For the second time this year Jon Lech Johansen told Norwegian authorities that he pleaded not guilty to violating the copyright protection of DVD films by helping to create a software utility that allowed users to make backup copies of such films. Johansen continues to argue that he only helped people use what they had legally purchased.

In January this year an Oslo court acquitted Johansen, 20, on all counts, and found no proof for the prosecutions case that the program DeCSS, which decodes DVD films, had been used for anything other than the copying of legally purchased films.

Eight working days have been set aside for the appeals trial, which is overseen by three professional judges and four lay assessors, two of whom have technical expertise relevant to the case.

In Norway, the laymen act as assistant judges and have a vote to cast towards the verdict and so are more than expert counsel.

According to newspaper VG's web site, the technical nature of the case led to judge Wenche Skjaeggestad asking the prosecutor to explain the meaning of the central term 'algorithm' (a computational procedure applied to solve a problem), a request eventually satisfied by one of the expert assessors.

Johansen, who became the front figure for the DeCSS program through media exposure, has been considered a criminal since a police raid in January 2000 led to the confiscation of his computers and charges of cracking the film industry's copy protection scheme.

The charges themselves are quite complex, and have changed three times previously, once even in the closing days of the original trial.

The Norwegian Economic Crime Unit (Oekokrim/Økokrim) amended charges to include complicity with cracking DVD codes to make a conviction easier. The prosecution has also argued that Johansen contributed to the distribution of protection-free DVDs on the Internet.

Aftenposten English Web Desk
Jonathan Tisdall/NTB

Freedom and Politics [20:53]