The Norwegian Jon Johansen pleaded 'not guilty' during the retrial on 2 December of his acquittal for reverse-engineering DVD technology and creating DeCSS in 1999. DeCSS is computer software that Johansen and others wrote in an effort to build an independent DVD player for the Linux operating system.

In January 2003, a three-judge panel in Oslo rejected charges against Johansen for accessing his DVD movies using an independently created DVD player. The court also rejected Hollywood's claim that it has the right to control the way in which an individual views a DVD after purchase.

The charges against Johansen were brought under the Norwegian criminal code section 145.2, which outlaws bypassing technological restrictions to access data that one is not entitled to access. Johansen's prosecution is the first time that this law has been used to prosecute a person for accessing his own property. This data theft law has been used in the past only to prosecute those who illegally access another's bank or phone records or data that they have no lawful right to access.

If Johansen's acquittal is over-turned on appeal, it will become illegal for Norwegians to bypass DVD region code restrictions or technical restrictions that prevent fast-forwarding over advertisements, or otherwise circumvent digital controls on their own property.

The case in the Oslo Appeals Court is set to end on 12 December with a verdict expected in early 2004.

In November 2003, Johansen published a new computer program called QTFairUse that allows consumers to make digital fair use of their Apple iTunes music collections by legally opening a music file and then saving it as an unrestricted file.

Timeline of DeCSS litigation by IP Justice
http://www.ipjustice.org/publications/decsstable.htm

Jon Johansen's page
http://www.nanocrew.net/