to the criminal law 145 fourth phrase is abetting also punishable.
From page 200 in Erling Johansen Husabo's bok "The periphery of criminal responsibility - Abetting, attempting, preparing" (1999) the following is quoted:
"The statement (in the preparation of the criminal law) shows that even if the abettor has done his part, one shall not punish the abettor for anything more than attempt as long as the main man hasn't completed the violation."
No evidence is presented that shows that anybody have used DeCSS on illegally acquired DVD movies. The court refers to special investigator Willassens testimony during the main negotiations where he said he didn't know of any specific cases where DeCSS have been used on illegally acquired DVD movies. Johansen can therefore not be convicted for completed abetting.
The court furthermore has to to decide upon whether Johansen can be convicted for attempt to abet. The problem posed is whether Johansen can be convicted for abetting by having produced and distributed a tool which makes it possible for other people to gain unrightful access to DVD movies.
Our case has many similarities with transfer of property discussed by Husabo. From page 100 in his book the following is quoted:
"Nearly every product can become new as a means to a law violation. Certain kinds of products even likely will lead to being used to such. But it is either way there's an agreement that the legal responsibility is excluded both for producer and salesman. (Emphasis) What intentions the producer or salesman had, is then basically irrelevant. (Emphasis end)
As long as the products also serves legal purposes the problem is not as much to give reason to freedom from punishment, but to give reason when sale to others anyway can lead to abetting responsibility.
The basis is thus that the sale of products that have a legal purpose cannot be punished as abetting. The same must be true for distribution of products. Decisive for the question is whether DeCSS has a legal purpose.
As mentioned earlier the court finds that it will not be in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase to utilize DeCSS to watch DVD movies acquired legally. Furthermore will it not be in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase to produce copies of legally acquired DVD movies for private use, in accordance to the copyright law 12. DeCSS can thus be used both to take a copy of a DVD movie and to play back a DVD movie if one doesn't have licensed playback equipment. How useful this is to society there could be different opinions about, but that this is legal have to seem clear after this. The court therefore finds that DeCSS can be used in a legal or illegal manner.
The supreme court has convicted for punishable abetting of sale of products that otherwise are legal, jf Rt 1996 page 965. The supreme court laid decisive stress on that the organization of the business obviously showed that the person's intension with the sale was to sell products that were to be used exclusively for illegal production of hard liquors. The defendant's intention with the distribution of a product is thus an important factor in the evaluation of the outer circumstances in the case, in accordance to Husabo page 117.
In our case the court finds it difficult to draw any safe conclusions with regard to Johansen's intention with the development of DeCSS and the publicizing of the program on the Internet. Johansen has testified that the intention was to contribute to the development of a DVD player for the operating system Linux. On page 885 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 23th of September 1999 from "the nomad" to Derek Fawcus. It's clear from the e-mail that "the named" sent program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS to Fawcus. "The nomad" further wrote in the e-mail that he hoped this would be of help for the development of a DVD player for Linux.
Johansen has on his side expressed himself negatively about the operating system Linux and the development community tied to this system. On page 45 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 6th of October 1999 on Livid from a person by the name Michael Holzt. Holzt writes that Johansen allegedly have said that he hates Linux and that he would have been glad if the system was never invented because FreeBSD is much better. On page 47 in the actual excerpt is there a quote from the answer from Johansen where he wrote that he never have said that he hates Linux, but that it doesn't matter if Linux never had been invented because FreeBSD is much better. On page 51 there is a quote from an e-mail of 8th of October 1999 to Livid where Johanse apologizes his attitued in earlier e-mails and writes that he means Linux is a very good operating system, but that FreeBSD is better. On page 458 and 459 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an IRC log with a conversation the 8th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad" where Johansen writes that he has sent an apology to Livid, but that it was just to satisfy another person who the court assumes is Derek Fawcus. Johanse writes further:
"God damned linux fanatics, I wish someone would shoot them ; )"
Given the context and the explanation Johansen has given during the main negotiations the court bases its decision on that the background for this statement is a conflict between Michael Holzt and Johansen about whether the source code should be publicized, as well as the situation around the transferral of the source code to Fawcus. The court finds that Johansen's statements regarding Linux thus cannot be taken literally and that they don't give any solid grounds for Johansen's relationship to Linux in general. The court therefore means that this correspondence is not sufficient evidence for what intention Johansen had with the development of DeCSS.
It does however speak against that Johansen's intention was to make a DVD player for Linux that he showed so little interest for this operating system at the time DeCSS was made. It's clear from what is mentioned above that Johansen meant that FreeBSD was a better operating system than Linux. It's further clear from a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" on IRC quoted on page 506 in the actual excerpt that Johansen as late as 26th of October 1999 did not have Linux installed on any of his computers.
It further speaks agains that Johansen's intention was the development of a DVD player for Linux that he made DeCSS a Windows program. Johansen has however testified that he did not have enough knowledge about Linux and that there was no support for UDF (the file system on a DVD dict) under this operating system.
Johansen made DeCSS available on the Internet and was occupied with making the program easy to use by "the average joe", in accordance to page 428 in the actual excerpt which is a printout from an IRC log with a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" the 5th of October 1999. Johansen has explained that it was neccesary to publicize DeCSS on the Internet so that the program could be tested and errors discovered so that the program could be developed further. The court can however not see that any of the improvements that were made after the 6th of October 1999 further contributed to the development of a DVD player for Linux.
On page 291 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of a printout of a log from a chatting channel from two conversations the 12th of September 1999 between Johansen and "Robshot". It's clear from the printout that a person calling himself "Wag" means that the chatting channel Johansen is operator in, PCDVD, is solely occupied with pirate copying. In the conversation there is a quote of another conversation between Johansen and "Wag" where Johansen wrote the following to "Wag":
"and I've got only one thing to say to you, keep out of # PCDVD, we are criminals in there, you don't want to mingle with us."
On page 366 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of a printout from a log from a chatting channel with a conversation from 25th of September 1999 between Johansen and a person calling himself "Terryben". It's clear from the printout that Johansen wrote the following to "Terryben":
"so, hehe, we'll be copying dvds i notime when dvd burners drop in $"
The court finds it difficult to put too much stress on the printouts from the chatting channels with regard to Johansen's intention with the development of DeCSS. The conversations can contain exaggregations, humour and irony, and what is said is not likely well thought through at all times. The court can therefore not base its decision on that the conversations give a correct image of the participators subjective judgements. In spite of this the logs show that the competition with other development communities was a strong driving force behind the development and DeCSS. This is especially shown in page 395, 396, 410, 435, 462, 464, 468 and 521 in the actual excerpt which are printouts from conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" where he repeatedly referred to DoDs development of a decryption program.
On this background the court does not find it reasonably proved that without any reasonable doubt Johansen's intention with the development and publicizing of the program was to contribute to illegal copying and distribution of DVD movies.
The court has on this background reached the verdict that Johansen cannot be convicted for having attempted to abet violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase with regard to access to the keys. This holds true even if Johansen was aware that the program could be misused. This will hold true for all who distribute products that can be used legally or illegally.
Access to the player keys
The next question the court has to decide upon is whether Johansen can be convicted for violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys in CSS. If Johansen is to be convicted for violation the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys there must also in this relation be present a break of a protection or other similar mean that has given unrightful access to these.
In Ot prp no 35 the condition to "break a protection or by other similar means" is discussed. From page 20 the following is quoted:
"The department basically agrees with the council of criminal law in that the decision should be articulated so that it only can be applied when the rightholder himself has done something to protect the information against illegal access."
It is thus required that both the information is actually protected against access and that the purpose of the protection is to prevent illegal access. The court bases its decision on that it doesn't matter how strong the protection is. It must be sufficient that the rightholder has done something to protect the information. The court does on the other size base its decision on that factors that makes the access more difficult cannot be counted as protection in relation to the criminal law 145 second phrase if the intention haven't been to protect against illegal access.
Johansen has testified and the court bases its decision on that "the nomad" wrote program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS after he had performed reverse engineering of a Xing-player. The questions thuse becomes whether such reverse engineering implied a violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase. Johansen has testified that he with reverse engineering means the analyze a computer program to find out how it works. According to Johansen "the nomad" has understood the decryption algorithm in CSS and written program code for this in a high level language. This code "the nomad" sent to Johansen.
Reverse engineering is not mentioned in the preparations for the criminal law 145. By the evaluation of the span of the criminal law 145 the legality principle's particular stress on the criminal law's reach must be taken into regard, in accordance to the constitution 96. The supreme court has in two decisions interpreted the criminal law 145 second phrase very narrowly compared to the actual wording, in accordance to Rt 1994 page 1610 and Rt 1995 page 35. Even though the decisions specificaly are about the expression "data", they can be read as a general expression that the criminal law 145 shall be interpreted narrowly.
Bjorn Bjerke gives in his book "Reverse engineering" of computer programes (1994) on page 23 the following definition of reverse engineering:
"Reverse engineering is thereby a process in which one gets an understanding about the datas and processes in an existing computer system. The goal is to pull out contents, structure and data flow from existing computer programs and represent this information in a shape well-suited for further analysis and documentation"
On page 24 and following Bjerke explains the different methods of reverse engineering. Firstly you can read about the program in available manuals and litterature. Secondly you can observe the program at run time. The court finds it obvious that the two first methods does not imply a violation of the criminal law 145. Bjerke describes on page 5 and following the approach used in the third method he calls the dissection method:
"The dissection method requires that we can read and understand computer programs and thereby pulling out information about the individual machine instructions, their function in shape of a description at a higher level of abstraction, as well as this functions place in the algorithm which describes what the program does. The computer program in its distributed for is in binary code, a long stream of one's and zero's, which contains a lot of "filling information" in addition to the original program.
Even by use of alphanumerical symbols will the resulting code not give particular meaning, unless one can read machine instructions and data. You can in other words not avoid disassembling the program."
Bjerke further writes that disassembling means that the object code is transformed into assembly code. Disassembling can be done with a disassmbling program, but one would in addition have to do some testing. The assembler language is very difficult for humans to interpret and decompilation is thus neccesary. Decompilation is the transforming of the assembly code to a high level programming language.
Based on the description Bjerke has given of reverse engineering, as well as the testimony Johansen has given about how "the nomad" wrote program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS, the court finds it difficult to call this breaking of a protecting or other similar means. The court finds it not proven that a computer program distributed in object code is caused by the producer of the program wanting to protect the source code. The cause could equally well be that the program in object code can be used directly in the computer. The court has therefore decided that the reverse engineering that "the nomad" performed is not in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase.
The court finds it proven that the program code Johansen got from "the nomad" contained at least one of the player keys in CSS. The question for the court is thus whether this/these were protected in relation to the criminal law 145 second phrase.
President in DVD CCA, John Hoy, has explained that keeping the player keys secret was a condition to get license to produce DVD players that could play encrypted movies. This is however not sufficient evidence that all producers actually fulfilled this condition. Johansen has explained that the Xing-player did not have any protection of the player keys. This corresponds to what "the nomad" said to Johansen in the conversation on IRC the 24th of September 1999 quoted on page 394 in the actual excerpt. No evidence is presented showing that keys were protected within the Xing player. The court has therefore based its decision on that there was no break of protection or other similar means in relation to player keys in the Xing player.
As regards to the rest of the player keys it's clear from page 537 in the actual excerpt that Brian Demsky the 7th of October 1999 made contact with Johansen and explained that he was in the process of finding all of the player keys in CSS with basis in the program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS that Johansen had made available on the Internet the day before. Demsky further wrote: "I'm currently at a key rate of 2.5 million keys/sec/450 mhz". This indicates that he had developed a computer program that made the computer able to guess possible player keys. The basis for the program is the decryption algorithm in DeCSS where Xing keys were present. The court finds that even though this approach does implies breaking a protection or at least is covered by the expression "or by similar means", the break does not give unrightful access to data. The criminal law 145 second phrase does not apply to breaking the protection itself if the protection breaking itself does not lead to the person getting unrightful access to data. As mentioned earlier the court has found that the use of DeCSS on movies that are neither illegally produced or acquired does not imply a violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase.
As regards to the question about abetting we show to the abovementioned in relation to access to the movie. Also in relation to other's possible use of the player keys to gain unrightful access to information on DVD discs does the court find that Johansen cannot be convicted for attempted abetting. The court thus finds that Johansen neither can be convicted for abetting to violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys.
Johansen is therefore acquitted.
Withdrawal
Prosecutor claimed the withdrawal of one PC cabinet Pentium III 500 MHz and 8 [CDs with] miscellanous unlicensed software in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase. The court does not find that these objects have been used to har was meant used to perform an illegal act. The claim of withdrawal is therefore not followed.
Case expenses
Prosecutor claimed that Johansen should be compelled to pay the case's expenses. Johansen is acquitted and can thus not be compelled to pay the case's expenses, in accordance to the criminal law 436 first phrase.
Verdict:
Jon Lech Johansen, born November 18, 1983, lives in Agmond Boltsvei 62. He is unmarried and has no children. He works as software developer and earns NOK 35 000 gross per month. He has no fortune.
By charges presented by the Norwegian economic crime unit's state attorney member the 10th of May 2002, changed under the main negotiations, is he placed under charges at Oslo district court for violation of
The criminal law 145 second by third and fourth phrase
For by unrightfully having broken a protection or by similar means having unrightfully acquired access to data that is stored or transferred electronically or by other technical means and by having caused damage by acquiring or using such unrightful knowledge or by having aided this.
The basis is the following chain of events or cooperation in this
In the period September 1999 to 24th of January 2000, via Internet from residence in Lardal, Jon Lech Johansen participated in the breaking of the technical protection system Content Scrambling System ("CSS"), licensed by DVD Copy Control Association Inc, to protect DVD-movies produced by Motion Pictures Association against copying. A DVD-movie is a movie that is stored electronically on a DVD-disc. Based on knowledge about a secret algorithm and player keys incorporated into CSS, did Jon Lech Johansen make the Windows program DeCSS. By using DeCSS an unencrypted copy of the DVD-film is produced. Jon Lech Johansen used DeCSS on his own DVD-movies, and he spread DeCSS several times in different versions via Internet in the said period. By the described circumstances Jon Lech Johansen acquired unrightful access to the secret key repository in CSS. Further did Jon Lech Johansen break the copy protection on the DVD-movies and acquired himself and others access to the DVD-discs in an unprotected condition. The access was unrightful because the DVD-movies were sold with the condition that the user would utilize authorized playback equipment and respect the copy protection. The acquiring of the movies in unprotect condition has caused damage because the right holders no longer has protection against unrightful spreading of the movies.
The main negotiations were held in Oslo Tinghus 9th to 16th of December 2002. The defendant met accompanied by his defender. The defendant testified and pleaded not guilty in accordance to the charges.
The court received testimonies from five witnesses, and there were held documentation as shown in the court book. Further were the program DeCSS demonstrated.
Prosecutor made the following claim:
Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is in correspondence with the charges sentenced to jail in 90 (ninety) days, which is made conditional with a parole of 2 (two) years, in accordance to the criminal law 52 following
Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is sentenced to handle the withdrawal of
one PC-cabinet Pentium III 500 MHz (withdrawal A-2), in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase.
8 CD-ROMS containing miscellaneous unlicensed software (withdrawal A-4-7), in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase.
Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is sentenced to carry the costs of this trial with 10 000 (ten thousand) NOK.
Defender made the following claim:
Jon Lech Johansen is found innocent.
The court's commentaries
The case's background
While taking under consideration the strong needs for evidence in the criminal court, including that any reasonable doubt should come to the defendant's advantage, the court finds the following actual background for the case proved:
4th of January 2000 Motion Pictures Association, hereafter called MPA, and DVD Copy Control Association Inc, hereafter called DVD CCA, reported Jon Lech Johansen to the Norwegian economic crime unit for violating the criminal law 145 second phrase. The background for the report is that Jon Lech Johansen had participated in the development of the computer program DeCSS.
MPA collects several of the large movie companies in USA. The organization was one of those who took the initiative to the work that lead to the foundation of the DVD CCA. DVD CCA was founded to prevent pirate copying of DVD movies. The DVD technology is described in the expert report delivered by Stige Frode Mjolsnes and Hakon Styri 18th of September 2000 after assignment from the Norwegian economic crime unit. From page 6 in the report the following is quoted:
"DVD is a technological extension of the compact disc (CD), and has the same external dimensions as this. The storage capacity for a DVD is significantly larger than for the compact disc. DVD is used as a digital storage medium both in the entertainment industry (music, video, games) and in the computer industry (software, databases etc)."
From page 7 in the report the following is quoted:
"DVD-video is an 'application' of DVD-ROM which among other things conditions that the information on the disc is structured in a specific way."
President John Hoy in DVD CCA testified during the main negotiations that because a DVD-video has a technology that stores information digitally, and not in analog, will this lead to the possibility of it being copied without loss of quality. The movie companies were obviously worried that the development of the DVD technology would lead to significant copying and distribution of movies without the producers of the movie receiving payment. He has further testified that the companies the stood behind the development of the DVD technology wished to tie themselves to the movie industry to have something to sell. A compromise between the movie producers and the DVD producers were the development of the Content Scrambling System, hereafter called CSS. On a question from the prosecutor did Hoy confirm that CSS came as a consequence of a demand from the movie industry.
From page 13 in Mjolsnes' and Styri's report the following is quoted:
"CSS is a technological measure that utilizes cryptographical methods to protect digital information stored on a DVD disc in accordance to the DVD video standard."
The court bases its decision on this explanation of what CSS is.
From page 15 and 16 in Mjolsnes' and Styri's report the following is quoted:
"The fundamental problem a right holder and a publisher of intellectual works is presented with is how to practice control with his copyrights at the same time as copies of the works is to be distributed.
(Emphasis) By distributing a work in an encrypted condition the distributor will limit the distribution of the work to those who know the decryption key. (Emphasis end)
We could try to make a technical obstruction such that the receiver cannot distribute the decryption key to others. This copy protection of decryption keys is a central point in CSS. Anyway will this not be sufficient. The receiver of course has the rightful claim to use (watch and listen to) the contents. Therefore it is also necessary to prevent technical copying of the contents while it is being decrypted and is presented in 'plain text'.
A normal solution concept consists of making the user dependent on a decoder or playback device do watch and listen to the digital content. A precondition that has to be satisfied is that there must not be any way to 'tap' the playback device for the contents that it presents in plain text for the user, otherwise this can be copied and distributed.
Further does this solution condition that the decoder/playback device itself is secured against copying. This can be done by encapsulating the decryption key in a tampering safe way, such that the secret key can neither be read nor modified nor circumvented by any physical or logical means. This will imply that the playback unit is secured against copying, essentially because the decryption key (and possible secreted algorithms) cannot be read out.
A CSS implementation that utilizes tampering safe hardware decoder and playback devices will be able to satisfy the above mentioned requirements. A CSS implementation that utilizes software-only decoder and playback devices would not likely satisfy any of these requirements. The protection is at least a lot weaker than what could have been done in electronical chipsets."
In conclusion does CSS make it neccesary for the buyer of a DVD-disc to have a special equipment that can decrypt DVD movies. The equipment can either consist of a DVD player in the shape of a so-called "brownware box", hardware, that is connected to a TV-apparatus for playback of the movie or a computer program, software, that is installed in a PC so that the DVD disc can be played back on PC. In a PC the DVD disc is placed in a DVD drive that communicates via a data bus with a DVD player in the form of a computer program.
A DVD disc with CSS encrypted material contains a disc key encrypted with a selection of approximately 400 so-called player keys. A DVD player must contain at least one of these player keys if a DVD movie is to be playable in unencrypted form. Producers of DVD players must therefore know at least one of the player keys in order to be able to produce a DVD player that is supposed to play encrypted DVD movies.
CSS consists of several forms of protection in form of codes or keys that is layered on top of each other. The title keys are used to encrypt the actual movie. Thereafter the title key is encrypted with a disc key. The disc key is encrypted with a selection of the approximately 400 player keys. A DVD player that knows at least one of the player keys can decrypt the disc key and with this key the title key can be decrypted so that the disc's contents can be watched/listened to in unencrypted form.
All those who wants to produce such a DVD player can apply for a license for this and thus get access to one or more player keys. The license is controlled by DVD CCA. The precondition for getting a license is that the license taker keeps secrecy about the player keys and that they are protected in the DVD player so that the buyer of a DVD player shall not get access to the player keys. We refer to Hoy's testimony during the main negotiations.
Not all producers of software accepts such conditions, for instance an amount of producers of programs under the operating system Linux. The background is that many programs that are made under Linux has open source code, meaning that everybody should be able to see how the program is built. The motive for this is that anyone who wants to modify computer software under Linux should have full access to this. By this reason there was no DVD player under the operating system Linux fall 1999. We refer to Johansens own explanation and that no evidence is presented that contradicts this explanation on this point.
In addition the the encryption CSS consists of an authentication that is supposed to prevent DVD movies with CSS protection from being played back on the DVD players that are not produced under license from DVD CCA. The authentication implies that the DVD drive with the DVD disc and the player accepts each other and that the DVD player gets access to the DVD disc's contents.
Further does the CSS contain a regional playback control. The world is divided into different zones where for instance USA is region 1 and Europe and parts of Asia is region 2. A DVD disc contains information about which region it's bought in and shall only be possible to play back on a DVD player bought in the same region.
The development of DeCSS
Johansen has explained that he during the fall 1999 wished to be able to play back DVD movies under the operating system Linux.
Through several chatting channels on the Internet Johansen made contact with other people having the same interests as him. The conversations on the chatting channels are either performed "openly" with all those who are logged on or "in private" between two persons. One of the most important chatting channel services for our case is IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Johansen was during the fall 1999 operator on the chatting channels PCDVD. Johansen's nick name on the chatting channels was "MultiAGP".
On page 326 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log that shows a conversation held 11th of September 1999 between Johansen and a person calling himself "mdx". It's clear from the printout that Johansen and "mdx" discussed how one could find the decryption algorithm in CSS by finding a DVD player that does not have or has low protection of player keys. On page 328 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of a conversation held 22th of September 1999 on IRC between Johansen and "mdx". It's clear from the printout that a person calling himself "the nomad" has program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS. It's further clear from the printout that "mdx" sent this program code to Johansen. This is also confirmed by Johansen's explanation during the main negotiations. Johansen has further explained that "the nomad" found the decryption algorithm in CSS by reverse engineering of a DVD player of the brand Xing. This is also clear from the conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" on IRC 24th of September 1999 quoted on page 393 in the actual excerpt.
Johansen has further explained that program code for the authentication algorithm in CSS was publicized on the news group Livid on the Internet. Livid is a news group for persons interested in development of software under the operating system Linux. Johansen could under the main negotiations not remember how he got program code to the authentication algorithm. There is however not presented any evidence that Johansen participated in the development of this program code and the court therefore bases its decision on that Johansen fetched or received this after the work after it was completed. Johansen has explained that he later came to know that a person by the name Derek Fawcus had ascertained program code for the authentication algorithm in CSS.
The court consider proven that DeCSS makes a unencrypted copy of an encrypted movie and puts this on the computer's harddisc. We refer to earlier special investigator in Okokrim Svein Yngvar Willassen's explanation, as well as the demonstation of the program that was performed during the main negotiations. This corresponds to Johansen's explanation.
On page 393 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log with a conversation from the 24th of September 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad". It is clear from the printout that Johansen had made a CSS decryption program by using "the nomad"'s program code for the decryption algorithm and that he had made a GUI (Graphical User Interface), that is a user interface that makes the program easier to use. It is further clear from the same page of the printout that Johansen asked "the nomad" to test the program. Johanse further asked "the nomad" if he could publish the program, something "the nomad" accepted.
Johansen has explaind that DeCSS was tested in the period before the program was realeased on the Internet. Johansen has further explained that there was made several versions of DeCSS. Willassen has explained that there was found several versions of DeCSS during the search in Johansen's home. The court therefore bases its decision on that several versions of DeCSS were made. Johansen is however not sure which version was distributed on the Internet. The court does not find this decisive for the case.
Johansen has explained that he the 6th of October 1999 either put out a link or put DeCSS directly on his home page on the Internet. The same day he sent a message to Livid that is quoted on page 20 in the actual excerpt. In the message Johansen explained that DeCSS is a CSS decryptor that works with the movie "The Matrix", something a similar program, "DoDs speedripper", doesn't. Johansen further explained that the program works under the operating systems Win98 and Win2k. Thereafter he explained where the program could be fetched on the Internet.
On page 450 in the actual excerpth there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log with a conversation from the 6th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad". It is clear that Johansen made a mistake "uploaded the source". The court bases its decision on that they were talking about the source code for DeCSS that was made available on the Internet. The court further bases its decision on that this was an error from Johansens side, and refers to that he wrote to "the nomad" that he would try to get those who had downloaded it to erase it. Johansen has explained that he removed the source code from the Internet. The cause was that the didn't want DVD CCA to pull back Xing-keys so that DeCSS would stop working. The court bases its decision on that Johansen withdrew the sourcecode from Internet a short time after it was distributed.
The 25th of October 1999 the source code for DeCSS was made available on Livid. The poster of the source code was anonymous. On page 501 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an IRC log showing a conversation between "the nomad" and Johansen the 25th of October 1999. It's clear from the printout that Johansen is annoyed by the fact that somemone posted the source for DeCSS. Johansen has explained that it was unfortunate that the source code was made available, because the source code contained player keys from the Xing player. DVD CCA could thus have reacted by withdrawing player keys. The court bases its decision on that it wasn't Johansen who publicized the source code for DeCSS at this time.
Johansen has however explained that he made the source code for DeCSS available on the Internet at a later time because the source code was then already available.
Johansen has explained that before the development of DeCSS, there existed programs for decryption of DVD movies. On of these programs are the abovementioned "Speedripper". The program was developed by a group who called themselves "Drink or Die" (DoD). According to Johansen this program didn't work on some movies, among others "The Matrix".
Disclosure of player keys
On page 537 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 7th of October 1999 from a person by the name Brian Demsky to Johansen. It's clear from the e-mail that Demsky downloaded DeCSS and that he has made a program to find the approximately 400 player keys. The purpose was to avoid that DeCSS would stop working if DVD CCA should revoke some of the player keys. This is confirmed by Johansen during the main negotiations.
On page 538 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of the reply from Johansen to Demsky the same day. Johansen wrote that this was good news and thet there is interst for this.
In the program code for the decryptino algorithm that Johansen received from "the nomad" there's at least one player key. On page 459 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an IRC log that shows a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" the 8th of October 1999, ie. after DeCSS was made publicly available on the Internet. It's clear from that log that Johansen first at this stage realised how the player keys work. It's further clear from the log that Johansen sent player keys that he had got from Demsky to "the nomad". It's further clear that "the nomad" tested several of the player keys and that Johansen were to forward the test results to Demsky. Johansen has explained during the main negotiations that he cannot remember whether he participated in the actual testing himself, but that he forwardet player keys and test results between Demsky and "the nomad". From the log it cannot be drawn any safe conclusins with regard to whether Johansen himself participated in the testing of player keys. The court does however not find this decisive for the case because it is clear that Johansen was the contact between Demsky and "the nomad".
On page 553 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an e-mail from 9th of October 199 from Demsky to Johansen. It's clear from the e-mail that Demsky had found approximately 400 player keys and that he sent them to Johansen.
After a while it was known in the media that CSS was broken. On page 674 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an article on the Internet in November 1999 where Johansen is presented as spokesperson of the group MoRE (Masters of Reverse Engineering), the group who broke CSS. Johansen has explained that his father was conatected by attorney Erik Tondel who on behalf of MPA asked that Johansen removed DeCSS from the Internet. Johansen followed the adviced from attorney Tondel and removed DeCSS from the Internet. Johansen has further explained that he uploaded DeCSS to the Internet again the following weekend, and that it was available until the 24th of January 2000.
Altering the charges during the main negotiations
The way the charges sounded during the start of the main negotiations was Johansen charged with having unrighfully gained access to the datas on the DVD discs. The way the charges was articulated data could both be understood as the actual movies, but also other data that is stored on a DVD disc. During the main negotiations the prosecutor changed the sentence with "did Jon Lech Johansen gain access to the secret key repository in CSS".
The defender mentioned that this is another case than the one the charges originally was about and that the case is deprecated in accordance to the criminal law 67 first phrase. The court finds that this is not another case than what the charges originally was about if the exact words of the charges are considered. The court has a certain sympathy for the defender's arguments against the fact that the prosecutor was a bit vague during the main negotiations with regard to what the charges actually are about, but either way finds that the exact words of the charges should be the basis of the court's decision.
The question of guild
The criminal law 145 first and second phrase sounds thus:
"He who unrightfully breaks letters or other closed writings or in similar ways unrightfully gains access to the contents, or acquires access to someone else's locked hidings is punished with fines or jail up to 6 months.
The same applies to he who by breaking a protection or by similar means unrightfully gains access to data or program equipment that is stored or transferred by electronical or other technical means."
If Johansen is to be convicted for violating the criminal law 145 second phrase he must therefore either himself, or by having contributed to that someone has broken a protection of by other similar means thereby acquired unrightful access to data or program equipment. Originally the criminal law 145 applied to he who "unrightfully breaks letter or other closed writings acquires access to someone else's locked hidings or aiding this". The decisions was changed by law the 16th of February 1979. Then another sentence was added in the first point, that sounded thus:
"The same applies to he who unrightfully acquires access to the contents of a closed message or writing when this regularily only is available by using special equipment for connection, playback, lighting through, reading or similar."
It's clear from NOU 1985:31 Computer crime on page 14 that the decision applied to inspection of computer stored information. On page 29 and 30 the council of crime law explains about the the need for changes in the crime law 145. From page 30 the following is quoted:
"The articulation in the decision ("closed message or writing") does not immediately lead the thought to information stored on computers, and there is reason to believe that the decision is little known among computer people. The council of crime law have therefore, without aiming for a change of meaning, given the decision a new articulation (as 145 second phrase)."
The council of crime law's suggestion for change of 145 second phrase is the decision the way it now sounds. Because the council of crime law didn't aim to change the meaning will law sources connected to the decision the way it sounded earlier still be relevant.
In Ot prp no 35 (1986-87) on page 20 and following, the department of justice explains the preconditions for punishment in 145 second phrase. On page 20 the deparment discusses the expression "breaking a protection or by similar means". From page 20 the following is quoted:
"By the fact that 'similar beans' is added, the interpretation of the precondition about breaking a protection becomes less important. The point is that 145 only shall apply to cases where the act of gaining access to data must be characterized as qualified unrightful. To break a protection is a such qualifying factor, but one can also imagine similar situations where the act of breaking into data will be so grave that 145 should be applied. Furthermore will the decision rely on a understanding where other factors of the act and the acting situation is pulled in."
It is hence the expression "unrightful" that is the central condition in the decision. The council of criminal law states one page 15 and following about the expression unrightful:
"In principle it depends on laws and agreements what data one has the right to get to know" (NOU 1985:31 Computer crime)
On the same page the council states:
"The expression 'unrightful' ties itself to the particular information and not the computer facility as such."
It is clear from the articulation, and also by articulations in the proposal, that the question about unrightful must be tied to whether a person is allowed to get access to computer stored information, not how the person gets the access.
The court therefore bases its decision on that the decision does not apply to he who in another way than the producer has required, acquires access to data he otherwise has access to. This must apply even if this happens by breaking a protection or by similar means.
Access to the movie
The court finds that he who buys a DVD movie that is produced in a legal way, has rightful access to watch the movie. Something else would apply if the DVD movie was produced by copying in violation with the copyright law, so-called pirate copying. The owner of a pirate copy will therefore not have a rightful demand to watch the movie.
As earlier mentioned the court does find it proven that DeCSS makes an unencrypted copy of an encrypted DVD movie that is put on the computers harddisc. The court therefore bases its decision that the use of DeCSS gives the user access to the movie in an unencrypted condition. The fact that such a copy is made is not decisive because the act of making a copy is not covered by the crime law 145.
The question for the courte is hence whether Johansen has used DeCSS on DVD movies that are produced in an illegal manner and therefore did not have the right to access.
On page 299 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of a chatting channel with a conversation the 9th of October 1999 between Johansen and another person calling himself "Robshot". It is clear from the printout that the Johansen has pirated copies of computer software. It is further clear from page 474 in the actual excerpt which is a printout of an IRC log from a conversation the 14th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad" that Johansen has an illegal copy of the computer program Scenarist 2.0. Johansen has however explained that he has not had illegally produced DVD movies in his posession. He has explained that he has used DeCSS on the movies "The Matrix" and "The fifth element" and that he has bought both of the films in a legal manner in stores in Oslo and Larvik, respectively. No evidence is presented that shows that Johansen has used DeCSS on illegally acquired DVD movies. The court has therefore reached the verdict that Johansen cannot be convicted for violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to his own use of DeCSS.
The next question the court has to decide upon is whether Johansen can be convicted for abetting violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase by the fact that other has gained unrightful access to DVD movies. In accordance to the criminal law 145 fourth phrase is abetting also punishable.
From page 200 in Erling Johansen Husabo's bok "The periphery of criminal responsibility - Abetting, attempting, preparing" (1999) the following is quoted:
"The statement (in the preparation of the criminal law) shows that even if the abettor has done his part, one shall not punish the abettor for anything more than attempt as long as the main man hasn't completed the violation."
No evidence is presented that shows that anybody have used DeCSS on illegally acquired DVD movies. The court refers to special investigator Willassens testimony during the main negotiations where he said he didn't know of any specific cases where DeCSS have been used on illegally acquired DVD movies. Johansen can therefore not be convicted for completed abetting.
The court furthermore has to to decide upon whether Johansen can be convicted for attempt to abet. The problem posed is whether Johansen can be convicted for abetting by having produced and distributed a tool which makes it possible for other people to gain unrightful access to DVD movies.
Our case has many similarities with transfer of property discussed by Husabo. From page 100 in his book the following is quoted:
"Nearly every product can become new as a means to a law violation. Certain kinds of products even likely will lead to being used to such. But it is either way there's an agreement that the legal responsibility is excluded both for producer and salesman. (Emphasis) What intentions the producer or salesman had, is then basically irrelevant. (Emphasis end)
As long as the products also serves legal purposes the problem is not as much to give reason to freedom from punishment, but to give reason when sale to others anyway can lead to abetting responsibility.
The basis is thus that the sale of products that have a legal purpose cannot be punished as abetting. The same must be true for distribution of products. Decisive for the question is whether DeCSS has a legal purpose.
As mentioned earlier the court finds that it will not be in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase to utilize DeCSS to watch DVD movies acquired legally. Furthermore will it not be in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase to produce copies of legally acquired DVD movies for private use, in accordance to the copyright law 12. DeCSS can thus be used both to take a copy of a DVD movie and to play back a DVD movie if one doesn't have licensed playback equipment. How useful this is to society there could be different opinions about, but that this is legal have to seem clear after this. The court therefore finds that DeCSS can be used in a legal or illegal manner.
The supreme court has convicted for punishable abetting of sale of products that otherwise are legal, jf Rt 1996 page 965. The supreme court laid decisive stress on that the organization of the business obviously showed that the person's intension with the sale was to sell products that were to be used exclusively for illegal production of hard liquors. The defendant's intention with the distribution of a product is thus an important factor in the evaluation of the outer circumstances in the case, in accordance to Husabo page 117.
In our case the court finds it difficult to draw any safe conclusions with regard to Johansen's intention with the development of DeCSS and the publicizing of the program on the Internet. Johansen has testified that the intention was to contribute to the development of a DVD player for the operating system Linux. On page 885 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 23th of September 1999 from "the nomad" to Derek Fawcus. It's clear from the e-mail that "the named" sent program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS to Fawcus. "The nomad" further wrote in the e-mail that he hoped this would be of help for the development of a DVD player for Linux.
Johansen has on his side expressed himself negatively about the operating system Linux and the development community tied to this system. On page 45 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 6th of October 1999 on Livid from a person by the name Michael Holzt. Holzt writes that Johansen allegedly have said that he hates Linux and that he would have been glad if the system was never invented because FreeBSD is much better. On page 47 in the actual excerpt is there a quote from the answer from Johansen where he wrote that he never have said that he hates Linux, but that it doesn't matter if Linux never had been invented because FreeBSD is much better. On page 51 there is a quote from an e-mail of 8th of October 1999 to Livid where Johanse apologizes his attitued in earlier e-mails and writes that he means Linux is a very good operating system, but that FreeBSD is better. On page 458 and 459 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an IRC log with a conversation the 8th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad" where Johansen writes that he has sent an apology to Livid, but that it was just to satisfy another person who the court assumes is Derek Fawcus. Johanse writes further:
"God damned linux fanatics, I wish someone would shoot them ; )"
Given the context and the explanation Johansen has given during the main negotiations the court bases its decision on that the background for this statement is a conflict between Michael Holzt and Johansen about whether the source code should be publicized, as well as the situation around the transferral of the source code to Fawcus. The court finds that Johansen's statements regarding Linux thus cannot be taken literally and that they don't give any solid grounds for Johansen's relationship to Linux in general. The court therefore means that this correspondence is not sufficient evidence for what intention Johansen had with the development of DeCSS.
It does however speak against that Johansen's intention was to make a DVD player for Linux that he showed so little interest for this operating system at the time DeCSS was made. It's clear from what is mentioned above that Johansen meant that FreeBSD was a better operating system than Linux. It's further clear from a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" on IRC quoted on page 506 in the actual excerpt that Johansen as late as 26th of October 1999 did not have Linux installed on any of his computers.
It further speaks agains that Johansen's intention was the development of a DVD player for Linux that he made DeCSS a Windows program. Johansen has however testified that he did not have enough knowledge about Linux and that there was no support for UDF (the file system on a DVD dict) under this operating system.
Johansen made DeCSS available on the Internet and was occupied with making the program easy to use by "the average joe", in accordance to page 428 in the actual excerpt which is a printout from an IRC log with a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" the 5th of October 1999. Johansen has explained that it was neccesary to publicize DeCSS on the Internet so that the program could be tested and errors discovered so that the program could be developed further. The court can however not see that any of the improvements that were made after the 6th of October 1999 further contributed to the development of a DVD player for Linux.
On page 291 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of a printout of a log from a chatting channel from two conversations the 12th of September 1999 between Johansen and "Robshot". It's clear from the printout that a person calling himself "Wag" means that the chatting channel Johansen is operator in, PCDVD, is solely occupied with pirate copying. In the conversation there is a quote of another conversation between Johansen and "Wag" where Johansen wrote the following to "Wag":
"and I've got only one thing to say to you, keep out of # PCDVD, we are criminals in there, you don't want to mingle with us."
On page 366 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of a printout from a log from a chatting channel with a conversation from 25th of September 1999 between Johansen and a person calling himself "Terryben". It's clear from the printout that Johansen wrote the following to "Terryben":
"so, hehe, we'll be copying dvds i notime when dvd burners drop in $"
The court finds it difficult to put too much stress on the printouts from the chatting channels with regard to Johansen's intention with the development of DeCSS. The conversations can contain exaggregations, humour and irony, and what is said is not likely well thought through at all times. The court can therefore not base its decision on that the conversations give a correct image of the participators subjective judgements. In spite of this the logs show that the competition with other development communities was a strong driving force behind the development and DeCSS. This is especially shown in page 395, 396, 410, 435, 462, 464, 468 and 521 in the actual excerpt which are printouts from conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" where he repeatedly referred to DoDs development of a decryption program.
On this background the court does not find it reasonably proved that without any reasonable doubt Johansen's intention with the development and publicizing of the program was to contribute to illegal copying and distribution of DVD movies.
The court has on this background reached the verdict that Johansen cannot be convicted for having attempted to abet violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase with regard to access to the keys. This holds true even if Johansen was aware that the program could be misused. This will hold true for all who distribute products that can be used legally or illegally.
Access to the player keys
The next question the court has to decide upon is whether Johansen can be convicted for violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys in CSS. If Johansen is to be convicted for violation the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys there must also in this relation be present a break of a protection or other similar mean that has given unrightful access to these.
In Ot prp no 35 the condition to "break a protection or by other similar means" is discussed. From page 20 the following is quoted:
"The department basically agrees with the council of criminal law in that the decision should be articulated so that it only can be applied when the rightholder himself has done something to protect the information against illegal access."
It is thus required that both the information is actually protected against access and that the purpose of the protection is to prevent illegal access. The court bases its decision on that it doesn't matter how strong the protection is. It must be sufficient that the rightholder has done something to protect the information. The court does on the other size base its decision on that factors that makes the access more difficult cannot be counted as protection in relation to the criminal law 145 second phrase if the intention haven't been to protect against illegal access.
Johansen has testified and the court bases its decision on that "the nomad" wrote program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS after he had performed reverse engineering of a Xing-player. The questions thuse becomes whether such reverse engineering implied a violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase. Johansen has testified that he with reverse engineering means the analyze a computer program to find out how it works. According to Johansen "the nomad" has understood the decryption algorithm in CSS and written program code for this in a high level language. This code "the nomad" sent to Johansen.
Reverse engineering is not mentioned in the preparations for the criminal law 145. By the evaluation of the span of the criminal law 145 the legality principle's particular stress on the criminal law's reach must be taken into regard, in accordance to the constitution 96. The supreme court has in two decisions interpreted the criminal law 145 second phrase very narrowly compared to the actual wording, in accordance to Rt 1994 page 1610 and Rt 1995 page 35. Even though the decisions specificaly are about the expression "data", they can be read as a general expression that the criminal law 145 shall be interpreted narrowly.
Bjorn Bjerke gives in his book "Reverse engineering" of computer programes (1994) on page 23 the following definition of reverse engineering:
"Reverse engineering is thereby a process in which one gets an understanding about the datas and processes in an existing computer system. The goal is to pull out contents, structure and data flow from existing computer programs and represent this information in a shape well-suited for further analysis and documentation"
On page 24 and following Bjerke explains the different methods of reverse engineering. Firstly you can read about the program in available manuals and litterature. Secondly you can observe the program at run time. The court finds it obvious that the two first methods does not imply a violation of the criminal law 145. Bjerke describes on page 5 and following the approach used in the third method he calls the dissection method:
"The dissection method requires that we can read and understand computer programs and thereby pulling out information about the individual machine instructions, their function in shape of a description at a higher level of abstraction, as well as this functions place in the algorithm which describes what the program does. The computer program in its distributed for is in binary code, a long stream of one's and zero's, which contains a lot of "filling information" in addition to the original program.
Even by use of alphanumerical symbols will the resulting code not give particular meaning, unless one can read machine instructions and data. You can in other words not avoid disassembling the program."
Bjerke further writes that disassembling means that the object code is transformed into assembly code. Disassembling can be done with a disassmbling program, but one would in addition have to do some testing. The assembler language is very difficult for humans to interpret and decompilation is thus neccesary. Decompilation is the transforming of the assembly code to a high level programming language.
Based on the description Bjerke has given of reverse engineering, as well as the testimony Johansen has given about how "the nomad" wrote program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS, the court finds it difficult to call this breaking of a protecting or other similar means. The court finds it not proven that a computer program distributed in object code is caused by the producer of the program wanting to protect the source code. The cause could equally well be that the program in object code can be used directly in the computer. The court has therefore decided that the reverse engineering that "the nomad" performed is not in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase.
The court finds it proven that the program code Johansen got from "the nomad" contained at least one of the player keys in CSS. The question for the court is thus whether this/these were protected in relation to the criminal law 145 second phrase.
President in DVD CCA, John Hoy, has explained that keeping the player keys secret was a condition to get license to produce DVD players that could play encrypted movies. This is however not sufficient evidence that all producers actually fulfilled this condition. Johansen has explained that the Xing-player did not have any protection of the player keys. This corresponds to what "the nomad" said to Johansen in the conversation on IRC the 24th of September 1999 quoted on page 394 in the actual excerpt. No evidence is presented showing that keys were protected within the Xing player. The court has therefore based its decision on that there was no break of protection or other similar means in relation to player keys in the Xing player.
As regards to the rest of the player keys it's clear from page 537 in the actual excerpt that Brian Demsky the 7th of October 1999 made contact with Johansen and explained that he was in the process of finding all of the player keys in CSS with basis in the program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS that Johansen had made available on the Internet the day before. Demsky further wrote: "I'm currently at a key rate of 2.5 million keys/sec/450 mhz". This indicates that he had developed a computer program that made the computer able to guess possible player keys. The basis for the program is the decryption algorithm in DeCSS where Xing keys were present. The court finds that even though this approach does implies breaking a protection or at least is covered by the expression "or by similar means", the break does not give unrightful access to data. The criminal law 145 second phrase does not apply to breaking the protection itself if the protection breaking itself does not lead to the person getting unrightful access to data. As mentioned earlier the court has found that the use of DeCSS on movies that are neither illegally produced or acquired does not imply a violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase.
As regards to the question about abetting we show to the abovementioned in relation to access to the movie. Also in relation to other's possible use of the player keys to gain unrightful access to information on DVD discs does the court find that Johansen cannot be convicted for attempted abetting. The court thus finds that Johansen neither can be convicted for abetting to violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys.
Johansen is therefore acquitted.
Withdrawal
Prosecutor claimed the withdrawal of one PC cabinet Pentium III 500 MHz and 8 [CDs with] miscellanous unlicensed software in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase. The court does not find that these objects have been used to har was meant used to perform an illegal act. The claim of withdrawal is therefore not followed.
Case expenses
Prosecutor claimed that Johansen should be compelled to pay the case's expenses. Johansen is acquitted and can thus not be compelled to pay the case's expenses, in accordance to the criminal law 436 first phrase.
All judges agreed on the verdict.
Slashdot Mirror
Try explaining that to DVD Jon in Norway - I'm fairly certain he would disagree with you.
Why? Because he was acquitted? Isn't that evidence that the US laws did not apply to him?
why they decided to use the moniker "free" in FSF instead of Freedom is anyones guess really.
Could it be that freedom is a noun while free is an adjective?
i think there are enough mentions of "GNU" in the header files, man pages, about dialog boxes to show how embedded GNU is into Linux.
But it isn't for the sake of credit he wants GNU to be mentioned, it is to remind people of the free software ideals Linux alone does not represent.
At 1.5mbps thats 150 megs a second!
IRC efnet a year and a half ago crawled to its knees when a cracker hit it with just 20 megs a second.
Assuming megs means megabytes, you are wrong. 1.5Mbps * 100 = 150 Mbps = 18 MB/s.
KDE doesn't require GNU or Linux, it requires QT (which usually implies X11) X/QT/KDE is more accurate
I suppose you mean KDE/Qt/X (we list the components top-down). However, you normally don't list what the software /requires/, but what makes your configuration distinct. Whether you are running Solaris, FreeBSD or Debian, you will be running KDE/Qt/X, so to make a distinction you would call it KDE/Solaris, KDE/FreeBSD or KDE/GNU/Linux. This distinction is obviously useless for most practical needs, so you can probably stick with just calling it "KDE".
However his die hard views seem strange. If Linus calls his kernel Linux and not gnuLinux then its called Linux.
You are confused, my friend. There is no debate regarding the name of the kernel; it is Linux. However, when you combine the kernel with the GNU C library and the other parts from GNU which makes a UNIX-like system (bash, ls, gcc etc.) you are running GNU/Linux, (or Linux, whichever you prefer).
do you just type it, or actually say "I use gnu linux"
I say I use Debian. If I talk to someone who doesn't know what Debian is, I say I use a free (Norwegian has a separate word for free as in freedom) operating system including Linux, called Debian. Otherwise I say the name of the specific software I am talking about ("I'm having problems configuring XFree86", "KDE uses a long time to load", "I can't use BSD without the GNU toolchain", "Linux lacks support for my sound card") where other people would just say Linux.
AAC is closed.
... and requires licenses for creating decoders and encoders, as opposed to MPEG Layer 3, which doesn't require licenses for decoders.
They shoot on DVCAM or whatever (a 25 MB/s stream, unless I've confused my terms)
Depending on quality, it's either 25 Mb/s or 50 Mb/s, not 25 MB/s. Firewire's capacity is 400 Mb/s, Firewire 2's is 800 Mb/s.
Instead, I'll use CD Baby [cdbaby.com] and get songs for approximately the same price, but at CD-quality,
This is untrue in some way: music on CD's generally have been mixed by a professional sound engineer, and thus has excellent quality. I listened to quite a few songs in the "Electronic" section on CD Baby, and all of them sounded very half-assed. People who enjoy underground electronica will not likely enjoy any of this.
1)The paranoia is NOT justified, look at the Sept 11th events, tons of people on cellphones on the planes with no problems.
Nonsense! All the planes crashed.
It's a plane! It's a bird! It's a flying vibrator!
Why were those people always so amazed to see a plane or a bird?
Humans are extremely complex, but as we go about our 'very' important lives, it's humbling to know that on the surface, we do not contain many more genes than some other 'lesser' forms of life on this planet.
We also have far fewer teeth than sharks.
To use the term "broadband" (or rather, "bredbånd") in advertising your internet service, the connection must be fast enough to use modern multimedia technologies in real time, the mark currently being set by the ability to watch live video streams of "good" quality.
There'd have to some law changes to avoid having to pay the taxes associated with buying consumable alcohol. Using ethanol in the chem lab is pricy.
Maybe that's one of the reasons why spirits not meant for consumption have added stuff that makes you vomit if you drink it?
Best places to live in the world (according to the UN):
1. Norway
2. Australia
3. Canada
4. Sweden
5. Belgium
6. United States
7. Iceland
8. Netherlands
9. Japan
10. Finland
11. Switzerland
12. Luxembourg
13. France
14. UK
15. Denmark
16. Austria
17. Germany
18. Ireland
19. New Zealand
20. Italy
So it isn't a real "JMP", it's more like /* and */.
Now I'd like to see you implement anything remotely useful with /* and */.
Note that the resizer cannot defrag, yet, so it can only shrink NTFS partitions by the amount of free space you have.
If you want to shrink it by more than the amount of free space, you would have to erase files, not defrag them. What is more likely, is that you cannot shrink it by more than the amount of continuous free space at the end of the filesystem.
given Microsoft's stance toward the GPL and Linux (one's a cancer, one's a threat)
Microsoft actually distributes GPL software (see right column).
If you mean how fast GCC can compile stuff, then it's probably not the fastest compiler in this world. Hopefully precompiled headers support will change this.
If you ever tried compiling applications with GCC on a system withough GNU libc, you would have noticed how important the header sizes are. Compiling applications in e.g. FreeBSD, which uses a small and non-portable C library, is way faster than in Debian or Red Hat.
return (n && 1 == 0) ? 1 : -1;
This is hardly optimized. A shorter equivalent would be return -1;
Hopefully gcc and Watcom can feed off each other and both products will improve.
As far as I know, the copyright for the code needs to be handed over to FSF it it is to be used in the GNU compiler collection. I don't think that's very likely to happen. (This has nothing to do with license compatibilities, but rather FSF's policy)
Between 1992 and 1996, the Bank progressively introduced a new series of notes to replace the original decimal notes, which were first issued in 1966. The new notes are printed on polymer (plastic) substrate instead of traditional paper.
From the website: Between 1992 and 1996, the Bank progressively introduced a new series of notes to replace the original decimal notes, which were first issued in 1966. The new notes are printed on polymer (plastic) substrate instead of traditional paper.
I wish that it would take off in more places so that I didn't have the urge to execute the five idiots who decide to pay for their milk with a check at the supermarket.
Ever since most bank terminals in the city got connected via ISDN, I've wished that the credit/debit cards took off in more places so that I didn't have the urge to execute the five idiots who decide to pay for their milk with cash at the supermarket.
Verdict:
Jon Lech Johansen, born November 18, 1983, lives in Agmond Boltsvei 62. He is unmarried and has no children. He works as software developer and earns NOK 35 000 gross per month. He has no fortune.
By charges presented by the Norwegian economic crime unit's state attorney member the 10th of May 2002, changed under the main negotiations, is he placed under charges at Oslo district court for violation of
The criminal law 145 second by third and fourth phrase
For by unrightfully having broken a protection or by similar means having unrightfully acquired access to data that is stored or transferred electronically or by other technical means and by having caused damage by acquiring or using such unrightful knowledge or by having aided this.
The basis is the following chain of events or cooperation in this
In the period September 1999 to 24th of January 2000, via Internet from residence in Lardal, Jon Lech Johansen participated in the breaking of the technical protection system Content Scrambling System ("CSS"), licensed by DVD Copy Control Association Inc, to protect DVD-movies produced by Motion Pictures Association against copying. A DVD-movie is a movie that is stored electronically on a DVD-disc. Based on knowledge about a secret algorithm and player keys incorporated into CSS, did Jon Lech Johansen make the Windows program DeCSS. By using DeCSS an unencrypted copy of the DVD-film is produced. Jon Lech Johansen used DeCSS on his own DVD-movies, and he spread DeCSS several times in different versions via Internet in the said period. By the described circumstances Jon Lech Johansen acquired unrightful access to the secret key repository in CSS. Further did Jon Lech Johansen break the copy protection on the DVD-movies and acquired himself and others access to the DVD-discs in an unprotected condition. The access was unrightful because the DVD-movies were sold with the condition that the user would utilize authorized playback equipment and respect the copy protection. The acquiring of the movies in unprotect condition has caused damage because the right holders no longer has protection against unrightful spreading of the movies.
The main negotiations were held in Oslo Tinghus 9th to 16th of December 2002. The defendant met accompanied by his defender. The defendant testified and pleaded not guilty in accordance to the charges.
The court received testimonies from five witnesses, and there were held documentation as shown in the court book. Further were the program DeCSS demonstrated.
Prosecutor made the following claim:
Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is in correspondence with the charges sentenced to jail in 90 (ninety) days, which is made conditional with a parole of 2 (two) years, in accordance to the criminal law 52 following
Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is sentenced to handle the withdrawal of
one PC-cabinet Pentium III 500 MHz (withdrawal A-2), in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase.
8 CD-ROMS containing miscellaneous unlicensed software (withdrawal A-4-7), in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase.
Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is sentenced to carry the costs of this trial with 10 000 (ten thousand) NOK.
Defender made the following claim:
Jon Lech Johansen is found innocent.
The court's commentaries
The case's background
While taking under consideration the strong needs for evidence in the criminal court, including that any reasonable doubt should come to the defendant's advantage, the court finds the following actual background for the case proved:
4th of January 2000 Motion Pictures Association, hereafter called MPA, and DVD Copy Control Association Inc, hereafter called DVD CCA, reported Jon Lech Johansen to the Norwegian economic crime unit for violating the criminal law 145 second phrase. The background for the report is that Jon Lech Johansen had participated in the development of the computer program DeCSS.
MPA collects several of the large movie companies in USA. The organization was one of those who took the initiative to the work that lead to the foundation of the DVD CCA. DVD CCA was founded to prevent pirate copying of DVD movies. The DVD technology is described in the expert report delivered by Stige Frode Mjolsnes and Hakon Styri 18th of September 2000 after assignment from the Norwegian economic crime unit. From page 6 in the report the following is quoted:
"DVD is a technological extension of the compact disc (CD), and has the same external dimensions as this. The storage capacity for a DVD is significantly larger than for the compact disc. DVD is used as a digital storage medium both in the entertainment industry (music, video, games) and in the computer industry (software, databases etc)."
From page 7 in the report the following is quoted:
"DVD-video is an 'application' of DVD-ROM which among other things conditions that the information on the disc is structured in a specific way."
President John Hoy in DVD CCA testified during the main negotiations that because a DVD-video has a technology that stores information digitally, and not in analog, will this lead to the possibility of it being copied without loss of quality. The movie companies were obviously worried that the development of the DVD technology would lead to significant copying and distribution of movies without the producers of the movie receiving payment. He has further testified that the companies the stood behind the development of the DVD technology wished to tie themselves to the movie industry to have something to sell. A compromise between the movie producers and the DVD producers were the development of the Content Scrambling System, hereafter called CSS. On a question from the prosecutor did Hoy confirm that CSS came as a consequence of a demand from the movie industry.
From page 13 in Mjolsnes' and Styri's report the following is quoted:
"CSS is a technological measure that utilizes cryptographical methods to protect digital information stored on a DVD disc in accordance to the DVD video standard."
The court bases its decision on this explanation of what CSS is.
From page 15 and 16 in Mjolsnes' and Styri's report the following is quoted:
"The fundamental problem a right holder and a publisher of intellectual works is presented with is how to practice control with his copyrights at the same time as copies of the works is to be distributed.
(Emphasis) By distributing a work in an encrypted condition the distributor will limit the distribution of the work to those who know the decryption key. (Emphasis end)
We could try to make a technical obstruction such that the receiver cannot distribute the decryption key to others. This copy protection of decryption keys is a central point in CSS. Anyway will this not be sufficient. The receiver of course has the rightful claim to use (watch and listen to) the contents. Therefore it is also necessary to prevent technical copying of the contents while it is being decrypted and is presented in 'plain text'.
A normal solution concept consists of making the user dependent on a decoder or playback device do watch and listen to the digital content. A precondition that has to be satisfied is that there must not be any way to 'tap' the playback device for the contents that it presents in plain text for the user, otherwise this can be copied and distributed.
Further does this solution condition that the decoder/playback device itself is secured against copying. This can be done by encapsulating the decryption key in a tampering safe way, such that the secret key can neither be read nor modified nor circumvented by any physical or logical means. This will imply that the playback unit is secured against copying, essentially because the decryption key (and possible secreted algorithms) cannot be read out.
A CSS implementation that utilizes tampering safe hardware decoder and playback devices will be able to satisfy the above mentioned requirements. A CSS implementation that utilizes software-only decoder and playback devices would not likely satisfy any of these requirements. The protection is at least a lot weaker than what could have been done in electronical chipsets."
In conclusion does CSS make it neccesary for the buyer of a DVD-disc to have a special equipment that can decrypt DVD movies. The equipment can either consist of a DVD player in the shape of a so-called "brownware box", hardware, that is connected to a TV-apparatus for playback of the movie or a computer program, software, that is installed in a PC so that the DVD disc can be played back on PC. In a PC the DVD disc is placed in a DVD drive that communicates via a data bus with a DVD player in the form of a computer program.
A DVD disc with CSS encrypted material contains a disc key encrypted with a selection of approximately 400 so-called player keys. A DVD player must contain at least one of these player keys if a DVD movie is to be playable in unencrypted form. Producers of DVD players must therefore know at least one of the player keys in order to be able to produce a DVD player that is supposed to play encrypted DVD movies.
CSS consists of several forms of protection in form of codes or keys that is layered on top of each other. The title keys are used to encrypt the actual movie. Thereafter the title key is encrypted with a disc key. The disc key is encrypted with a selection of the approximately 400 player keys. A DVD player that knows at least one of the player keys can decrypt the disc key and with this key the title key can be decrypted so that the disc's contents can be watched/listened to in unencrypted form.
All those who wants to produce such a DVD player can apply for a license for this and thus get access to one or more player keys. The license is controlled by DVD CCA. The precondition for getting a license is that the license taker keeps secrecy about the player keys and that they are protected in the DVD player so that the buyer of a DVD player shall not get access to the player keys. We refer to Hoy's testimony during the main negotiations.
Not all producers of software accepts such conditions, for instance an amount of producers of programs under the operating system Linux. The background is that many programs that are made under Linux has open source code, meaning that everybody should be able to see how the program is built. The motive for this is that anyone who wants to modify computer software under Linux should have full access to this. By this reason there was no DVD player under the operating system Linux fall 1999. We refer to Johansens own explanation and that no evidence is presented that contradicts this explanation on this point.
In addition the the encryption CSS consists of an authentication that is supposed to prevent DVD movies with CSS protection from being played back on the DVD players that are not produced under license from DVD CCA. The authentication implies that the DVD drive with the DVD disc and the player accepts each other and that the DVD player gets access to the DVD disc's contents.
Further does the CSS contain a regional playback control. The world is divided into different zones where for instance USA is region 1 and Europe and parts of Asia is region 2. A DVD disc contains information about which region it's bought in and shall only be possible to play back on a DVD player bought in the same region.
The development of DeCSS
Johansen has explained that he during the fall 1999 wished to be able to play back DVD movies under the operating system Linux.
Through several chatting channels on the Internet Johansen made contact with other people having the same interests as him. The conversations on the chatting channels are either performed "openly" with all those who are logged on or "in private" between two persons. One of the most important chatting channel services for our case is IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Johansen was during the fall 1999 operator on the chatting channels PCDVD. Johansen's nick name on the chatting channels was "MultiAGP".
On page 326 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log that shows a conversation held 11th of September 1999 between Johansen and a person calling himself "mdx". It's clear from the printout that Johansen and "mdx" discussed how one could find the decryption algorithm in CSS by finding a DVD player that does not have or has low protection of player keys. On page 328 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of a conversation held 22th of September 1999 on IRC between Johansen and "mdx". It's clear from the printout that a person calling himself "the nomad" has program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS. It's further clear from the printout that "mdx" sent this program code to Johansen. This is also confirmed by Johansen's explanation during the main negotiations. Johansen has further explained that "the nomad" found the decryption algorithm in CSS by reverse engineering of a DVD player of the brand Xing. This is also clear from the conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" on IRC 24th of September 1999 quoted on page 393 in the actual excerpt.
Johansen has further explained that program code for the authentication algorithm in CSS was publicized on the news group Livid on the Internet. Livid is a news group for persons interested in development of software under the operating system Linux. Johansen could under the main negotiations not remember how he got program code to the authentication algorithm. There is however not presented any evidence that Johansen participated in the development of this program code and the court therefore bases its decision on that Johansen fetched or received this after the work after it was completed. Johansen has explained that he later came to know that a person by the name Derek Fawcus had ascertained program code for the authentication algorithm in CSS.
The court consider proven that DeCSS makes a unencrypted copy of an encrypted movie and puts this on the computer's harddisc. We refer to earlier special investigator in Okokrim Svein Yngvar Willassen's explanation, as well as the demonstation of the program that was performed during the main negotiations. This corresponds to Johansen's explanation.
On page 393 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log with a conversation from the 24th of September 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad". It is clear from the printout that Johansen had made a CSS decryption program by using "the nomad"'s program code for the decryption algorithm and that he had made a GUI (Graphical User Interface), that is a user interface that makes the program easier to use. It is further clear from the same page of the printout that Johansen asked "the nomad" to test the program. Johanse further asked "the nomad" if he could publish the program, something "the nomad" accepted.
Johansen has explaind that DeCSS was tested in the period before the program was realeased on the Internet. Johansen has further explained that there was made several versions of DeCSS. Willassen has explained that there was found several versions of DeCSS during the search in Johansen's home. The court therefore bases its decision on that several versions of DeCSS were made. Johansen is however not sure which version was distributed on the Internet. The court does not find this decisive for the case.
Johansen has explained that he the 6th of October 1999 either put out a link or put DeCSS directly on his home page on the Internet. The same day he sent a message to Livid that is quoted on page 20 in the actual excerpt. In the message Johansen explained that DeCSS is a CSS decryptor that works with the movie "The Matrix", something a similar program, "DoDs speedripper", doesn't. Johansen further explained that the program works under the operating systems Win98 and Win2k. Thereafter he explained where the program could be fetched on the Internet.
On page 450 in the actual excerpth there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log with a conversation from the 6th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad". It is clear that Johansen made a mistake "uploaded the source". The court bases its decision on that they were talking about the source code for DeCSS that was made available on the Internet. The court further bases its decision on that this was an error from Johansens side, and refers to that he wrote to "the nomad" that he would try to get those who had downloaded it to erase it. Johansen has explained that he removed the source code from the Internet. The cause was that the didn't want DVD CCA to pull back Xing-keys so that DeCSS would stop working. The court bases its decision on that Johansen withdrew the sourcecode from Internet a short time after it was distributed.
The 25th of October 1999 the source code for DeCSS was made available on Livid. The poster of the source code was anonymous. On page 501 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an IRC log showing a conversation between "the nomad" and Johansen the 25th of October 1999. It's clear from the printout that Johansen is annoyed by the fact that somemone posted the source for DeCSS. Johansen has explained that it was unfortunate that the source code was made available, because the source code contained player keys from the Xing player. DVD CCA could thus have reacted by withdrawing player keys. The court bases its decision on that it wasn't Johansen who publicized the source code for DeCSS at this time.
Johansen has however explained that he made the source code for DeCSS available on the Internet at a later time because the source code was then already available.
Johansen has explained that before the development of DeCSS, there existed programs for decryption of DVD movies. On of these programs are the abovementioned "Speedripper". The program was developed by a group who called themselves "Drink or Die" (DoD). According to Johansen this program didn't work on some movies, among others "The Matrix".
Disclosure of player keys
On page 537 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 7th of October 1999 from a person by the name Brian Demsky to Johansen. It's clear from the e-mail that Demsky downloaded DeCSS and that he has made a program to find the approximately 400 player keys. The purpose was to avoid that DeCSS would stop working if DVD CCA should revoke some of the player keys. This is confirmed by Johansen during the main negotiations.
On page 538 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of the reply from Johansen to Demsky the same day. Johansen wrote that this was good news and thet there is interst for this.
In the program code for the decryptino algorithm that Johansen received from "the nomad" there's at least one player key. On page 459 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an IRC log that shows a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" the 8th of October 1999, ie. after DeCSS was made publicly available on the Internet. It's clear from that log that Johansen first at this stage realised how the player keys work. It's further clear from the log that Johansen sent player keys that he had got from Demsky to "the nomad". It's further clear that "the nomad" tested several of the player keys and that Johansen were to forward the test results to Demsky. Johansen has explained during the main negotiations that he cannot remember whether he participated in the actual testing himself, but that he forwardet player keys and test results between Demsky and "the nomad". From the log it cannot be drawn any safe conclusins with regard to whether Johansen himself participated in the testing of player keys. The court does however not find this decisive for the case because it is clear that Johansen was the contact between Demsky and "the nomad".
On page 553 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an e-mail from 9th of October 199 from Demsky to Johansen. It's clear from the e-mail that Demsky had found approximately 400 player keys and that he sent them to Johansen.
After a while it was known in the media that CSS was broken. On page 674 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an article on the Internet in November 1999 where Johansen is presented as spokesperson of the group MoRE (Masters of Reverse Engineering), the group who broke CSS. Johansen has explained that his father was conatected by attorney Erik Tondel who on behalf of MPA asked that Johansen removed DeCSS from the Internet. Johansen followed the adviced from attorney Tondel and removed DeCSS from the Internet. Johansen has further explained that he uploaded DeCSS to the Internet again the following weekend, and that it was available until the 24th of January 2000.
Altering the charges during the main negotiations
The way the charges sounded during the start of the main negotiations was Johansen charged with having unrighfully gained access to the datas on the DVD discs. The way the charges was articulated data could both be understood as the actual movies, but also other data that is stored on a DVD disc. During the main negotiations the prosecutor changed the sentence with "did Jon Lech Johansen gain access to the secret key repository in CSS".
The defender mentioned that this is another case than the one the charges originally was about and that the case is deprecated in accordance to the criminal law 67 first phrase. The court finds that this is not another case than what the charges originally was about if the exact words of the charges are considered. The court has a certain sympathy for the defender's arguments against the fact that the prosecutor was a bit vague during the main negotiations with regard to what the charges actually are about, but either way finds that the exact words of the charges should be the basis of the court's decision.
The question of guild
The criminal law 145 first and second phrase sounds thus:
"He who unrightfully breaks letters or other closed writings or in similar ways unrightfully gains access to the contents, or acquires access to someone else's locked hidings is punished with fines or jail up to 6 months.
The same applies to he who by breaking a protection or by similar means unrightfully gains access to data or program equipment that is stored or transferred by electronical or other technical means."
If Johansen is to be convicted for violating the criminal law 145 second phrase he must therefore either himself, or by having contributed to that someone has broken a protection of by other similar means thereby acquired unrightful access to data or program equipment. Originally the criminal law 145 applied to he who "unrightfully breaks letter or other closed writings acquires access to someone else's locked hidings or aiding this". The decisions was changed by law the 16th of February 1979. Then another sentence was added in the first point, that sounded thus:
"The same applies to he who unrightfully acquires access to the contents of a closed message or writing when this regularily only is available by using special equipment for connection, playback, lighting through, reading or similar."
It's clear from NOU 1985:31 Computer crime on page 14 that the decision applied to inspection of computer stored information. On page 29 and 30 the council of crime law explains about the the need for changes in the crime law 145. From page 30 the following is quoted:
"The articulation in the decision ("closed message or writing") does not immediately lead the thought to information stored on computers, and there is reason to believe that the decision is little known among computer people. The council of crime law have therefore, without aiming for a change of meaning, given the decision a new articulation (as 145 second phrase)."
The council of crime law's suggestion for change of 145 second phrase is the decision the way it now sounds. Because the council of crime law didn't aim to change the meaning will law sources connected to the decision the way it sounded earlier still be relevant.
In Ot prp no 35 (1986-87) on page 20 and following, the department of justice explains the preconditions for punishment in 145 second phrase. On page 20 the deparment discusses the expression "breaking a protection or by similar means". From page 20 the following is quoted:
"By the fact that 'similar beans' is added, the interpretation of the precondition about breaking a protection becomes less important. The point is that 145 only shall apply to cases where the act of gaining access to data must be characterized as qualified unrightful. To break a protection is a such qualifying factor, but one can also imagine similar situations where the act of breaking into data will be so grave that 145 should be applied. Furthermore will the decision rely on a understanding where other factors of the act and the acting situation is pulled in."
It is hence the expression "unrightful" that is the central condition in the decision. The council of criminal law states one page 15 and following about the expression unrightful:
"In principle it depends on laws and agreements what data one has the right to get to know" (NOU 1985:31 Computer crime)
On the same page the council states:
"The expression 'unrightful' ties itself to the particular information and not the computer facility as such."
It is clear from the articulation, and also by articulations in the proposal, that the question about unrightful must be tied to whether a person is allowed to get access to computer stored information, not how the person gets the access.
The court therefore bases its decision on that the decision does not apply to he who in another way than the producer has required, acquires access to data he otherwise has access to. This must apply even if this happens by breaking a protection or by similar means.
Access to the movie
The court finds that he who buys a DVD movie that is produced in a legal way, has rightful access to watch the movie. Something else would apply if the DVD movie was produced by copying in violation with the copyright law, so-called pirate copying. The owner of a pirate copy will therefore not have a rightful demand to watch the movie.
As earlier mentioned the court does find it proven that DeCSS makes an unencrypted copy of an encrypted DVD movie that is put on the computers harddisc. The court therefore bases its decision that the use of DeCSS gives the user access to the movie in an unencrypted condition. The fact that such a copy is made is not decisive because the act of making a copy is not covered by the crime law 145.
The question for the courte is hence whether Johansen has used DeCSS on DVD movies that are produced in an illegal manner and therefore did not have the right to access.
On page 299 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of a chatting channel with a conversation the 9th of October 1999 between Johansen and another person calling himself "Robshot". It is clear from the printout that the Johansen has pirated copies of computer software. It is further clear from page 474 in the actual excerpt which is a printout of an IRC log from a conversation the 14th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad" that Johansen has an illegal copy of the computer program Scenarist 2.0. Johansen has however explained that he has not had illegally produced DVD movies in his posession. He has explained that he has used DeCSS on the movies "The Matrix" and "The fifth element" and that he has bought both of the films in a legal manner in stores in Oslo and Larvik, respectively. No evidence is presented that shows that Johansen has used DeCSS on illegally acquired DVD movies. The court has therefore reached the verdict that Johansen cannot be convicted for violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to his own use of DeCSS.
The next question the court has to decide upon is whether Johansen can be convicted for abetting violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase by the fact that other has gained unrightful access to DVD movies. In accordance to the criminal law 145 fourth phrase is abetting also punishable.
From page 200 in Erling Johansen Husabo's bok "The periphery of criminal responsibility - Abetting, attempting, preparing" (1999) the following is quoted:
"The statement (in the preparation of the criminal law) shows that even if the abettor has done his part, one shall not punish the abettor for anything more than attempt as long as the main man hasn't completed the violation."
No evidence is presented that shows that anybody have used DeCSS on illegally acquired DVD movies. The court refers to special investigator Willassens testimony during the main negotiations where he said he didn't know of any specific cases where DeCSS have been used on illegally acquired DVD movies. Johansen can therefore not be convicted for completed abetting.
The court furthermore has to to decide upon whether Johansen can be convicted for attempt to abet. The problem posed is whether Johansen can be convicted for abetting by having produced and distributed a tool which makes it possible for other people to gain unrightful access to DVD movies.
Our case has many similarities with transfer of property discussed by Husabo. From page 100 in his book the following is quoted:
"Nearly every product can become new as a means to a law violation. Certain kinds of products even likely will lead to being used to such. But it is either way there's an agreement that the legal responsibility is excluded both for producer and salesman. (Emphasis) What intentions the producer or salesman had, is then basically irrelevant. (Emphasis end)
As long as the products also serves legal purposes the problem is not as much to give reason to freedom from punishment, but to give reason when sale to others anyway can lead to abetting responsibility.
The basis is thus that the sale of products that have a legal purpose cannot be punished as abetting. The same must be true for distribution of products. Decisive for the question is whether DeCSS has a legal purpose.
As mentioned earlier the court finds that it will not be in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase to utilize DeCSS to watch DVD movies acquired legally. Furthermore will it not be in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase to produce copies of legally acquired DVD movies for private use, in accordance to the copyright law 12. DeCSS can thus be used both to take a copy of a DVD movie and to play back a DVD movie if one doesn't have licensed playback equipment. How useful this is to society there could be different opinions about, but that this is legal have to seem clear after this. The court therefore finds that DeCSS can be used in a legal or illegal manner.
The supreme court has convicted for punishable abetting of sale of products that otherwise are legal, jf Rt 1996 page 965. The supreme court laid decisive stress on that the organization of the business obviously showed that the person's intension with the sale was to sell products that were to be used exclusively for illegal production of hard liquors. The defendant's intention with the distribution of a product is thus an important factor in the evaluation of the outer circumstances in the case, in accordance to Husabo page 117.
In our case the court finds it difficult to draw any safe conclusions with regard to Johansen's intention with the development of DeCSS and the publicizing of the program on the Internet. Johansen has testified that the intention was to contribute to the development of a DVD player for the operating system Linux. On page 885 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 23th of September 1999 from "the nomad" to Derek Fawcus. It's clear from the e-mail that "the named" sent program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS to Fawcus. "The nomad" further wrote in the e-mail that he hoped this would be of help for the development of a DVD player for Linux.
Johansen has on his side expressed himself negatively about the operating system Linux and the development community tied to this system. On page 45 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 6th of October 1999 on Livid from a person by the name Michael Holzt. Holzt writes that Johansen allegedly have said that he hates Linux and that he would have been glad if the system was never invented because FreeBSD is much better. On page 47 in the actual excerpt is there a quote from the answer from Johansen where he wrote that he never have said that he hates Linux, but that it doesn't matter if Linux never had been invented because FreeBSD is much better. On page 51 there is a quote from an e-mail of 8th of October 1999 to Livid where Johanse apologizes his attitued in earlier e-mails and writes that he means Linux is a very good operating system, but that FreeBSD is better. On page 458 and 459 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an IRC log with a conversation the 8th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad" where Johansen writes that he has sent an apology to Livid, but that it was just to satisfy another person who the court assumes is Derek Fawcus. Johanse writes further:
"God damned linux fanatics, I wish someone would shoot them ; )"
Given the context and the explanation Johansen has given during the main negotiations the court bases its decision on that the background for this statement is a conflict between Michael Holzt and Johansen about whether the source code should be publicized, as well as the situation around the transferral of the source code to Fawcus. The court finds that Johansen's statements regarding Linux thus cannot be taken literally and that they don't give any solid grounds for Johansen's relationship to Linux in general. The court therefore means that this correspondence is not sufficient evidence for what intention Johansen had with the development of DeCSS.
It does however speak against that Johansen's intention was to make a DVD player for Linux that he showed so little interest for this operating system at the time DeCSS was made. It's clear from what is mentioned above that Johansen meant that FreeBSD was a better operating system than Linux. It's further clear from a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" on IRC quoted on page 506 in the actual excerpt that Johansen as late as 26th of October 1999 did not have Linux installed on any of his computers.
It further speaks agains that Johansen's intention was the development of a DVD player for Linux that he made DeCSS a Windows program. Johansen has however testified that he did not have enough knowledge about Linux and that there was no support for UDF (the file system on a DVD dict) under this operating system.
Johansen made DeCSS available on the Internet and was occupied with making the program easy to use by "the average joe", in accordance to page 428 in the actual excerpt which is a printout from an IRC log with a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" the 5th of October 1999. Johansen has explained that it was neccesary to publicize DeCSS on the Internet so that the program could be tested and errors discovered so that the program could be developed further. The court can however not see that any of the improvements that were made after the 6th of October 1999 further contributed to the development of a DVD player for Linux.
On page 291 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of a printout of a log from a chatting channel from two conversations the 12th of September 1999 between Johansen and "Robshot". It's clear from the printout that a person calling himself "Wag" means that the chatting channel Johansen is operator in, PCDVD, is solely occupied with pirate copying. In the conversation there is a quote of another conversation between Johansen and "Wag" where Johansen wrote the following to "Wag":
"and I've got only one thing to say to you, keep out of # PCDVD, we are criminals in there, you don't want to mingle with us."
On page 366 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of a printout from a log from a chatting channel with a conversation from 25th of September 1999 between Johansen and a person calling himself "Terryben". It's clear from the printout that Johansen wrote the following to "Terryben":
"so, hehe, we'll be copying dvds i notime when dvd burners drop in $"
The court finds it difficult to put too much stress on the printouts from the chatting channels with regard to Johansen's intention with the development of DeCSS. The conversations can contain exaggregations, humour and irony, and what is said is not likely well thought through at all times. The court can therefore not base its decision on that the conversations give a correct image of the participators subjective judgements. In spite of this the logs show that the competition with other development communities was a strong driving force behind the development and DeCSS. This is especially shown in page 395, 396, 410, 435, 462, 464, 468 and 521 in the actual excerpt which are printouts from conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" where he repeatedly referred to DoDs development of a decryption program.
On this background the court does not find it reasonably proved that without any reasonable doubt Johansen's intention with the development and publicizing of the program was to contribute to illegal copying and distribution of DVD movies.
The court has on this background reached the verdict that Johansen cannot be convicted for having attempted to abet violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase with regard to access to the keys. This holds true even if Johansen was aware that the program could be misused. This will hold true for all who distribute products that can be used legally or illegally.
Access to the player keys
The next question the court has to decide upon is whether Johansen can be convicted for violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys in CSS. If Johansen is to be convicted for violation the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys there must also in this relation be present a break of a protection or other similar mean that has given unrightful access to these.
In Ot prp no 35 the condition to "break a protection or by other similar means" is discussed. From page 20 the following is quoted:
"The department basically agrees with the council of criminal law in that the decision should be articulated so that it only can be applied when the rightholder himself has done something to protect the information against illegal access."
It is thus required that both the information is actually protected against access and that the purpose of the protection is to prevent illegal access. The court bases its decision on that it doesn't matter how strong the protection is. It must be sufficient that the rightholder has done something to protect the information. The court does on the other size base its decision on that factors that makes the access more difficult cannot be counted as protection in relation to the criminal law 145 second phrase if the intention haven't been to protect against illegal access.
Johansen has testified and the court bases its decision on that "the nomad" wrote program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS after he had performed reverse engineering of a Xing-player. The questions thuse becomes whether such reverse engineering implied a violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase. Johansen has testified that he with reverse engineering means the analyze a computer program to find out how it works. According to Johansen "the nomad" has understood the decryption algorithm in CSS and written program code for this in a high level language. This code "the nomad" sent to Johansen.
Reverse engineering is not mentioned in the preparations for the criminal law 145. By the evaluation of the span of the criminal law 145 the legality principle's particular stress on the criminal law's reach must be taken into regard, in accordance to the constitution 96. The supreme court has in two decisions interpreted the criminal law 145 second phrase very narrowly compared to the actual wording, in accordance to Rt 1994 page 1610 and Rt 1995 page 35. Even though the decisions specificaly are about the expression "data", they can be read as a general expression that the criminal law 145 shall be interpreted narrowly.
Bjorn Bjerke gives in his book "Reverse engineering" of computer programes (1994) on page 23 the following definition of reverse engineering:
"Reverse engineering is thereby a process in which one gets an understanding about the datas and processes in an existing computer system. The goal is to pull out contents, structure and data flow from existing computer programs and represent this information in a shape well-suited for further analysis and documentation"
On page 24 and following Bjerke explains the different methods of reverse engineering. Firstly you can read about the program in available manuals and litterature. Secondly you can observe the program at run time. The court finds it obvious that the two first methods does not imply a violation of the criminal law 145. Bjerke describes on page 5 and following the approach used in the third method he calls the dissection method:
"The dissection method requires that we can read and understand computer programs and thereby pulling out information about the individual machine instructions, their function in shape of a description at a higher level of abstraction, as well as this functions place in the algorithm which describes what the program does. The computer program in its distributed for is in binary code, a long stream of one's and zero's, which contains a lot of "filling information" in addition to the original program.
Even by use of alphanumerical symbols will the resulting code not give particular meaning, unless one can read machine instructions and data. You can in other words not avoid disassembling the program."
Bjerke further writes that disassembling means that the object code is transformed into assembly code. Disassembling can be done with a disassmbling program, but one would in addition have to do some testing. The assembler language is very difficult for humans to interpret and decompilation is thus neccesary. Decompilation is the transforming of the assembly code to a high level programming language.
Based on the description Bjerke has given of reverse engineering, as well as the testimony Johansen has given about how "the nomad" wrote program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS, the court finds it difficult to call this breaking of a protecting or other similar means. The court finds it not proven that a computer program distributed in object code is caused by the producer of the program wanting to protect the source code. The cause could equally well be that the program in object code can be used directly in the computer. The court has therefore decided that the reverse engineering that "the nomad" performed is not in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase.
The court finds it proven that the program code Johansen got from "the nomad" contained at least one of the player keys in CSS. The question for the court is thus whether this/these were protected in relation to the criminal law 145 second phrase.
President in DVD CCA, John Hoy, has explained that keeping the player keys secret was a condition to get license to produce DVD players that could play encrypted movies. This is however not sufficient evidence that all producers actually fulfilled this condition. Johansen has explained that the Xing-player did not have any protection of the player keys. This corresponds to what "the nomad" said to Johansen in the conversation on IRC the 24th of September 1999 quoted on page 394 in the actual excerpt. No evidence is presented showing that keys were protected within the Xing player. The court has therefore based its decision on that there was no break of protection or other similar means in relation to player keys in the Xing player.
As regards to the rest of the player keys it's clear from page 537 in the actual excerpt that Brian Demsky the 7th of October 1999 made contact with Johansen and explained that he was in the process of finding all of the player keys in CSS with basis in the program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS that Johansen had made available on the Internet the day before. Demsky further wrote: "I'm currently at a key rate of 2.5 million keys/sec/450 mhz". This indicates that he had developed a computer program that made the computer able to guess possible player keys. The basis for the program is the decryption algorithm in DeCSS where Xing keys were present. The court finds that even though this approach does implies breaking a protection or at least is covered by the expression "or by similar means", the break does not give unrightful access to data. The criminal law 145 second phrase does not apply to breaking the protection itself if the protection breaking itself does not lead to the person getting unrightful access to data. As mentioned earlier the court has found that the use of DeCSS on movies that are neither illegally produced or acquired does not imply a violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase.
As regards to the question about abetting we show to the abovementioned in relation to access to the movie. Also in relation to other's possible use of the player keys to gain unrightful access to information on DVD discs does the court find that Johansen cannot be convicted for attempted abetting. The court thus finds that Johansen neither can be convicted for abetting to violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys.
Johansen is therefore acquitted.
Withdrawal
Prosecutor claimed the withdrawal of one PC cabinet Pentium III 500 MHz and 8 [CDs with] miscellanous unlicensed software in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase. The court does not find that these objects have been used to har was meant used to perform an illegal act. The claim of withdrawal is therefore not followed.
Case expenses
Prosecutor claimed that Johansen should be compelled to pay the case's expenses. Johansen is acquitted and can thus not be compelled to pay the case's expenses, in accordance to the criminal law 436 first phrase.
All judges agreed on the verdict.
Verdict: Jon Lech Johansen, born November 18, 1983, lives in Agmond Boltsvei 62. He is unmarried and has no children. He works as software developer and earns NOK 35 000 gross per month. He has no fortune. By charges presented by the Norwegian economic crime unit's state attorney member the 10th of May 2002, changed under the main negotiations, is he placed under charges at Oslo district court for violation of The criminal law 145 second by third and fourth phrase For by unrightfully having broken a protection or by similar means having unrightfully acquired access to data that is stored or transferred electronically or by other technical means and by having caused damage by acquiring or using such unrightful knowledge or by having aided this. The basis is the following chain of events or cooperation in this In the period September 1999 to 24th of January 2000, via Internet from residence in Lardal, Jon Lech Johansen participated in the breaking of the technical protection system Content Scrambling System ("CSS"), licensed by DVD Copy Control Association Inc, to protect DVD-movies produced by Motion Pictures Association against copying. A DVD-movie is a movie that is stored electronically on a DVD-disc. Based on knowledge about a secret algorithm and player keys incorporated into CSS, did Jon Lech Johansen make the Windows program DeCSS. By using DeCSS an unencrypted copy of the DVD-film is produced. Jon Lech Johansen used DeCSS on his own DVD-movies, and he spread DeCSS several times in different versions via Internet in the said period. By the described circumstances Jon Lech Johansen acquired unrightful access to the secret key repository in CSS. Further did Jon Lech Johansen break the copy protection on the DVD-movies and acquired himself and others access to the DVD-discs in an unprotected condition. The access was unrightful because the DVD-movies were sold with the condition that the user would utilize authorized playback equipment and respect the copy protection. The acquiring of the movies in unprotect condition has caused damage because the right holders no longer has protection against unrightful spreading of the movies. The main negotiations were held in Oslo Tinghus 9th to 16th of December 2002. The defendant met accompanied by his defender. The defendant testified and pleaded not guilty in accordance to the charges. The court received testimonies from five witnesses, and there were held documentation as shown in the court book. Further were the program DeCSS demonstrated. Prosecutor made the following claim: Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is in correspondence with the charges sentenced to jail in 90 (ninety) days, which is made conditional with a parole of 2 (two) years, in accordance to the criminal law 52 following Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is sentenced to handle the withdrawal of one PC-cabinet Pentium III 500 MHz (withdrawal A-2), in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase. 8 CD-ROMS containing miscellaneous unlicensed software (withdrawal A-4-7), in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase. Jon Lech Johansen, b 181183, is sentenced to carry the costs of this trial with 10 000 (ten thousand) NOK. Defender made the following claim: Jon Lech Johansen is found innocent. The court's commentaries The case's background While taking under consideration the strong needs for evidence in the criminal court, including that any reasonable doubt should come to the defendant's advantage, the court finds the following actual background for the case proved: 4th of January 2000 Motion Pictures Association, hereafter called MPA, and DVD Copy Control Association Inc, hereafter called DVD CCA, reported Jon Lech Johansen to the Norwegian economic crime unit for violating the criminal law 145 second phrase. The background for the report is that Jon Lech Johansen had participated in the development of the computer program DeCSS. MPA collects several of the large movie companies in USA. The organization was one of those who took the initiative to the work that lead to the foundation of the DVD CCA. DVD CCA was founded to prevent pirate copying of DVD movies. The DVD technology is described in the expert report delivered by Stige Frode Mjolsnes and Hakon Styri 18th of September 2000 after assignment from the Norwegian economic crime unit. From page 6 in the report the following is quoted: "DVD is a technological extension of the compact disc (CD), and has the same external dimensions as this. The storage capacity for a DVD is significantly larger than for the compact disc. DVD is used as a digital storage medium both in the entertainment industry (music, video, games) and in the computer industry (software, databases etc)." From page 7 in the report the following is quoted: "DVD-video is an 'application' of DVD-ROM which among other things conditions that the information on the disc is structured in a specific way." President John Hoy in DVD CCA testified during the main negotiations that because a DVD-video has a technology that stores information digitally, and not in analog, will this lead to the possibility of it being copied without loss of quality. The movie companies were obviously worried that the development of the DVD technology would lead to significant copying and distribution of movies without the producers of the movie receiving payment. He has further testified that the companies the stood behind the development of the DVD technology wished to tie themselves to the movie industry to have something to sell. A compromise between the movie producers and the DVD producers were the development of the Content Scrambling System, hereafter called CSS. On a question from the prosecutor did Hoy confirm that CSS came as a consequence of a demand from the movie industry. From page 13 in Mjolsnes' and Styri's report the following is quoted: "CSS is a technological measure that utilizes cryptographical methods to protect digital information stored on a DVD disc in accordance to the DVD video standard." The court bases its decision on this explanation of what CSS is. From page 15 and 16 in Mjolsnes' and Styri's report the following is quoted: "The fundamental problem a right holder and a publisher of intellectual works is presented with is how to practice control with his copyrights at the same time as copies of the works is to be distributed. (Emphasis) By distributing a work in an encrypted condition the distributor will limit the distribution of the work to those who know the decryption key. (Emphasis end) We could try to make a technical obstruction such that the receiver cannot distribute the decryption key to others. This copy protection of decryption keys is a central point in CSS. Anyway will this not be sufficient. The receiver of course has the rightful claim to use (watch and listen to) the contents. Therefore it is also necessary to prevent technical copying of the contents while it is being decrypted and is presented in 'plain text'. A normal solution concept consists of making the user dependent on a decoder or playback device do watch and listen to the digital content. A precondition that has to be satisfied is that there must not be any way to 'tap' the playback device for the contents that it presents in plain text for the user, otherwise this can be copied and distributed. Further does this solution condition that the decoder/playback device itself is secured against copying. This can be done by encapsulating the decryption key in a tampering safe way, such that the secret key can neither be read nor modified nor circumvented by any physical or logical means. This will imply that the playback unit is secured against copying, essentially because the decryption key (and possible secreted algorithms) cannot be read out. A CSS implementation that utilizes tampering safe hardware decoder and playback devices will be able to satisfy the above mentioned requirements. A CSS implementation that utilizes software-only decoder and playback devices would not likely satisfy any of these requirements. The protection is at least a lot weaker than what could have been done in electronical chipsets." In conclusion does CSS make it neccesary for the buyer of a DVD-disc to have a special equipment that can decrypt DVD movies. The equipment can either consist of a DVD player in the shape of a so-called "brownware box", hardware, that is connected to a TV-apparatus for playback of the movie or a computer program, software, that is installed in a PC so that the DVD disc can be played back on PC. In a PC the DVD disc is placed in a DVD drive that communicates via a data bus with a DVD player in the form of a computer program. A DVD disc with CSS encrypted material contains a disc key encrypted with a selection of approximately 400 so-called player keys. A DVD player must contain at least one of these player keys if a DVD movie is to be playable in unencrypted form. Producers of DVD players must therefore know at least one of the player keys in order to be able to produce a DVD player that is supposed to play encrypted DVD movies. CSS consists of several forms of protection in form of codes or keys that is layered on top of each other. The title keys are used to encrypt the actual movie. Thereafter the title key is encrypted with a disc key. The disc key is encrypted with a selection of the approximately 400 player keys. A DVD player that knows at least one of the player keys can decrypt the disc key and with this key the title key can be decrypted so that the disc's contents can be watched/listened to in unencrypted form. All those who wants to produce such a DVD player can apply for a license for this and thus get access to one or more player keys. The license is controlled by DVD CCA. The precondition for getting a license is that the license taker keeps secrecy about the player keys and that they are protected in the DVD player so that the buyer of a DVD player shall not get access to the player keys. We refer to Hoy's testimony during the main negotiations. Not all producers of software accepts such conditions, for instance an amount of producers of programs under the operating system Linux. The background is that many programs that are made under Linux has open source code, meaning that everybody should be able to see how the program is built. The motive for this is that anyone who wants to modify computer software under Linux should have full access to this. By this reason there was no DVD player under the operating system Linux fall 1999. We refer to Johansens own explanation and that no evidence is presented that contradicts this explanation on this point. In addition the the encryption CSS consists of an authentication that is supposed to prevent DVD movies with CSS protection from being played back on the DVD players that are not produced under license from DVD CCA. The authentication implies that the DVD drive with the DVD disc and the player accepts each other and that the DVD player gets access to the DVD disc's contents. Further does the CSS contain a regional playback control. The world is divided into different zones where for instance USA is region 1 and Europe and parts of Asia is region 2. A DVD disc contains information about which region it's bought in and shall only be possible to play back on a DVD player bought in the same region. The development of DeCSS Johansen has explained that he during the fall 1999 wished to be able to play back DVD movies under the operating system Linux. Through several chatting channels on the Internet Johansen made contact with other people having the same interests as him. The conversations on the chatting channels are either performed "openly" with all those who are logged on or "in private" between two persons. One of the most important chatting channel services for our case is IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Johansen was during the fall 1999 operator on the chatting channels PCDVD. Johansen's nick name on the chatting channels was "MultiAGP". On page 326 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log that shows a conversation held 11th of September 1999 between Johansen and a person calling himself "mdx". It's clear from the printout that Johansen and "mdx" discussed how one could find the decryption algorithm in CSS by finding a DVD player that does not have or has low protection of player keys. On page 328 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of a conversation held 22th of September 1999 on IRC between Johansen and "mdx". It's clear from the printout that a person calling himself "the nomad" has program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS. It's further clear from the printout that "mdx" sent this program code to Johansen. This is also confirmed by Johansen's explanation during the main negotiations. Johansen has further explained that "the nomad" found the decryption algorithm in CSS by reverse engineering of a DVD player of the brand Xing. This is also clear from the conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" on IRC 24th of September 1999 quoted on page 393 in the actual excerpt. Johansen has further explained that program code for the authentication algorithm in CSS was publicized on the news group Livid on the Internet. Livid is a news group for persons interested in development of software under the operating system Linux. Johansen could under the main negotiations not remember how he got program code to the authentication algorithm. There is however not presented any evidence that Johansen participated in the development of this program code and the court therefore bases its decision on that Johansen fetched or received this after the work after it was completed. Johansen has explained that he later came to know that a person by the name Derek Fawcus had ascertained program code for the authentication algorithm in CSS. The court consider proven that DeCSS makes a unencrypted copy of an encrypted movie and puts this on the computer's harddisc. We refer to earlier special investigator in Okokrim Svein Yngvar Willassen's explanation, as well as the demonstation of the program that was performed during the main negotiations. This corresponds to Johansen's explanation. On page 393 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log with a conversation from the 24th of September 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad". It is clear from the printout that Johansen had made a CSS decryption program by using "the nomad"'s program code for the decryption algorithm and that he had made a GUI (Graphical User Interface), that is a user interface that makes the program easier to use. It is further clear from the same page of the printout that Johansen asked "the nomad" to test the program. Johanse further asked "the nomad" if he could publish the program, something "the nomad" accepted. Johansen has explaind that DeCSS was tested in the period before the program was realeased on the Internet. Johansen has further explained that there was made several versions of DeCSS. Willassen has explained that there was found several versions of DeCSS during the search in Johansen's home. The court therefore bases its decision on that several versions of DeCSS were made. Johansen is however not sure which version was distributed on the Internet. The court does not find this decisive for the case. Johansen has explained that he the 6th of October 1999 either put out a link or put DeCSS directly on his home page on the Internet. The same day he sent a message to Livid that is quoted on page 20 in the actual excerpt. In the message Johansen explained that DeCSS is a CSS decryptor that works with the movie "The Matrix", something a similar program, "DoDs speedripper", doesn't. Johansen further explained that the program works under the operating systems Win98 and Win2k. Thereafter he explained where the program could be fetched on the Internet. On page 450 in the actual excerpth there is a quote from a printout from an IRC log with a conversation from the 6th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad". It is clear that Johansen made a mistake "uploaded the source". The court bases its decision on that they were talking about the source code for DeCSS that was made available on the Internet. The court further bases its decision on that this was an error from Johansens side, and refers to that he wrote to "the nomad" that he would try to get those who had downloaded it to erase it. Johansen has explained that he removed the source code from the Internet. The cause was that the didn't want DVD CCA to pull back Xing-keys so that DeCSS would stop working. The court bases its decision on that Johansen withdrew the sourcecode from Internet a short time after it was distributed. The 25th of October 1999 the source code for DeCSS was made available on Livid. The poster of the source code was anonymous. On page 501 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an IRC log showing a conversation between "the nomad" and Johansen the 25th of October 1999. It's clear from the printout that Johansen is annoyed by the fact that somemone posted the source for DeCSS. Johansen has explained that it was unfortunate that the source code was made available, because the source code contained player keys from the Xing player. DVD CCA could thus have reacted by withdrawing player keys. The court bases its decision on that it wasn't Johansen who publicized the source code for DeCSS at this time. Johansen has however explained that he made the source code for DeCSS available on the Internet at a later time because the source code was then already available. Johansen has explained that before the development of DeCSS, there existed programs for decryption of DVD movies. On of these programs are the abovementioned "Speedripper". The program was developed by a group who called themselves "Drink or Die" (DoD). According to Johansen this program didn't work on some movies, among others "The Matrix". Disclosure of player keys On page 537 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 7th of October 1999 from a person by the name Brian Demsky to Johansen. It's clear from the e-mail that Demsky downloaded DeCSS and that he has made a program to find the approximately 400 player keys. The purpose was to avoid that DeCSS would stop working if DVD CCA should revoke some of the player keys. This is confirmed by Johansen during the main negotiations. On page 538 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of the reply from Johansen to Demsky the same day. Johansen wrote that this was good news and thet there is interst for this. In the program code for the decryptino algorithm that Johansen received from "the nomad" there's at least one player key. On page 459 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an IRC log that shows a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" the 8th of October 1999, ie. after DeCSS was made publicly available on the Internet. It's clear from that log that Johansen first at this stage realised how the player keys work. It's further clear from the log that Johansen sent player keys that he had got from Demsky to "the nomad". It's further clear that "the nomad" tested several of the player keys and that Johansen were to forward the test results to Demsky. Johansen has explained during the main negotiations that he cannot remember whether he participated in the actual testing himself, but that he forwardet player keys and test results between Demsky and "the nomad". From the log it cannot be drawn any safe conclusins with regard to whether Johansen himself participated in the testing of player keys. The court does however not find this decisive for the case because it is clear that Johansen was the contact between Demsky and "the nomad". On page 553 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an e-mail from 9th of October 199 from Demsky to Johansen. It's clear from the e-mail that Demsky had found approximately 400 player keys and that he sent them to Johansen. After a while it was known in the media that CSS was broken. On page 674 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an article on the Internet in November 1999 where Johansen is presented as spokesperson of the group MoRE (Masters of Reverse Engineering), the group who broke CSS. Johansen has explained that his father was conatected by attorney Erik Tondel who on behalf of MPA asked that Johansen removed DeCSS from the Internet. Johansen followed the adviced from attorney Tondel and removed DeCSS from the Internet. Johansen has further explained that he uploaded DeCSS to the Internet again the following weekend, and that it was available until the 24th of January 2000. Altering the charges during the main negotiations The way the charges sounded during the start of the main negotiations was Johansen charged with having unrighfully gained access to the datas on the DVD discs. The way the charges was articulated data could both be understood as the actual movies, but also other data that is stored on a DVD disc. During the main negotiations the prosecutor changed the sentence with "did Jon Lech Johansen gain access to the secret key repository in CSS". The defender mentioned that this is another case than the one the charges originally was about and that the case is deprecated in accordance to the criminal law 67 first phrase. The court finds that this is not another case than what the charges originally was about if the exact words of the charges are considered. The court has a certain sympathy for the defender's arguments against the fact that the prosecutor was a bit vague during the main negotiations with regard to what the charges actually are about, but either way finds that the exact words of the charges should be the basis of the court's decision. The question of guild The criminal law 145 first and second phrase sounds thus: "He who unrightfully breaks letters or other closed writings or in similar ways unrightfully gains access to the contents, or acquires access to someone else's locked hidings is punished with fines or jail up to 6 months. The same applies to he who by breaking a protection or by similar means unrightfully gains access to data or program equipment that is stored or transferred by electronical or other technical means." If Johansen is to be convicted for violating the criminal law 145 second phrase he must therefore either himself, or by having contributed to that someone has broken a protection of by other similar means thereby acquired unrightful access to data or program equipment. Originally the criminal law 145 applied to he who "unrightfully breaks letter or other closed writings acquires access to someone else's locked hidings or aiding this". The decisions was changed by law the 16th of February 1979. Then another sentence was added in the first point, that sounded thus: "The same applies to he who unrightfully acquires access to the contents of a closed message or writing when this regularily only is available by using special equipment for connection, playback, lighting through, reading or similar." It's clear from NOU 1985:31 Computer crime on page 14 that the decision applied to inspection of computer stored information. On page 29 and 30 the council of crime law explains about the the need for changes in the crime law 145. From page 30 the following is quoted: "The articulation in the decision ("closed message or writing") does not immediately lead the thought to information stored on computers, and there is reason to believe that the decision is little known among computer people. The council of crime law have therefore, without aiming for a change of meaning, given the decision a new articulation (as 145 second phrase)." The council of crime law's suggestion for change of 145 second phrase is the decision the way it now sounds. Because the council of crime law didn't aim to change the meaning will law sources connected to the decision the way it sounded earlier still be relevant. In Ot prp no 35 (1986-87) on page 20 and following, the department of justice explains the preconditions for punishment in 145 second phrase. On page 20 the deparment discusses the expression "breaking a protection or by similar means". From page 20 the following is quoted: "By the fact that 'similar beans' is added, the interpretation of the precondition about breaking a protection becomes less important. The point is that 145 only shall apply to cases where the act of gaining access to data must be characterized as qualified unrightful. To break a protection is a such qualifying factor, but one can also imagine similar situations where the act of breaking into data will be so grave that 145 should be applied. Furthermore will the decision rely on a understanding where other factors of the act and the acting situation is pulled in." It is hence the expression "unrightful" that is the central condition in the decision. The council of criminal law states one page 15 and following about the expression unrightful: "In principle it depends on laws and agreements what data one has the right to get to know" (NOU 1985:31 Computer crime) On the same page the council states: "The expression 'unrightful' ties itself to the particular information and not the computer facility as such." It is clear from the articulation, and also by articulations in the proposal, that the question about unrightful must be tied to whether a person is allowed to get access to computer stored information, not how the person gets the access. The court therefore bases its decision on that the decision does not apply to he who in another way than the producer has required, acquires access to data he otherwise has access to. This must apply even if this happens by breaking a protection or by similar means. Access to the movie The court finds that he who buys a DVD movie that is produced in a legal way, has rightful access to watch the movie. Something else would apply if the DVD movie was produced by copying in violation with the copyright law, so-called pirate copying. The owner of a pirate copy will therefore not have a rightful demand to watch the movie. As earlier mentioned the court does find it proven that DeCSS makes an unencrypted copy of an encrypted DVD movie that is put on the computers harddisc. The court therefore bases its decision that the use of DeCSS gives the user access to the movie in an unencrypted condition. The fact that such a copy is made is not decisive because the act of making a copy is not covered by the crime law 145. The question for the courte is hence whether Johansen has used DeCSS on DVD movies that are produced in an illegal manner and therefore did not have the right to access. On page 299 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of a chatting channel with a conversation the 9th of October 1999 between Johansen and another person calling himself "Robshot". It is clear from the printout that the Johansen has pirated copies of computer software. It is further clear from page 474 in the actual excerpt which is a printout of an IRC log from a conversation the 14th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad" that Johansen has an illegal copy of the computer program Scenarist 2.0. Johansen has however explained that he has not had illegally produced DVD movies in his posession. He has explained that he has used DeCSS on the movies "The Matrix" and "The fifth element" and that he has bought both of the films in a legal manner in stores in Oslo and Larvik, respectively. No evidence is presented that shows that Johansen has used DeCSS on illegally acquired DVD movies. The court has therefore reached the verdict that Johansen cannot be convicted for violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to his own use of DeCSS. The next question the court has to decide upon is whether Johansen can be convicted for abetting violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase by the fact that other has gained unrightful access to DVD movies. In accordance to the criminal law 145 fourth phrase is abetting also punishable. From page 200 in Erling Johansen Husabo's bok "The periphery of criminal responsibility - Abetting, attempting, preparing" (1999) the following is quoted: "The statement (in the preparation of the criminal law) shows that even if the abettor has done his part, one shall not punish the abettor for anything more than attempt as long as the main man hasn't completed the violation." No evidence is presented that shows that anybody have used DeCSS on illegally acquired DVD movies. The court refers to special investigator Willassens testimony during the main negotiations where he said he didn't know of any specific cases where DeCSS have been used on illegally acquired DVD movies. Johansen can therefore not be convicted for completed abetting. The court furthermore has to to decide upon whether Johansen can be convicted for attempt to abet. The problem posed is whether Johansen can be convicted for abetting by having produced and distributed a tool which makes it possible for other people to gain unrightful access to DVD movies. Our case has many similarities with transfer of property discussed by Husabo. From page 100 in his book the following is quoted: "Nearly every product can become new as a means to a law violation. Certain kinds of products even likely will lead to being used to such. But it is either way there's an agreement that the legal responsibility is excluded both for producer and salesman. (Emphasis) What intentions the producer or salesman had, is then basically irrelevant. (Emphasis end) As long as the products also serves legal purposes the problem is not as much to give reason to freedom from punishment, but to give reason when sale to others anyway can lead to abetting responsibility. The basis is thus that the sale of products that have a legal purpose cannot be punished as abetting. The same must be true for distribution of products. Decisive for the question is whether DeCSS has a legal purpose. As mentioned earlier the court finds that it will not be in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase to utilize DeCSS to watch DVD movies acquired legally. Furthermore will it not be in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase to produce copies of legally acquired DVD movies for private use, in accordance to the copyright law 12. DeCSS can thus be used both to take a copy of a DVD movie and to play back a DVD movie if one doesn't have licensed playback equipment. How useful this is to society there could be different opinions about, but that this is legal have to seem clear after this. The court therefore finds that DeCSS can be used in a legal or illegal manner. The supreme court has convicted for punishable abetting of sale of products that otherwise are legal, jf Rt 1996 page 965. The supreme court laid decisive stress on that the organization of the business obviously showed that the person's intension with the sale was to sell products that were to be used exclusively for illegal production of hard liquors. The defendant's intention with the distribution of a product is thus an important factor in the evaluation of the outer circumstances in the case, in accordance to Husabo page 117. In our case the court finds it difficult to draw any safe conclusions with regard to Johansen's intention with the development of DeCSS and the publicizing of the program on the Internet. Johansen has testified that the intention was to contribute to the development of a DVD player for the operating system Linux. On page 885 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 23th of September 1999 from "the nomad" to Derek Fawcus. It's clear from the e-mail that "the named" sent program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS to Fawcus. "The nomad" further wrote in the e-mail that he hoped this would be of help for the development of a DVD player for Linux. Johansen has on his side expressed himself negatively about the operating system Linux and the development community tied to this system. On page 45 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from an e-mail of 6th of October 1999 on Livid from a person by the name Michael Holzt. Holzt writes that Johansen allegedly have said that he hates Linux and that he would have been glad if the system was never invented because FreeBSD is much better. On page 47 in the actual excerpt is there a quote from the answer from Johansen where he wrote that he never have said that he hates Linux, but that it doesn't matter if Linux never had been invented because FreeBSD is much better. On page 51 there is a quote from an e-mail of 8th of October 1999 to Livid where Johanse apologizes his attitued in earlier e-mails and writes that he means Linux is a very good operating system, but that FreeBSD is better. On page 458 and 459 in the actual excerpt there is a quote from a printout of an IRC log with a conversation the 8th of October 1999 between Johansen and "the nomad" where Johansen writes that he has sent an apology to Livid, but that it was just to satisfy another person who the court assumes is Derek Fawcus. Johanse writes further: "God damned linux fanatics, I wish someone would shoot them ; )" Given the context and the explanation Johansen has given during the main negotiations the court bases its decision on that the background for this statement is a conflict between Michael Holzt and Johansen about whether the source code should be publicized, as well as the situation around the transferral of the source code to Fawcus. The court finds that Johansen's statements regarding Linux thus cannot be taken literally and that they don't give any solid grounds for Johansen's relationship to Linux in general. The court therefore means that this correspondence is not sufficient evidence for what intention Johansen had with the development of DeCSS. It does however speak against that Johansen's intention was to make a DVD player for Linux that he showed so little interest for this operating system at the time DeCSS was made. It's clear from what is mentioned above that Johansen meant that FreeBSD was a better operating system than Linux. It's further clear from a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" on IRC quoted on page 506 in the actual excerpt that Johansen as late as 26th of October 1999 did not have Linux installed on any of his computers. It further speaks agains that Johansen's intention was the development of a DVD player for Linux that he made DeCSS a Windows program. Johansen has however testified that he did not have enough knowledge about Linux and that there was no support for UDF (the file system on a DVD dict) under this operating system. Johansen made DeCSS available on the Internet and was occupied with making the program easy to use by "the average joe", in accordance to page 428 in the actual excerpt which is a printout from an IRC log with a conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" the 5th of October 1999. Johansen has explained that it was neccesary to publicize DeCSS on the Internet so that the program could be tested and errors discovered so that the program could be developed further. The court can however not see that any of the improvements that were made after the 6th of October 1999 further contributed to the development of a DVD player for Linux. On page 291 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of a printout of a log from a chatting channel from two conversations the 12th of September 1999 between Johansen and "Robshot". It's clear from the printout that a person calling himself "Wag" means that the chatting channel Johansen is operator in, PCDVD, is solely occupied with pirate copying. In the conversation there is a quote of another conversation between Johansen and "Wag" where Johansen wrote the following to "Wag": "and I've got only one thing to say to you, keep out of # PCDVD, we are criminals in there, you don't want to mingle with us." On page 366 in the actual excerpt there is a quote of a printout from a log from a chatting channel with a conversation from 25th of September 1999 between Johansen and a person calling himself "Terryben". It's clear from the printout that Johansen wrote the following to "Terryben": "so, hehe, we'll be copying dvds i notime when dvd burners drop in $" The court finds it difficult to put too much stress on the printouts from the chatting channels with regard to Johansen's intention with the development of DeCSS. The conversations can contain exaggregations, humour and irony, and what is said is not likely well thought through at all times. The court can therefore not base its decision on that the conversations give a correct image of the participators subjective judgements. In spite of this the logs show that the competition with other development communities was a strong driving force behind the development and DeCSS. This is especially shown in page 395, 396, 410, 435, 462, 464, 468 and 521 in the actual excerpt which are printouts from conversation between Johansen and "the nomad" where he repeatedly referred to DoDs development of a decryption program. On this background the court does not find it reasonably proved that without any reasonable doubt Johansen's intention with the development and publicizing of the program was to contribute to illegal copying and distribution of DVD movies. The court has on this background reached the verdict that Johansen cannot be convicted for having attempted to abet violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase with regard to access to the keys. This holds true even if Johansen was aware that the program could be misused. This will hold true for all who distribute products that can be used legally or illegally. Access to the player keys The next question the court has to decide upon is whether Johansen can be convicted for violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys in CSS. If Johansen is to be convicted for violation the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys there must also in this relation be present a break of a protection or other similar mean that has given unrightful access to these. In Ot prp no 35 the condition to "break a protection or by other similar means" is discussed. From page 20 the following is quoted: "The department basically agrees with the council of criminal law in that the decision should be articulated so that it only can be applied when the rightholder himself has done something to protect the information against illegal access." It is thus required that both the information is actually protected against access and that the purpose of the protection is to prevent illegal access. The court bases its decision on that it doesn't matter how strong the protection is. It must be sufficient that the rightholder has done something to protect the information. The court does on the other size base its decision on that factors that makes the access more difficult cannot be counted as protection in relation to the criminal law 145 second phrase if the intention haven't been to protect against illegal access. Johansen has testified and the court bases its decision on that "the nomad" wrote program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS after he had performed reverse engineering of a Xing-player. The questions thuse becomes whether such reverse engineering implied a violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase. Johansen has testified that he with reverse engineering means the analyze a computer program to find out how it works. According to Johansen "the nomad" has understood the decryption algorithm in CSS and written program code for this in a high level language. This code "the nomad" sent to Johansen. Reverse engineering is not mentioned in the preparations for the criminal law 145. By the evaluation of the span of the criminal law 145 the legality principle's particular stress on the criminal law's reach must be taken into regard, in accordance to the constitution 96. The supreme court has in two decisions interpreted the criminal law 145 second phrase very narrowly compared to the actual wording, in accordance to Rt 1994 page 1610 and Rt 1995 page 35. Even though the decisions specificaly are about the expression "data", they can be read as a general expression that the criminal law 145 shall be interpreted narrowly. Bjorn Bjerke gives in his book "Reverse engineering" of computer programes (1994) on page 23 the following definition of reverse engineering: "Reverse engineering is thereby a process in which one gets an understanding about the datas and processes in an existing computer system. The goal is to pull out contents, structure and data flow from existing computer programs and represent this information in a shape well-suited for further analysis and documentation" On page 24 and following Bjerke explains the different methods of reverse engineering. Firstly you can read about the program in available manuals and litterature. Secondly you can observe the program at run time. The court finds it obvious that the two first methods does not imply a violation of the criminal law 145. Bjerke describes on page 5 and following the approach used in the third method he calls the dissection method: "The dissection method requires that we can read and understand computer programs and thereby pulling out information about the individual machine instructions, their function in shape of a description at a higher level of abstraction, as well as this functions place in the algorithm which describes what the program does. The computer program in its distributed for is in binary code, a long stream of one's and zero's, which contains a lot of "filling information" in addition to the original program. Even by use of alphanumerical symbols will the resulting code not give particular meaning, unless one can read machine instructions and data. You can in other words not avoid disassembling the program." Bjerke further writes that disassembling means that the object code is transformed into assembly code. Disassembling can be done with a disassmbling program, but one would in addition have to do some testing. The assembler language is very difficult for humans to interpret and decompilation is thus neccesary. Decompilation is the transforming of the assembly code to a high level programming language. Based on the description Bjerke has given of reverse engineering, as well as the testimony Johansen has given about how "the nomad" wrote program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS, the court finds it difficult to call this breaking of a protecting or other similar means. The court finds it not proven that a computer program distributed in object code is caused by the producer of the program wanting to protect the source code. The cause could equally well be that the program in object code can be used directly in the computer. The court has therefore decided that the reverse engineering that "the nomad" performed is not in violation with the criminal law 145 second phrase. The court finds it proven that the program code Johansen got from "the nomad" contained at least one of the player keys in CSS. The question for the court is thus whether this/these were protected in relation to the criminal law 145 second phrase. President in DVD CCA, John Hoy, has explained that keeping the player keys secret was a condition to get license to produce DVD players that could play encrypted movies. This is however not sufficient evidence that all producers actually fulfilled this condition. Johansen has explained that the Xing-player did not have any protection of the player keys. This corresponds to what "the nomad" said to Johansen in the conversation on IRC the 24th of September 1999 quoted on page 394 in the actual excerpt. No evidence is presented showing that keys were protected within the Xing player. The court has therefore based its decision on that there was no break of protection or other similar means in relation to player keys in the Xing player. As regards to the rest of the player keys it's clear from page 537 in the actual excerpt that Brian Demsky the 7th of October 1999 made contact with Johansen and explained that he was in the process of finding all of the player keys in CSS with basis in the program code for the decryption algorithm in CSS that Johansen had made available on the Internet the day before. Demsky further wrote: "I'm currently at a key rate of 2.5 million keys/sec/450 mhz". This indicates that he had developed a computer program that made the computer able to guess possible player keys. The basis for the program is the decryption algorithm in DeCSS where Xing keys were present. The court finds that even though this approach does implies breaking a protection or at least is covered by the expression "or by similar means", the break does not give unrightful access to data. The criminal law 145 second phrase does not apply to breaking the protection itself if the protection breaking itself does not lead to the person getting unrightful access to data. As mentioned earlier the court has found that the use of DeCSS on movies that are neither illegally produced or acquired does not imply a violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase. As regards to the question about abetting we show to the abovementioned in relation to access to the movie. Also in relation to other's possible use of the player keys to gain unrightful access to information on DVD discs does the court find that Johansen cannot be convicted for attempted abetting. The court thus finds that Johansen neither can be convicted for abetting to violation of the criminal law 145 second phrase in relation to the player keys. Johansen is therefore acquitted. Withdrawal Prosecutor claimed the withdrawal of one PC cabinet Pentium III 500 MHz and 8 [CDs with] miscellanous unlicensed software in accordance to the criminal law 35 second phrase. The court does not find that these objects have been used to har was meant used to perform an illegal act. The claim of withdrawal is therefore not followed. Case expenses Prosecutor claimed that Johansen should be compelled to pay the case's expenses. Johansen is acquitted and can thus not be compelled to pay the case's expenses, in accordance to the criminal law 436 first phrase. All judges agreed on the verdict.