DVD Jon moves to America
p2p news / p2pnet: Jon Lech Johansen, aka DVD Jon, sprang to fame when he cracked the encryption on DVDs. Now he’s moving to the US to work for Linspire’s Mike Robertson.
For years he’s been driving the entertainment cartels in general, and Apple Computer in particular, crazy by creating software designed to unchain DRM-bound applications, among other things. And his So Sue Me blog is on everyone’s list.
Do a search on Johansen for more. Lots more ;P
Robertson founded MP3.com, sold the site after it had become highly controversial, and then started Lindows which, after a prolonged, headline-generating fight with Microsoft, became Linspire, a Linux OS. He uses BitTorrent to distribute his product.
He also started an online music store called MP3tunes which, he says on his blog, “is in the midst of a project called Oboe, slated for launch by the end of the year and which will “bring digital music into the 21st century”.
Hey Mike, look around. Digital music is already in the 21st century.
Anyhow, on his blog, “This week MP3tunes added a new employee – a Norwegian named Jon Lech Johansen,” says Robertson. “He’s half Polish – as you can probably tell from the ‘Lech’ in his name.”
He goes on, “I knew he’d be a great fit for the team, so I quickly extended him a job offer. It took a few months to process the immigration paperwork, but now he’s living in San Diego and working on Oboe.”
Stay tuned.
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local political representatives. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance.
See:-
blog – DVD Jon and Oboe, October 18, 2005
October 19th, 2005 at 3:35 pm
I wonder how he got through customs?
Or is it that American customs is not on tha take as is congress and the courts?
October 19th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
All it takes is money. Mike, who is most likely reasonably wealthy (because he earned it), probably got him the visa, and it was approved before the cartels got wind of the action. A person can move any where so long as he or she has a lot of money (or a sponsor with a lot of money). The government-cartel alliances do not want an average working person emigrating to different countries unless that person is a smuggled slave who is ripe for exploitation. Goods are allowed to transit borders without restriction but people are not. This should tell the people of the world something.
October 19th, 2005 at 5:57 pm
Or they wanted him here so they can use the DMCA against him…
October 20th, 2005 at 2:29 am
Likely, it was the combination of having a sponsor & the ‘unique skills’ provision of the immigration rules for H1-B visas. The whole DeCSS debacle is a moot point because ultimately he was not convicted of anything in regards to those trumped-up charges. (The Norwegian Prosectors had a rather difficult time trying to twist and contort the existing laws to attempt to cast Jon’s creation of DeCSS as a criminal act.
Furthermore, nothing that he did while not within US jurisdiction (in regards to copyright) can be the basis for a claim of tort once he is within US jurisdiction, as it’s a matter for civil, not criminal courts. Since he is not a US citizen, if he did something that would be a criminal act if done within the US jurisdiction, but as a Norwegian Citizen, the act was consummated in Norway and is perfectly legal in Norway, he can not be prosecuted. This is a generally accepted international practice. After all, we don’t want our citizens who may be working in Saudi Arabia to be prosecuted for violating some Islamic law (consuming beer, for instance) for something they did while they were at home in the US visitng for the holidays.
While he might be more vulnerable to the DCMA now, he’s also got a well-heeled patron. Likely, any work he does will probably come under the Linspire corporate umbrella, so it will be almost impossible for any of the cartels to sue him personally for work he does for Linspire. They will have to sue Linspire and Mr. Robertson has a track record of standing up to these people, so they may think twice about filing a suit that is total BS.
–TurboGeek
October 22nd, 2005 at 2:52 pm