Johansen charged in Norway

[Major Variola (ret)]

             http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAM2Y25BWC.html

       Norwegian Hacker Indicted for Breaking Hollywood DVD Code
                By Doug MellgrenAssociated Press Writer
                         Published: Jan 10, 2002
OSLO, Norway (AP) - Prosecutors filed criminal charges Thursday against
a Norwegian teen-ager who drew Hollywood's anger by writing and
distributing a program that unlocks copy-protected DVDs.

After a two-year investigation, authorities indicted Jon Lech Johansen
in an important test of Norway's new computer crime laws.

Johansen's defenders call the prosecution a wrongheaded attack on
intellectual freedom. Creating software that breaks copy-protection
schemes, they argue, is not the same as using such programs to steal
copyright material.

Johansen, who was 15 when he authored the software, has said he did so
because only wanted to be able to play movies on his computer.

"Software that Jon wrote is something that is necessary for people to be
able to exercise their...rights with a DVD," said Robin Gross of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has provided Johansen's legal
defense.

Johansen, now 18 and a household name as DVD-Jon in Norway, became a
celebrity among computer hackers, who even marched to support him in New
York, where a related civil trial was held.

Norway's economic crime police declined to charge Johansen under the
country's copyright laws. Rather, prosecutors are using a law that
prohibits data break-ins.

"We want to focus on the code-breaking part of it, and that he made a
copy of something that he did not pay for," said Inger Marie Sunde, an
attorney with the Norwegian police unit.

The investigation grew out of complaints filed by the Motion Picture
Association of America, which represents the major Hollywood studios.

Sunde said authorities agreed with the studios' contention that
Johansen's program unlocked their property and left it open for theft.

Sunde said it was the first such case in Norway. She did not know when
the trial would begin but said it would probably be sometime this year.

If convicted, Johansen could face up to two years in prison and claims
for compensation.

Gross, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the law in question
is designed to prevent break-ins of secured systems like banks. In this
case, she said, Johansen was trying to access his own property - a DVD
he lawfully purchased.

Johansen could not immediately be reached for comment. Repeated efforts
to call his home and mobile numbers produced busy signals.

Movie industry officials applauded the indictment and expressed
confidence that "Norwegian law will provide a fair and just result."

DVDs are gaining fast in popularity and rapidly becoming the preferred
media for movie sales. They hold up to seven times more data than CDs
and, because they are digital, don't lose quality when copied.

The movie industry had attempted to protect films recorded to DVDs with
the Content Scrambling System, usually called CSS. Johansen's DeCSS
program unlocks the discs, opening them for copying and playing.

Though Johansen has said he was trying to watch DVDs on a Linux-based
computer, which did not already have DVD software like Windows and
Macintosh systems, the program also permits reproduction of DVDs and
their circulation over the Internet.

Such free distribution could cost the movie industry millions of dollars
a year, it argues.

According to the indictment, more than 5,000 copies of the DeCSS program
were downloaded from the Internet in the first three months after it was
posted. It can still be found on the Internet.

The DeCSS program has been the subject of at least three lawsuits in the
United States.

In November, a federal appeals court in New York sided with Hollywood
and rejected free-speech claims from Eric Corley, who had posted links
to the program on his Web site. A similar case is pending in
Connecticut.

A California appeals court, however, sided with a man who posted DeCSS
on his site. The DVD Copy Control Association, which licenses the DVD
scrambling system, considered the posting a breach of trade secrets and
is appealing to the state Supreme Court.

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"Stick a fork in their ass and turn them over... they're done"