-
Yesterday, I spent the entire day in court in Follo Tingrett
-representing the member association NUUG, alongside the member
-association EFN and the DNS registrar IMC, challenging the seizure of
-the DNS name popcorn-time.no. It was interesting to sit in a court of
-law for the first time in my life.
+
On Wednesday, I spent the entire day in court in Follo Tingrett
+representing the member association
+NUUG, alongside the member
+association EFN and the DNS registrar
+IMC, challenging the seizure of the DNS name popcorn-time.no. It
+was interesting to sit in a court of law for the first time in my
+life. Our team can be seen in the picture above: attorney Ola
+Tellesbø, EFN board member Tom Fredrik Blenning, IMC CEO Morten Emil
+Eriksen and NUUG board member Petter Reinholdtsen.
-
The case at hand is that the Norwegian National Authority for
-Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime
-decided on their own, to seizure a DNS domain early last year, without
-following
+
The
+case at hand is that the Norwegian National Authority for
+Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (aka
+Ãkokrim) decided on their own, to seize a DNS domain early last
+year, without following
the
official policy of the Norwegian DNS authority which require a
court decision. The web site in question was a site covering Popcorn
-Time. Our team can be seen in the picture above: attorney Ola
-Tellesbø, EFN board member Tom Fredrik Blenning, IMC CEO Morten Emil
-Eriksen and NUUG board member Petter Reinholdtsen. From the other
-side there were two people from Ãkokrim (Elisabeth Harbo-Lervik and
-Stian Petersen). On the benches, appearing to be part of the
-government group were two people from the Simonsen Vogt Wiik lawyer
-office (Hedda Heier and Nicholas Foss Barbantonis), and three others I
-am not quite sure who was.
-
-
I did not quite know what to expect, but the government held on to
-their version of the story and we held on to ours, and I hope the
-judge is able to make sense of it all. Unfortunately I do not have
-high hopes, as it is expensive to be right also in Norway. So far the
-case have cost more than NOK 70 000,-. NUUG and EFN have asked for
-donations to help fund this case, but only received around NOK 25
-000,- so far. Thus we are quite a bit short. And if we win, I expect
-the government to appeal. And if the government appeal, I hope we
-have enough funding to run our own appeal.
+Time. And Popcorn Time is the name of a technology with both legal
+and illegal applications. Popcorn Time is a client combining
+searching a Bittorrent directory available on the Internet with
+downloading/distribute content via Bittorrent and playing the
+downloaded content on screen. It can be used illegally if it is used
+to distribute content against the will of the right holder, but it can
+also be used legally to play a lot of content, for example the
+millions of movies
+
available from the
+Internet Archive or the collection
+
available from Vodo. We created
+
a
+video demonstrating legally use of Popcorn Time and played it in
+Court. It can of course be downloaded using Bittorrent.
+
+
I did not quite know what to expect from a day in court. The
+government held on to their version of the story and we held on to
+ours, and I hope the judge is able to make sense of it all. We will
+know in two weeks time. Unfortunately I do not have high hopes, as
+the Government have the upper hand here with more knowledge about the
+case, better training in handling criminal law and in general higher
+standing in the courts than fairly unknown DNS registrar and member
+associations. It is expensive to be right also in Norway. So far the
+case have cost more than NOK 70 000,-. To help fund the case, NUUG
+and EFN have asked for donations, and managed to collect around NOK 25
+000,- so far. Given the presentation from the Government, I expect
+the government to appeal if the case go our way. And if the case do
+not go our way, I hope we have enough funding to appeal.
+
+
From the other side came two people from Ãkokrim. On the benches,
+appearing to be part of the group from the government were two people
+from the Simonsen Vogt Wiik lawyer office, and three others I am not
+quite sure who was. Ãkokrim had proposed to present two witnesses
+from The Motion Picture Association, but this was rejected because
+they did not speak Norwegian and it was a bit late to bring in a
+translator, but perhaps the two from MPA were present anyway. All
+seven appeared to know each other. Good to see the case is take
+seriously.
If you, like me, believe the courts should be involved before a DNS
-domain is hijacked by the government, or the Popcorn Time technology
-have a lot of useful and legal applications, I suggest you
-donate to the
-NUUG defence fund. Both Bitcoin and bank transfer are
-available. If NUUG get more than we need for the legal action, the
-rest will be spend promoting free software, open standards and
-unix-like operating systems in Norway.
+domain is hijacked by the government, or you believe the Popcorn Time
+technology have a lot of useful and legal applications, I suggest you
+too
donate to
+the NUUG defense fund. Both Bitcoin and bank transfer are
+available. If NUUG get more than we need for the legal action (very
+unlikely), the rest will be spend promoting free software, open
+standards and unix-like operating systems in Norway, so no matter what
+happens the money will be put to good use.
If you want to lean more about the case, I recommend you check out
the blog
-posts from NUUG covering the case.
+posts from NUUG covering the case. They cover the legal arguments
+on both sides.