Norwegian hacker hero goes on trial

OSLO, Norway -- Jon Lech Johansen was only 15 when he wrote and distributed on the Internet for free a program that unlocked copy-protected DVDs, giving Hollywood nightmares and making him a folk hero among hackers.

Three years later, he's going on trial in an important test case for Norway's strict laws against computer piracy and hacking.

The proceedings begin Monday in Oslo District Court and are expected to last five days, with Johansen taking the stand. But whatever the trial's outcome, the digital copycat is well out of the bag.

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

Johansen has refused to talk to reporters ahead of his trial. But his defense attorney, Halvor Manshaus, said the teenager has done nothing wrong, having only written a small program using security-breaking code developed and sent to him by others.

Under the law, Johansen could be sentenced to up to two years in prison, fines and compensation, although few expect the teen to do any prison time.

The charges were filed after Norwegian prosecutors received a complaint from the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the major Hollywood studios.

The prosecutors agreed with the movie industry that Johansen's program, in effect, left their property unlocked and open for theft. Called DeCSS, it compromised an industry-developed software scheme called the Content Scrambling System -- usually called CSS -- that was designed to prevent unauthorized duplication.

Johansen has said he wanted only to watch DVDs on his Linux-based computer, which lacked the DVD-viewing software of Windows and Macintosh users. However, DeCSS also lets people copy and share DVD files on the Internet, thus allowing others to obtain movies for free.

"The access was a violation because the DVD films were sold on the condition that the user would use authorized playing equipment and respect the copy protection," the indictment says.

More than 5,000 copies of the DeCSS program were downloaded from the Internet in the first three months after it was posted in late October 1999, prosecutors say.

Johansen, now 19 and known in Norway as "DVD Jon", became a rallying point for hackers, some of whom even marched in his support when witnessed at a New York trial against others who had linked to his DeCSS program.

In the United States, the case is seen as a test of freedom of expression, since proponents claim that writing such software is an exercise in intellectual freedom rather than an attempt to steal copyright material. The act of cracking the code in and of itself should not be criminal, such people argue.

Johansen's DeCSS program has been the subject of at least three lawsuits in the United States.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization based on San Francisco, Calif., has criticized the prosecution of Johansen as distorting a law intended for serious criminal activity, like breaking into a bank's computer system.

Johansen, it notes, merely broke in to a DVD he bought legally.