A Norwegian hacker who has angered Hollywood by cracking a DVD copy protection code is a cyberspace version of a burglar, plaintiffs told an Oslo appeals court Thursday.
Major U.S. studios, which have brought charges in Norway, said a film-copying program developed by Jon Johansen when he was a teenager had helped DVD piracy worldwide.
"We consider this stealing," Marsha King, executive vice president and general manager of Warner Home Video, told the Oslo Appeals Court. "It's taking our key and breaking into our house and stealing what we've made," she said.
The U.S. movie industry wants to use the Johansen case to set a legal precedent as part of a global crack down on piracy, which it estimates costs it $3 billion annually in lost sales.
In January, a court acquitted the 20-year-old computer programmer of charges of violating Norwegian data laws when he was 15 by developing a DVD-copying program and distributing it on the Internet.
That ruling established that, under Norwegian law, anyone buying a DVD legally can decide what to do with it. Prosecutors lodged an appeal.
The program "opened a door which we would have liked to close immediately, but we didn't manage," King said. Johansen's program is banned in the United States.
"Anyone who had not bought our product could get the product for free on the Internet," King said, referring to markets such as China and Malaysia, where she said up to an estimated 90 percent of DVD films are pirate copies.
John Hoy, president of the DVD Copy Control Association, said the case against Johansen was principally important in trying to protect trade secrets globally.
"My view is that it's important--very important--for the concept of trade secrets and, more generally, for intellectual property to be sustained by courts worldwide," Hoy said.
The retrial is due to end Dec. 12.
Story Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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