Jon Johansen, the Norwegian teen cracker who started this mess by crafting DeCSS, finally had his day in an American court. Johansen and his father became the center of a media circus back in January when Hollywood pressured the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit to investigate the pair. The Motion Picture Association of America painted Johansen as a marauding underage pirate. Yet in testimony marked by a remarkable simplicity, Johansen told the court that, contrary to the studios' claims, he had written DeCSS only to allow Linux users to play the same movies available to Windows and Mac users. Far from demonizing its hackers, Norway, it would seem, lionizes them.
Nobody's in court arguing for the right to copy movies.
At issue will be not only the legal protection afforded the decryption program, DeCSS, but, quite possibly, the future of online media. Though the DVD trial was roundly upstaged by news of Napster's sudden demise and just as sudden recovery, close observers of the judicial system note that the DVD trial may set the more significant legal precedent. The prosecution claims that DeCSS poses the threat of irreparable harm to film copyright holders, and is nothing more than a utility for piracy. The plaintiffs, then, occupy a distinct redoubt in the actual letter of the law. On its face, the program would seem to be in clear violation of the statute.