Johansen Prosecutors Appeal 251
kmitnick writes "Jon Johansen will be back in court, tried again in an appeals court, because Hollywood knows better than the Norwegian legal system." Norway's legal system is different than the U.S.; the government can appeal a loss in a criminal case.
They have no chance. (Score:1, Insightful)
Old but sane legal system.
Fair Use? (Score:2, Insightful)
If they can't win on merit, beat them to death (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm just glad the guy has support.
*sigh*
When will they realize... (Score:5, Insightful)
The group estimates that piracy costs the U.S. motion picture industry $3.0 billion annually in lost sales.
When are the MPAA and the RIAA going to realize that while they may be losing money, is isn't close to that magnitude?
Even if we couldn't download the movies and music, we wouldn't be buying the CDs or DVDs in those numbers. Out of every 100 albums or movies you download (the general "you"), how many would you have bought if you couldn't download them? 10? 5? 1? If it's only 1, or 1% of the movies you download, then that $3.0 billion figure is only $30 million. Which is pennies in a multi-billion dollar industry.
It's amazing how the game isn't "How much money are we losing," but rather "How much money would we have lost in this incredibly unrealistic circumstance?"
Re:If they can't win on merit, beat them to death (Score:2, Insightful)
I say if you buy a CD, you help provide the legal funds to send Jon to jail.
Don't feed the tiger that keeps biting your ass!
Re:When will they realize... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think I'm.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Double Jeopary in Norway (Score:1, Insightful)
Take the US criminal and civil court system. OJ was found not guilty of murder by the state but found guilty in civil court. He was essentially tried twice for the same event but for different charges...
A ramble on my part but I guess this is how lawyers make money.
Re:Double Jeopardy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When will they realize... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing how the game isn't "How much money are we losing," but rather "How much money would we have lost in this incredibly unrealistic circumstance?"
Oh, I'm pretty sure that they know that already.. my question is:
When are the MPAA and the RIAA going to figure out that they are "losing" money by not having the governments of the world mandate that thier citizens buy thier product? I'm serious, after all, the logic is the same. By not forcing every American to buy at least 10 albums a year, the RIAA "loses" $50 BILLION a year! And that is America alone. Can you believe that? That is a travesty! By not having every nation on earth mandate that every man woman and child buy at leat three albums a year, they are "losing" $360 BILLION and that's EVERY SINGLE YEAR! Add piracy on top of that and we are at $363 billion. Wow, that is almost as much as the defense budget for the entire US.
Re:When will they realize... (Score:3, Insightful)
When are the MPAA and the RIAA going to realize that while they may be losing money, is isn't close to that magnitude?
I think they're fully aware of that. It's all a matter of political spin-doctoring, kinda like Sun claiming that Mitnick costed them 3 billion dollars, or whatever they claimed. They just add up the cost of what people would have paid if they'd bought the downloaded files at retail prices, regardless of whether the person subsequently did that (and/or bought even more stuff later on). The big numbers sound more impressive to people who don't dig deeper to see where they came from and how unrealistic they are.
Remember, it's not the truth that matters here -- it's public opinion about the truth you give them!
This just in from the No Shit Desk (Score:4, Insightful)
But protection from double jeopardy is still part of Norwegian law. Read the article to see why this occuring. Before any Merikins start pontificating about our venerated and very good, but also deeply flawed legal system, remember that you can be tried twice for the same charge in the States as well. Hung juries, witness tampering, lawyer misconduct etc. cause subsequent trials to occur. I don't know the statistics on how many 2nd and third trials result in acquittal, but a egg rots when left out in the sun. It is best to not face a jury too often.
If you are acquitted of a crime and subsequently admit that "yes" you actually did it, you can be hauled in for perjury if you attested in court that you did not do it (read this: never testify on your own behalf), and believe you me, if an Attorney General can figure a way to hang a Federal charge on you for the same crime or an attendant one, they will. Sure this isn't exactly the same as double jeopardy, but if you piss off the right/wrong prosecutor, they will get you no matter what. And you will be put on the hardest bitch cellblock in whatever state you live in. All prosecutors have to do to people is threaten them with "Brushy Mountain" here in Tennessee and people fold like lawnchairs. The very protocol for picking prosecutors requires that they keep their hearts in jars buried under fencepost on an uncle's farm. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way. Criminals need to be pursued and convicted.
Money they COULD have made (Score:4, Insightful)
The losses screamed about under the dark moniker of piracy are merely missed opportunities for revenue. Are profits down? Yes, but they're still profits, not losses. And just because they're down, Hollywood studios and recording companies think they can enlist the powers-that-be to get them back up.
And sadly, they're right.
Re:Double Jeopardy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They have no chance. (Score:3, Insightful)
You must mean some different Europe from the one I know. The one I know is populated by regular people not saints.
article is so misleading.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at this BS:
Norwegian Teenager to Face Retrial for Film Piracy
Calling what Jon did "piracy" is a bit of a stretch isn't it? He wrote a program that reads the format of DVDs. Amazing that a news organization would use this expression.
acquitted by an Oslo court in January of charges of theft
No shit! Since there was no "theft", not even Mickey-Mouse Monopoly Money Copyright "theft"!
The group estimates that piracy costs the U.S. motion picture industry $3.0 billion annually in lost sales.
What does this have to do with Jon? How much did Jon lose from this stupid case, which has nothing to do with the MPAA's imaginary loses?
Johansen has become a symbol for hackers worldwide who say making software such as his -- called DeCSS -- is an act of intellectual freedom rather than theft.
Uh, hello, WRITING SOFTWARE is an act of creation, not of theft. Can't these people read the illogical statements they write?
There is no specific legislation in Norway to protect digital content, but Johansen's program has been criminalized in the United States under the Digital Copyright Millennium Act.
What, you mean Norway doesn't have copyright law? Yeah right. Laws like the DMCA don't protect *content* they protect *access methods* which "protect" content. They are "paracopyright" laws like one author has written.
I wish they would write the story and tell the truth: DVD-Jon wrote a program that lets you load DVDs into your computer. THAT'S ALL.
The evolution of Piracy:
What's next on the list I wonder?? Piracy == the crime of not preventing copyright infringement when you see it happening. Or maybe Piracy == not buying the latest Britnee CD.
FUCK I can't wait for this copyright nonesense to sort itself out.
Legal US centrism (Score:1, Insightful)
So the firmly rooted conviction among many Americans that their system gives better protection to the accused, because of the technical implementation of their double jeopardy rule seems very misguided, and more of parroting what hey were told in school than based on actual knowledge of the issues.
The reality is that in the US you are far more likely to be thrown in jail for far longer times than in the rest of the free world, "Land of the Free" rhetoric notwithstanding.
Re:Legal US centrism (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't the protection not given to the accused, but the fact that we have made the most trivial of unsocial acts into felonies. Take the narcotics offenders, prostitutes, check kiters, etc, out of prison and we'll be on parity with most of Europe. We do have a problem here, but it has to do with the laws and the enforcement of laws, and not the legal system itself.
So why do we have this problem? Just take a look at Slashdot. How many times have you seen a Slashdot poster suggest that justice is corrupted because Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are not in prison? Have you ever secretly wished that? Yet they have not committed any felonies (check the laws, they haven't). There are some here that would wish every officer of every corporation, as well as every proprietary software developer, to be sent to jail. This kind of attitude is dangerous, and it isn't limited to the US.
If I were to hazard a guess as to why this attitude is more of a problem in the US than in Europe, I would say it's because of the US two party "winner takes all" system, which encourages pandering to the whim of the public. Most most European nations have parliamentary systems where the winners must share the "spoils" of power.
Re:When will they realize... (Score:3, Insightful)
The group estimates that piracy costs the U.S. motion picture industry $3.0 billion annually in lost sales.
Followup calculation:
3 billion
number of people in U.S. about 300 million
Assuming an average cost of $10 per DVD, their calculation seems to assume an average drop of 1 DVD purchase per year per person.
Maybe it gets different when you start considering marketing groups and everything (I know I hardly ever pirate nor purchase any kind of video entertainment, so I'm probably not in the focus group) but I don't see how an average drop of 1 DVD purchase per person has any significance whatsoever, let alone from "piracy".
Finally, I don't see how this factoid (or any facts about piracy) could have any relevancy to Jon's case. Piracy is possibly without what Jon wrote, and the primary purpose of Jon's work was viewing DVDs -- a capability without which I can guarantee anyone that DVD sales will go down.