Johansen not-guilty in Norway DVD DeCSS case

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/01/07/dvd.johansen/index.html
 
Teen cleared in landmark DVD case



OSLO, Norway --A Norwegian teenager has been cleared of DVD piracy charges
in a landmark trial brought by major Hollywood studios.

The Oslo court said Jon Johansen, known in Norway as "DVD Jon," had not
broken the law when he helped unlock a code and distribute a computer
program enabling DVD films to be copied.

"Johansen is found not guilty," Judge Irene Sogn told the court. She said
prosecutors could appeal against the unanimous verdict.

Johansen said after the ruling that he would celebrate by "watching DVD
films on unlicensed players."

Prosecutors had asked for a 90-day suspended jail term for Johansen, 19, who
developed the program when he was 15.

The teenager has become a symbol for hackers worldwide who say making
software such as Johansen's -- called DeCSS -- is an act of intellectual
freedom rather than theft.

DeCSS defeats the copyright protection system known as Contents Scramble
System (CSS), which the entertainment industry uses to protect films
distributed on DVDs.

Johansen created and published DeCSS so that he would be able to view DVDs
on his Linux computer. He said the program meant the film industry no longer
had a monopoly on making DVD players.

The prosecution was brought after a complaint was filed by the Motion
Picture Association (MPA), which represents the major Hollywood studios.

The studios argued unauthorised copying was copyright theft and undermined a
market for DVDs and videos worth $20 billion a year in North America alone.

But Johansen argued his code was necessary to watch movies he already owned,
on his Linux-based computer, for which DVD software had not yet been
written.

He said since he owned the DVDs, he should be able to view them as he liked,
preferably on his own computer. The court, citing consumer laws which
protect consumers' fair use of their own property, agreed.

The court ruled there was "no evidence" that Johansen or others used the
decryption code called DeCSS for illegal purposes. Nor was there any
evidence that Johansen intended to contribute to illegal copying.

The court also ruled that it is not illegal to use the DeCSS code to watch
DVD films obtained by legal means.

In the United States, Johansen's case raised concerns among Internet users
of what they see as a constitutional right to freedom of expression. A
battle is raging in the U.S. over a 1998 copyright law that bans software
like DeCSS.

Even though Johansen's software is now outdated, it was the first to give
the so-called source codes, or instructions, for how to decipher DVD codes.

-- CNN Norge's Morten Overbye contributed to this report

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