blog/archive/2017/02/02.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from February 2017</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from February 2017</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
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   9         <item>
  10                 <title>A day in court challenging seizure of popcorn-time.no for #domstolkontroll</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_day_in_court_challenging_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no_for__domstolkontroll.html</link>
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  13                 <pubDate>Fri, 3 Feb 2017 11:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;70%&quot; src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-02-01-popcorn-time-in-court.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  15
  16 &lt;p&gt;On Wednesday, I spent the entire day in court in Follo Tingrett
  17 representing &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the member association
  18 NUUG&lt;/a&gt;, alongside &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.efn.no/&quot;&gt;the member
  19 association EFN&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imc.no&quot;&gt;the DNS registrar
  20 IMC&lt;/a&gt;, challenging the seizure of the DNS name popcorn-time.no.  It
  21 was interesting to sit in a court of law for the first time in my
  22 life.  Our team can be seen in the picture above: attorney Ola
  23 Tellesbø, EFN board member Tom Fredrik Blenning, IMC CEO Morten Emil
  24 Eriksen and NUUG board member Petter Reinholdtsen.&lt;/p&gt;
  25
  26 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.domstol.no/no/Enkelt-domstol/follo-tingrett/Nar-gar-rettssaken/Beramming/?cid=AAAA1701301512081262234UJFBVEZZZZZEJBAvtale&quot;&gt;The
  27 case at hand&lt;/a&gt; is that the Norwegian National Authority for
  28 Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (aka
  29 Økokrim) decided on their own, to seize a DNS domain early last
  30 year, without following
  31 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.norid.no/no/regelverk/navnepolitikk/#link12&quot;&gt;the
  32 official policy of the Norwegian DNS authority&lt;/a&gt; which require a
  33 court decision.  The web site in question was a site covering Popcorn
  34 Time.  And Popcorn Time is the name of a technology with both legal
  35 and illegal applications.  Popcorn Time is a client combining
  36 searching a Bittorrent directory available on the Internet with
  37 downloading/distribute content via Bittorrent and playing the
  38 downloaded content on screen.  It can be used illegally if it is used
  39 to distribute content against the will of the right holder, but it can
  40 also be used legally to play a lot of content, for example the
  41 millions of movies
  42 &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/movies&quot;&gt;available from the
  43 Internet Archive&lt;/a&gt; or the collection
  44 &lt;a href=&quot;http://vodo.net/films/&quot;&gt;available from Vodo&lt;/a&gt;.  We created
  45 &lt;a href=&quot;magnet:?xt=urn:btih:86c1802af5a667ca56d3918aecb7d3c0f7173084&amp;dn=PresentasjonFolloTingrett.mov&amp;tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fpublic.popcorn-tracker.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&quot;&gt;a
  46 video demonstrating legally use of Popcorn Time&lt;/a&gt; and played it in
  47 Court.  It can of course be downloaded using Bittorrent.&lt;/p&gt;
  48
  49 &lt;p&gt;I did not quite know what to expect from a day in court.  The
  50 government held on to their version of the story and we held on to
  51 ours, and I hope the judge is able to make sense of it all.  We will
  52 know in two weeks time.  Unfortunately I do not have high hopes, as
  53 the Government have the upper hand here with more knowledge about the
  54 case, better training in handling criminal law and in general higher
  55 standing in the courts than fairly unknown DNS registrar and member
  56 associations.  It is expensive to be right also in Norway.  So far the
  57 case have cost more than NOK 70 000,-.  To help fund the case, NUUG
  58 and EFN have asked for donations, and managed to collect around NOK 25
  59 000,- so far.  Given the presentation from the Government, I expect
  60 the government to appeal if the case go our way.  And if the case do
  61 not go our way, I hope we have enough funding to appeal.&lt;/p&gt;
  62
  63 &lt;p&gt;From the other side came two people from Økokrim.  On the benches,
  64 appearing to be part of the group from the government were two people
  65 from the Simonsen Vogt Wiik lawyer office, and three others I am not
  66 quite sure who was.  Økokrim had proposed to present two witnesses
  67 from The Motion Picture Association, but this was rejected because
  68 they did not speak Norwegian and it was a bit late to bring in a
  69 translator, but perhaps the two from MPA were present anyway.  All
  70 seven appeared to know each other.  Good to see the case is take
  71 seriously.&lt;/p&gt;
  72
  73 &lt;p&gt;If you, like me, believe the courts should be involved before a DNS
  74 domain is hijacked by the government, or you believe the Popcorn Time
  75 technology have a lot of useful and legal applications, I suggest you
  76 too &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml&quot;&gt;donate to
  77 the NUUG defense fund&lt;/a&gt;.  Both Bitcoin and bank transfer are
  78 available. If NUUG get more than we need for the legal action (very
  79 unlikely), the rest will be spend promoting free software, open
  80 standards and unix-like operating systems in Norway, so no matter what
  81 happens the money will be put to good use.&lt;/p&gt;
  82
  83 &lt;p&gt;If you want to lean more about the case, I recommend you check out
  84 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nuug.no/news/tags/dns-domenebeslag/&quot;&gt;the blog
  85 posts from NUUG covering the case&lt;/a&gt;.  They cover the legal arguments
  86 on both sides.&lt;/p&gt;
  87 </description>
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