'DVD Jon' Acquitted On All Counts in DeCSS Case

benh57 writes "Jon Johansen, the author of DeCSS, has been acquitted on all charges by the Norwegian Supreme Court.' Johansen and his defense attorney Halvor Manshaus won on all counts, with the Oslo court ruling that Johansen did nothing wrong when he helped cracked the code on a DVD that was his own personal property.'" Here's Aftenposten's story, in English. Read on below for some more links, and please post others in the comments. Update: 01/07 14:02 GMT by T : Reader Torstein Grotnes writes with a correction: The court which cleared Johansen is not Norway's Supreme Court, but rather "the 'tingrett' which is two steps below 'supreme court' level."

Here's John Leyden's story at the Register about the ruling.

LarsBT links to this Reuters newsflash and points out that since Johansen's arrest, "Norway has introduced legislation similar to the European Unions directive on copyright [pdf], making it illegal to circumvent any copyright protection - making it highly unlikely that he would be found not guilty under these new rules."

An anonymous reader writes with some background (or do a search on Slashdot for DeCSS ;)): "Read the DVD-Jon lawsuit story here and here" and notes that "'the prosecution decided to charge Johansen with a data break-in, rather than handle the matter as a copyright case.' The court said that DeCSS could be used both legally and illegally and referred to similar cases outside the computing industry. The court said it was difficult to conclude on Johansen's intentions with DeCSS, but there was no conclusive evidence."

Comments

Supreme court? Not quite....

[The Leather Duke]

Ahem. The case wasn't held in the Norwegian supreme court, it was helt at the Oslo local court. It could be appealed by the MPAA first to the lagmannsrett, a court with a jury. Only after a decision there can the case (or usually only the sentence) be appealed to the supreme court.

Re:Not supreme court

[arcade]

Not entirely correct, I think (IANAL though). My understanding is that anyone can appeal to lagmannsretten - but one may be rejected if its an obvious case.

This case is not obvious - and probably will not be rejected if there is an appeal. A thypical 'rejected' case is if some graphitti-punk is caught by the police, and wants to appeal the lower-court ruling claiming "I didn't do it" - when it is obvious that he did.

This is not such a case.