blog/data/2017-02-01-popcorn-time-court.txt

   1 Title: A day in court challenging seizure of popcorn-time.no for #domstolkontroll
   2 Tags: english, nuug, offentlig innsyn, opphavsrett
   3 Date: 2017-02-02 11:00
   4 Publish: 2017-02-02 11:00
   5
   6 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-02-01-popcorn-time-in-court.jpeg"></p>
   7
   8 <p>Yesterday, I spent the entire day in court in Follo Tingrett
   9 representing the member association NUUG, alongside the member
  10 association EFN and the DNS registrar IMC, challenging the seizure of
  11 the DNS name popcorn-time.no.  It was interesting to sit in a court of
  12 law for the first time in my life.  Our team can be seen in the
  13 picture above: attorney Ola Tellesbø, EFN board member Tom Fredrik
  14 Blenning, IMC CEO Morten Emil Eriksen and NUUG board member Petter
  15 Reinholdtsen.</p>
  16
  17 <p>The case at hand is that the Norwegian National Authority for
  18 Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (aka
  19 Økokrim) decided on their own, to seizure a DNS domain early last
  20 year, without following
  21 <a href="https://www.norid.no/no/regelverk/navnepolitikk/#link12">the
  22 official policy of the Norwegian DNS authority</a> which require a
  23 court decision.  The web site in question was a site covering Popcorn
  24 Time.</p>
  25
  26 <p>I did not quite know what to expect from a day in court, but the
  27 government held on to their version of the story and we held on to
  28 ours, and I hope the judge is able to make sense of it all.
  29 Unfortunately I do not have high hopes, as it is expensive to be right
  30 also in Norway.  So far the case have cost more than NOK 70 000,-.
  31 NUUG and EFN have asked for donations to help fund this case, but only
  32 received around NOK 25 000,- so far.  Thus we are quite a bit short.
  33 And if we win, I expect the government to appeal.  And if the
  34 government appeal, I hope we have enough funding to run our own
  35 appeal.</p>
  36
  37 <p>From the other side there were
  38 two people from Økokrim (Elisabeth Harbo-Lervik and Stian Petersen).
  39 On the benches, appearing to be part of the government group were two
  40 people from the Simonsen Vogt Wiik lawyer office (Hedda Heier and
  41 Nicholas Foss Barbantonis), and three others I am not quite sure who
  42 was.  Økokrim had asked to present two witnesses from The Motion
  43 Picture Association, which was denied because the did not speak
  44 Norwegian and it was a bit late to bring in a translator, but perhaps
  45 they were present anyway.  All seven appeared to know each other.
  46
  47 <p>If you, like me, believe the courts should be involved before a DNS
  48 domain is hijacked by the government, or the Popcorn Time technology
  49 have a lot of useful and legal applications, I suggest you too
  50 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">donate to the
  51 NUUG defence fund</a>.  Both Bitcoin and bank transfer are
  52 available. If NUUG get more than we need for the legal action (very
  53 unlikely), the rest will be spend promoting free software, open
  54 standards and unix-like operating systems in Norway, so no matter what
  55 happen the money will be put to good use.</p>
  56
  57 <p>If you want to lean more about the case, I recommend you check out
  58 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/tags/dns-domenebeslag/">the blog
  59 posts from NUUG covering the case</a>.  They cover the legal arguments
  60 on both sides.</p>