Jari Ketola
9 Dec 2002 12:22
The DeCSS trial got underway today in Oslo, Norway. As anticipated Jon Johansen, or DVD Jon, like the Norwegians like to call him, pleeded not guilty to the charges on developing a software, that makes it possible to copy movies. Namely he is charged with helping to crack the CSS code, and develop and distribute a program taking advantage of the cracked code.
According to prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde, Johansen collaborated with people from Germany, Russia, Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States on making and publishing DeCSS in 1999 and 2000. At the time Johansen was 15 and 16 years old.
Even though it's true that Johansen took part in developing DeCSS, he had nothing at all to do with cracking the CSS code, which makes the already weak case against him even weaker.
Just to refresh our memory, here's a quote from a three-year-old article written by deZZY/DoD about DeCSS and cracking the CSS code.
Lately, Jon Johansen of MoRE has been pretty much all over the news in Norway, though he had NOTHING to do with the actual cracking of the DVD CSS protection. Yes, it was MoRE who did DeCSS, but the actual crack was not a team effort, MoRE didn't even exist back when the anonymous German (who is now a MoRE member) cracked it...
The trial is due to last five days.
Source:
Yahoo! News