Jon Johansen Cleared On All Charges In DeCSS Case
from the phew dept
First ElcomSoft, and now Jon Johnasen. Could the courts actually be catching on to just how silly some of these copy protection laws are? Jon Johansen has been cleared on all charges for creating the DeCSS code that could be used to crack the encryption found on DVDs so that he could (gasp!) watch the DVDs he legally purchased on his Linux computer. The court found no evidence that he was helping people break the law. Perhaps more importantly, the court also agreed that there's absolutely nothing wrong with using DeCSS to watch a legally purchased movie. Hopefully courts outside of Norway will agree with this sort of reasoning when other cases come to trial.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
