Johansen
Hollywood anti-piracy efforts overseas suffered a setback Tuesday when a Norwegian court ruled that the Oslo teen who wrote DeCSS, a popular program that hackers use to unscramble DVD anti-copying protections, was not guilty of criminal theft charges.
Jon Johansen wrote the program in 1999, when he was 15. DeCSS spread worldwide, quickly becoming a favorite of hackers wanting to copy DVDs onto computers.
The Motion Picture Assn. of America pressed the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit to file charges against Johansen, and he was later arrested on criminal theft charges and his computer equipment seized. But after a short December trial, a three-judge panel, which included two computer-savvy specialists, unanimously agreed there was no evidence Johansen had any intent to aid piracy efforts.
Linux connection
The teen's attorneys had argued that Johansen used the program he created to legally make copies of movies he already owned. He had long said that he wrote the program so he could watch DVDs on computers that use the Linux operating system. The program works by circumventing the CSS copy-prevention systems built into the DVD format.
"What we did was legal," Johansen told a Norwegian publication. "Today it's been clarified that consumers have certain rights that the film industry can't take away from us."
The MPAA released a brief statement saying, "We understand the prosecution in Norway is reviewing whether to take an appeal, and we support that consideration. We look forward to reviewing the court's decision in greater detail."
Prosecutors said they will decide in the next two weeks whether to appeal.
The Oslo decision is only the latest in a series of notable cases connected to DeCSS, including an industry suit against a Web site run by the publisher of 2600, a quarterly magazine beloved by hackers, that was forced to take down links to the program. That case was brought in U.S. courts against U.S. citizens under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forbids creating or disseminating electronic tools that aid in violating copyrights if they don't have "substantial noninfringing uses."
Breaking and entering
Johansen was charged under a Norwegian law that forbids breaking into locked property to access information they don't have a right to see. It typically was used against people who hacked into big computer systems belonging to institutions rather than into property the hacker already owned.
In November, the California Supreme Court held that a Texas man couldn't be sued in California for posting DeCSS online.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor briefly issued a stay of the decision before revoking it last Friday. The stay request by attorneys for the DVD Copy Control Assn. is likely only the first step in a process to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.
(Jorn Rossing Jensen in Copenhagen contributed to this report.)
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