Search results : 94

On 3 March 2003, the Norwegian Eidsivating Court of Appeal gave its decision in the napster.no case (civil lawsuit). Finding for the defendant, the court overruled the first instance decision, which was reported in a previous IRIS article (see IRIS 2003-3: 16). In brief, the defendant had maintained a web-site (napster.no) containing hyperlinks to illegal MP3 files on the web. The napster.no site did not itself contain any MP3 files, only links to such files elsewhere on the web. Clicking on the links published on napster.no led users directly to the chosen MP3 file and, through a popup menu,...

In its decision of 22 December 2003, the Norwegian Borgarting Appellate Court acquitted a young man, Jon Johansen, who had been prosecuted for breaking the Norwegian Criminal Code section 145 (2) by participating in breaking the technical protection system CSS used on DVD movies. The background of the case, and the aquittal of Johansen by the court of first instance, are described in a prior IRIS article (see IRIS 2003-2: 15). The Norwegian Criminal Code section 145 (2) makes it a crime to break a security measure or in similar ways to unlawfully access "data" or computer programs stored or communicated...

The Norwegian E-commerce Act entered into force on 1 July 2003. The Act fulfills some of Norway's obligations in relation to the EEA (European Economic Area), implementing parts of the E-Commerce Directive (Directive 2000/31/EC ­ see IRIS 2000-5: 3). The current Act implements all aspects of the E-Commerce Directive apart from the provisions regarding the liability of intermediary service providers. The Act covers mainly the implementation of the provisions regarding the internal market (Articles 1-3), enabling Norwegian citizens and providers, together with the rest of the European Union, to...

The issue was whether a consumer portal on the Internet, ABC Startsiden, contributed to infringement of copyright by publishing links to file-sharing services like KaZaA. The plaintiff was Phonofile, a company organising the licensing of musical works for the Internet. ABC Startsiden is a typical portal, the first page including a categorisation of different services. By selecting the category "MP3", the user was directed to a new page, which included the choice "file sharing". If this was selected, a page was displayed with links to several file-sharing services, including KaZaA. The court states...

The existing Norwegian regulatory authorities, the Media Ownership Authority - Eigarskapstilsynet, the Mass Media Authority - Statens medieforvaltning and the Norwegian Board of Film Classification - Statens Filmtilsyn, are being combined to form a joint authority (Medietilsynet). Despite the misgivings that have been expressed about the effectiveness and independence of a new authority, the newly formed institution is set to be more capable of meeting the need, thrown up by the development of the electronic media, for the regulation of media content in times of convergence. The authority will...