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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...

On 22 January 2003, Sør-Gubrandsdal tingrett (the Court of Sør-Gudbrandsdal) rendered its decision in the case between the copyright-holder organisations and the owner of the web-site, napster.no. Napster.no was a web-site offering links directly to music that was illegally up-loaded on the Internet. The Court had to address whether this linking was illegal as regards the Norwegian Copyright Act. The Court's point of departure was the exclusive right that the copyright-holder has according to Section 2 of the Norwegian Copyright Act (NCA) to make the copyrighted work available to the public and...

A verdict has finally come in the so-called "DVD-case" in Norway. The case concerned the actions of (at the time of the act) a 15-year-old Norwegian, Jon Johansen. He was indicted for having gained unlawful access to movies and player keys contained on region 1-encoded DVD-discs by breaking the DVD protective device, CSS. The question was whether this was a punishable offence in accordance with Section 145(2) of the Norwegian Penal Code. The indictment also included contribution to similar offences by users of his program utility, DeCSS. DeCSS is a software tool that circumvents the CSS protective...

From July 1998 until May 1999, Tele2 made so-called newsgroups available to its subscribers. Some of these newsgroups gave access to explicit sexual films and images involving children, animals, violence, coercion and sadism. This illegal pornography was stored on Tele2's server. Tele2 was therefore charged with infringement of Straffeloven § 204(1)a (the General Penal Codestrl.), which prohibits attempts to disseminate illegal pornographic material. In examining the case, Oslo Tingrett pointed out the following. According to the preparatory works relating to § 204 strl., Internet hosts, access...

On 22 April 2002 Asker og Bærum Tingrett (Asker and Bærum District Court - a court of first instance) became the first Norwegian court to convict a person (hereinafter referred to as "T.") to unconditional imprisonment (30 days) for having disseminated racist material among the public using the Internet and printed media. Fifty-nine year-old T. is one of the leading figures in an organisation called Vigrid. This organisation believes in racial superiority and has declared the Jewish people to be its archenemy. On the organisation's website and in its monthly magazine, Vigrid has expressed its...