DVD Jon seeks compensation from Norwegian government

January 28, 2004

ZDnet is citing this story over
at Norway's Aftenposten that says Jon Lech Johansen will seek restitution from
the Norwegian government for his defense costs. This follows after his recent
acquittal in an appellate court, on charges related to alleged copyright
violation.

The legal battle drug on for four
years, Johansen is seeking NOK 150,000 from the white collar crime unit
that prosecuted him. That is about 20 thousand dollars US.

While
Johansen is widely reported as being the "lone gunman" behind the creation
of the DeCSS de-scrambler, DVD interest sites maintain the DCC code itself
was broken by an anonymous German hacker. Johansen, who was allegedly a
part of a group known as the Masters of Reverse Engineering, or MoRE,
simply helped in writing the program that used the existing CSS crack to
de-scramble the discs.

A text file that is said to
be distributed with the DeCSS software purports to be a joint statement
from MoRE and another group, Drink or Die (DoD), refutes the claim that
"DVD-Jon" was the master hacker behind the downfall of DVD piracy
protection.

"Jon Johansen of MoRE... 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 file reads.

So far, there is no reaction from the prosecutors
(Oekokrim) who failed to prove Johansen as responsible for the proliferation of
the program. For those that don't know yet, the
program DeCSS was created (among other things) for users of Linux operating
systems that were unable to watch a DVD on their PC. It also strips the region
restrictions and made copying of the DVD possible. Johansen is very animate
about fair use of content by consumers.

Source: ZDNet