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Cimarron
Joined: Dec 14, 2002
Posts: 7 (view all)
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Province/State: Florida
City: Fort Lauderdale
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Norwegian Teen Cleared of Piracy
January 7, 2003 - 11:00 AM
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This article appeared today on Yahoo News. Thoughts?:
Norway Teenager Found Not Guilty of DVD Piracy
OSLO (Reuters) - A Norwegian teenager was cleared of DVD piracy charges on Tuesday in a landmark trial brought on behalf of 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 unauthorized copying of DVD movies.
"Johansen is found not guilty," Judge Irene Sogn, flanked by two technical experts, told the court. "The verdict is unanimous." She said prosecutors could appeal the ruling.
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 world wide who say making software such as Johansen's -- called DeCSS -- is an act of intellectual freedom rather than theft.
The prosecution was brought after a complaint was filed by the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents the major Hollywood studios.
The studios, which code DVD movies to prevent people copying them, said unauthorized copying was copyright theft and undermined a market for DVDs and videos worth $20 billion a year in North America alone.
In the United States, Johansen's case has raised concerns among Internet users of what they see as a constitutional right to freedom of expression.
DeCSS is one of many similar programs available on the Internet. Even though Johansen's software is now outdated, it was the first to give the so-called source codes, or instructions, for how to decipher DVD codes.
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