<title>A day in court challenging seizure of popcorn-time.no for #domstolkontroll</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_day_in_court_challenging_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no_for__domstolkontroll.html</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_day_in_court_challenging_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no_for__domstolkontroll.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 2 Feb 2017 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 3 Feb 2017 11:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
<description><p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-02-01-popcorn-time-in-court.jpeg"></p>
-<p>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.</p>
+<p>On Wednesday, I spent the entire day in court in Follo Tingrett
+representing <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the member association
+NUUG</a>, alongside <a href="https://www.efn.no/">the member
+association EFN</a> and <a href="http://www.imc.no">the DNS registrar
+IMC</a>, 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.</p>
-<p>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
+<p><a href="http://www.domstol.no/no/Enkelt-domstol/follo-tingrett/Nar-gar-rettssaken/Beramming/?cid=AAAA1701301512081262234UJFBVEZZZZZEJBAvtale">The
+case at hand</a> is that the Norwegian National Authority for
+Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (aka
+Økokrim) decided on their own, to seizure a DNS domain early last
+year, without following
<a href="https://www.norid.no/no/regelverk/navnepolitikk/#link12">the
official policy of the Norwegian DNS authority</a> 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 Økokrim (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.</p>
+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
+<a href="https://archive.org/details/movies">available from the
+Internet Archive</a> or the collection
+<a href="http://vodo.net/films/">available from Vodo</a>. We created
+<a href="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:86c1802af5a667ca56d3918aecb7d3c0f7173084&dn=PresentasjonFolloTingrett.mov&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fpublic.popcorn-tracker.org%3A6969%2Fannounce">a
+video demonstrating legally use of Popcorn Time</a> and played it in
+Court. It can of course be downloaded using Bittorrent.</p>
+
+<p>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.
+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.</p>
-<p>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.</p>
+<p>From the other side came two people from Økokrim. 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. Økokrim 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 they take the case
+seriously.</p>
<p>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
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">donate to the
-NUUG defence fund</a>. 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.</p>
+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 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">donate to
+the NUUG defense fund</a>. 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
+happen the money will be put to good use.</p>
<p>If you want to lean more about the case, I recommend you check out
<a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/tags/dns-domenebeslag/">the blog
-posts from NUUG covering the case</a>.</p>
+posts from NUUG covering the case</a>. They cover the legal arguments
+on both sides.</p>
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projects / homepage.git / blobdiff