Norwegian teen acquitted in DVD cracking case

A Norwegian teenager was acquitted Tuesday in a key case that pitted the use of new technology against sharing copyrighted material.

The court said that Jon Lech Johansen, 19, didn't break Norway's data security laws when he developed and posted online a program that let him watch copyright-protected DVDs on his personal computer.

In its unanimous 25-page ruling, the three-member Oslo City Court found Johansen known throughout Norway as DVD-Jon innocent on all counts in the latest setback for the film industry's push to eliminate illegal copying.

"I'm very satisfied. We won support on all points. I had figured that we could win, but it can go either way," Johansen said after the verdict was read.

In Washington, Phuong Yokitis, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America, said the group "decided not to issue a statement and will have no comment."

Prosecutors have two weeks to decide whether to file an appeal. They sought a 90-day suspended jail sentence, the confiscation of Johansen's computer equipment and the payment of court costs, all of which were rejected in the ruling.

Johansen became a folk hero to hackers, especially in the United States where a battle is raging over a 1998 copyright law that bans software like DeCSS.

The film industry developed the Content Scrambling System, ususally called CSS, to encrypt and prevent illegal copying of DVD films. However, the program also prevents DVD films from being played on unauthorized equipment.

Johansen had said he was sent the security codes from outside Norway by other members of a hacker network, and that he only combined them into a program so he could watch DVDs on his Linux-based computer, which lacked such software.

But DeCSS also lets people copy and share DVD files on the Internet, compromising the CSS program.

The short program Johansen wrote is just one of many easily available programs that can break DVD security codes. One is included in a software package, sold by at least one U.S. company, that even burns DVDs after cracking the copy protection.

Charges were filed after Norwegian prosecutors received a complaint from the Motion Picture Association of America and the DVD Copy Control Association.

However, prosecutors agreed that Johansen's program, in effect, left film studios' property unlocked and open for theft. The prosecution decided to charge Johansen with a data break-in, rather than handle the matter as a copyright case.

Judge Irene Sogn, in reading the verdict, said no one could be convicted of breaking into their own property, and that there was no proof that Johansen or others had used the program to access illegal pirate copies of films.

"The court finds that someone who buys a DVD film that has been legally produced has legal access the film. Something else would apply if the film had been an illegal ... pirate copy," the ruling said.

It found that consumers have rights to legally obtained DVD films "even if the films are played in a diferent way than the makers had foreseen."