'DVD Jon' Heads Back to Court

Jon Lech Johansen will be returning to court to contest for a second time charges related to his development and distribution of DeCSS, a program that can break digital copy protection on DVDs.

Johansen, also known as "DVD Jon," was acquitted of the charges in January, but the prosecution lodged an appeal with the Oslo Court of Appeals, his attorney says. Under Norwegian law, the appeals court must evaluate the merits of an appeal before deciding to hear it.

On Friday, the court, Borgarting lagmannsrett, decided to let the appeal go ahead, said Halvor Manshaus, Johansen's attorney. The court has not set an appeal date, he added.

First Challenge

The case attracted worldwide interest because of the involvement of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The entertainment industry trade group filed the original complaint that led to an investigation by Økokrim, a branch of the Norwegian police dealing with white-collar crime.

Johansen was accused of helping users thwart the content scrambling system (CSS) on DVDs. He developed a program, called DeCSS, that enables people to decrypt motion pictures in DVD format. The decrypted files can then be copied onto a PC's hard drive for viewing and, potentially, further distribution, such as transmission over the Internet.

Johansen released DeCSS online in late 1999, when he was 15 years old. Norwegian police raided Johansen's home in January 2000 after the MPAA filed a complaint.

Copies Controlled

Fair-use rights in place until recently in many countries allowed for some copying for personal use, but that concept has come under attack in the digital age. In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to circumvent copy controls.

Johansen's attorney, Manshaus, contends that his client did nothing wrong, because Norway does not have a DMCA.

The DMCA also prohibits distributing code that can break copy protection.