Teenage hacker beats Hollywood clamp on DVDs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,870445,00.html
Andrew Osborn
Wednesday January 8, 2003
The Guardian
Hollywood's biggest film studios were defeated yesterday in their effort to
punish a Norwegian teenage computer hacker for DVD piracy.
The case has made a cult figure of Jon Lech Johansen, who is now 19.
Mr Johansen - dubbed "DVD Jon" by the international hacker community -
created a computer program in his bedroom which cracked all the codes
protecting DVD films from illegal copying.
The codes also prevent DVDs being watched on many personal computers, which
was why Mr Johansen set out to break them.
He infuriated US film makers by posting his program, called DeCSS, on the
internet.
His bedroom was then raided by Norway's white-collar crime unit, his
computer was confiscated and he was charged with unauthorised data
tampering.
Mr Johansen maintained that he had merely devised a way of watching his
favourite films, such as The Matrix and The Fifth Element, on his own
computer.
But Hollywood disagreed. The Motion Picture Association of America, which
represents such leading studios as Walt Disney, Universal and Warner
Brothers, lodged a complaint, as did the US DVD Copy Control Association.
Yesterday the Oslo city court ruled in Mr Johansen's favour, clearing him of
all the charges.
In a unanimous ruling it said that nobody could be punished for breaking
into his own property - he had legally bought the DVDs whose codes he
subsequently cracked.
Nor was there any evidence that he or anyone else had used his program to
produce or watch pirated copies of films.
"I'm happy but not surprised," a beaming Mr Johansen said after his
acquittal.
"This is about consumers' rights. All over the world copyright holders are
trying to limit consumers' rights. We cannot have that.
"Today it's been clarified that consumers have certain rights that the film
industry can't take away from us."
In Washington Phuong Yokitis, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture
Association, said the group had decided not to issue a statement and would
have no comment.
Film studios had hoped that the case would send a signal to hackers that the
complex codes protecting DVDs against illegal copying must not be tampered
with.
They say that Mr Johansen and others like him are undermining the market for
DVDs and videos, worth $20bn (