For those who are unfamiliar with the case the MPAA pressed the Norwegian government to press criminal charges against the creator of DeCSS (btw: Jon Johansen didn’t write the program all by himself and many important parts were not written by him which makes this case so ludicrous). For more info visit the EFF_site.
In the DeCSS case there hasn’t been a verdict yet. This was due to a last minute change in charges against Jon Johansen.
“The changes largely reflect Økokrim – Norway’s special force for economic crime – wanting to include charges that Johansen also cracked code that revealed a repository of protection keys. According to the prosecution, this made it possible for the decryption program DeCSS to work on a wide range of films.
Prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde argues that the changes only make the original indictment more precise, and so do not represent new charges.
The trial was originally scheduled to conclude with closing arguments on Friday. This will now take place on Monday, primarily to allow the defense to adjust arguments to reflect the newly worded indictment. Judgment will not fall until after New Year.
This was the third time the charges against Johansen change. This spring Økokrim amended the indictment to complicity with cracking DVD codes, which means that they do not have to prove that Johansen acted alone. Just before the start of the trial Johansen’s defense counsel had the wording of the charges slightly adjusted.
The trial this week has been dominated by the prosecution’s painstaking attempts to argue that Johansen deliberately contributed to the removal of copy protection of DVD films leading to their free distribution on the Internet.
DVDs have a reserve of 408 encrypted keys, where at least one must correspond to a key in the DVD-player in order to access the data. According to Johansen himself, the original DeCSS contained only one key, but this was later expanded thanks to the efforts of friends on the Internet.
DeCSS, was published in 1999 and widely associated with Johansen via reports in the media. Specialist circles have debated Johansen’s level of involvement with the actual codebreaking. Johansen also made the program freely available for download via the Internet.
On a personal note I find it rather strange that you can change the charges in mid-process. The Norwegian Aftonposten has more_on_the_subject.
