-
-
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 (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. 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 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. They cover the legal arguments
-on both sides.
-
