Oslo Court OKs Personal Copying of DVDs

An Oslo appeals court cleared a 20-year-old Norwegian of DVD piracy charges Monday, dismaying Hollywood studios, which said the ruling would encourage copying blamed for leaching billions of dollars from the movie industry worldwide.

Upholding a verdict by a lower court in January, the court said Jon Johansen had broken no law by helping to unlock a code and distribute a computer program on the Internet enabling unauthorized copying of DVD movies.

The seven-member panel of judges and data experts was unanimous in ruling that Johansen was free to copy DVDs he bought legally. The ruling applies only in Norway but has been widely seen as a test for cyberspace copyright rules around the globe.

Johansen, dubbed “DVD Jon” by fans worldwide who see him as a hero for free speech, was on vacation in France and could not be reached for comment.

The U.S. movie industry, which brought the case in a bid to stifle piracy that it says costs $3 billion a year in lost sales, slammed the verdict as an encouragement to hackers.

“The actions of serial hackers such as Mr. Johansen are damaging to honest consumers everywhere,” the Motion Picture Assn. of America said in a statement. It had argued that Johansen’s copying was unauthorized and therefore illegal.

“While the ruling does not affect laws outside of Norway, we believe this decision encourages circumvention of copyright that threatens consumer choice and employment in the film and television industries,” it said.

The court also ruled that it was more reasonable to make a personal copy of a DVD than a book under copyright laws, for instance, because a scratch could make a DVD unusable.

Last year, Hollywood scored a victory in the United States after Eric Corley, the central figure in the widely watched “DVD Hacker” case, was barred by a court from posting online Johansen’s program that descrambled the safeguards on DVDs.

The Corley case was tried under the 1998 U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Johansen was tried under criminal theft laws in Norway, which, like most nations, has no specific legislation to protect digital content.