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OSAC Item (Printer Friendly Version)
from Associated Press on Tuesday, December 10, 2002

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- A Norwegian teenager has denied creating a computer program that allows users to unlock the security codes of DVDs.

Jon Lech Johansen was 15 when it is alleged he wrote and distributed without charge on the Internet a program that enabled copy-protected DVDs to be pirated.

Johansen, now 19, appeared in court on Monday for the start of a five-day trial -- almost four years after a police raid on his father's farmhouse.

Prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde, in her opening remarks, compared the hacker group to an international crime network "with Jon Johansen and his friends on the Internet from Germany, the Netherlands, England and Russia."

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

Johansen's attorney, Halvor Manshaus, said the teen cannot be convicted of breaking into a DVD that he bought and legally owned.

Johansen, who denies breaking data security laws, said as he arrived at court on Monday: "We are right."

He says most people believe he is innocent, except "the economic crime police and the film industry."

The proceedings in Oslo District Court are expected to last five days, with the verdict being delivered a few weeks later.

If convicted, Johansen could be sentenced to up to two years in prison, fines and compensation.

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

Called DeCSS, the program compromised an industry-developed software scheme called the Content Scrambling System (CSS) -- that was designed to prevent unauthorised duplication.

But DeCSS also lets people copy and share DVD files on the Internet.

The short program Johansen wrote is just one of many available that can break DVD security codes.

One is included in a software package, sold by a U.S. company, that also burns DVDs after cracking the copy protection.

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