I guess we all already noticed that breaking a protection or hacking is not a hobby anymore, where once people were praised for their effort to increase security by showing leaks in the system, they are now sent to jail.
Also the author of DeCSS, software that was able to descramble the contents of DVD discs, is facing serious jail-time. With one of America's largest industries against him he will have a hard time to stay out of jail.
The National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime in Norway (OKOKRIM) indicted Johansen on January 9th for violating Norwegian criminal code section 145(2), which prohibits the opening of a closed document in a way that gains access to its contents, or breaking into a locked repository. The law also prohibits the breaking of a protective device in a way that unlawfully obtains access to the data. |
If Johansen is found to have committed the felony for the purpose of unlawful gain, he could serve up to two years in prison.
"The way we understand it, the data is the content of the DVD, what you are breaking is the encryption and what you are getting access to is the data on the disk," said Halvor Manshaus of the Oslo law firm Schjodt, which is representing Johansen.
Manshaus says the law has previously been used to prosecute those who broke into bank or phone company records. But he says this is the first time that the law has been used to prosecute someone who broke an encryption system. The case is expected to go to trial before summer.
Of course you can't really justify the use of breaking the protection of a DVD, but the industry should know they will always be broken, and next time it will maybe be harder to find the one who did it, because they will probably not be telling anyone anymore.
Besides that they should learn from the people that broke their protection instead of sueing them. As you might know, the best security experts are hackers...
Source: Securityfocus.com
