Jon Johansen Indicted by Norwegian Authorities

phlawed writes: "This story (norwegian) states that the authorities responsible for investigating economic crime in Norway today (after 2 years of "investigation") charged JLJ for violating a law regarding computer "break-ins", commonly known as the "hacker paragraph". This is for distributing the DeCSS sourcecode. The analysis so far (by media) is that the authorities not necessarily thinks JLJ is guilty, but due to unclear wording in the relevant law they seem to think that the courts should have a look at it... It is worth noting that JLJ has *not* been charged for violating any law regarding IP, piracy or such." I've only found one story in English, which is quite vague. Hopefully the above poster is correct in summarizing the situation.

Comments

From norwegian newspaper Dagbladet

[bob@dB.org]

My translation of the Dagbladet (norwegian newspaper) article. Spelling and gramatical errors are mine, factual errors are those of Dagbladet and the norwegian Police.

The 18 year only Jon Lech Johansen has been indicted for breaking the "computer trespasing" paragraph of the norwegian criminal code.

Thursday January 10, 2002 14:02, updated 14:53.

This is confirmed to NTB by attorney Inger Marie Sunde. Johansen has since January 2000 been charged by the norwegian financial crimes unit (Økokrim) after being reported by the american movie- and entertainment organization Movie Picture Association (MPA).

The background is that Johansen in 1999 participated in creating a program, DeCSS, that make it possible to play back DVD movie under the Linux operating system, and made it available on the internet. The program can also be used to decrypt the content of DVD-disks and makes it possible to copy the movie.

Johansen is indicted for participating in breaking the protection system Content Scrambling System (CSS), that protects the content of DVD-disks from copying.

Johansen is indicted based on the criminal code paragraph 145, parts two and tree Sunde informs the NTB.

From the inditement:

"- For by breaking a protection scheme, of by similar activities unjustly having gained access to data stored of transmitted by electronic or other technical means and by having caused damage by gaining or using such unjustly obtained knowledge."

The charged offense carries a maximum sentence of 6 months in prison.

Re:The English story is correctly translated.

[Hater's Leaving, The]

Add to that the fact that it wasn't even Jon (not Jan) that broke the crypto, he merely hosted the source code files. The actual reverse engineer who wrote the original code was allegendly German, and as far as I know to this day remains anonymous (though pseudonyms, and the name of the cracker group they belonged to are known).

I was thinking that maybe I could pack up my "Got DeCSS" T-shirts for posterity just last week, but hell no. The world is still full of shite and nonsense, and _we_ are still a tiny minority.

THL.

Surely it's irrelevant now?

[kaiidth]

DeCSS isn't a trade secret any longer, according to this kuro5hin story from November, and also according to the story linked to from the Norwegian site... According to the EFF even the DVD CCA have stopped attempting to limit its distribution.

Also, according to this, the DVD CCA claimed at least once that reverse engineering the CSS code was 'in principal lawful', and that the illegal part of it was from the fact that the reverse engineering was done from a piece of software which required you to click through a contract that said you agreed not to do so.

All of which makes me wonder why the Norwegians have decided to make a fuss about it now. Just when I thought we'd finally heard the last of CSS lawsuits.

Added to which, I have no idea about the Norwegian law but surely the kid was a minor at the time? He's only 18 now! Maybe it's different in Norway but most countries seem to relax laws somewhat for children...?

Re:Taste of our own medicine (tongue in cheek)

[vidarh]

It's not the same. He has been indicted in Norway, because they claim he has broken Norwegian law. Besides, there is no extradition treaty between Norway and the US, and Norwegian courts are in general careful about extraditing anyone to the US due to a general scepticism of the US court system.

Re:The English story is correctly translated.

[TheTomcat]

[note: this is not going to be a popular opinion, but, please, think before slapping]

It has NOTHING to do with copying.
Originally, you are correct. DeCSS was built to decode discs without using one of the proprietary (and unavailable) players.

BUT, unfortunately, it has opened the door to DVD copyright infringement ("piracy"), like it or not.

You don't have to go far to find DeCSS being used in "shady" ways:
http://www.dvd-copy.com/
http://www.dvdcopycentral.com/
http://www.howtocopydvds.com/
http://www.dvdcopypro.com/
.. I could go on.

While it shouldn't be inherently illegal to decode and copy discs for legitimate purposes, that's not how DeCSS is being used, the majority of the time. It sucks, but it's true.

To many people, it has EVERYTHING to do with copying (or decoding and re-encoding to other media, distributing, etc).

Jon Johansen's own words on DeCSS code

[Seth Finkelstein]

As Jon Johansen put it himself in an old interview:

http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2000-01/lw -01-dvd-interview.html

Jon Johansen: I'm 16 now, I was 15 when it happened ... and the encryption code wasn't in fact written by me, but written by the German member. There seems to be a bit of confusion about that part.

LinuxWorld: The other two people that you had worked with to make the player are remaining anonymous -- is that right?

Jon Johansen: Yes, that is correct.

...

LinuxWorld: Do you know why they want to remain anonymous?

Jon Johansen: They are both a lot older than me, and they are employed. So I guess they just didn't want the publicity, and they were perhaps afraid of getting fired.

He's a wonderfully plain-spoken person. My other favorite Jon Johansen quote is from when he was responding to reporter Declan McCullagh, and Declan was arrogantly giving Jon a hard time for not immediate returning Declan's request for comment:

Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 21:26:23 +0100
From: Jon Johansen (Micro Media ADB)
Subject: [Livid-dev] Wired article on legal threats

I assume you've read a great deal of articles on the subject? If you have, you might have noticed that I'm only 15 years old; which means I go to school. Norway is GMT+01. You should be able to figure out the time difference, and when I would be available for comment :)

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Buy the right to copy?

[st0rmshad0w]

I find this remark very curious:

"When you buy the disc, you buy the rights to play the movie, not to copy it"

Curious because its technically correct, I'm not paying them a dime for the right to copy it, its already a right that I have. Its called "Fair Use".