Fox News: Teen-age Norwegian computer geek: A villain to Hollywood, a hero to hackers

[ Thanks to brew miester for this
link. ]

“In the basement of an old farmhouse deep in the Norwegian
countryside, a 15-year-old computer geek named Jon Lech Johansen
pecked out the finishing touches on a piece of programming that had
been keeping him busy after school and homework.”

“Jon says he didn’t realize it at the time, but when he pressed
‘enter’ on his keyboard 16 months ago and launched his handiwork
into cyberspace, he was setting off an intercontinental
earthquake.”

“The program he assembled over a few weeks on his home-assembled
Pentium 600 computer would rattle Hollywood, unleash lawsuits,
mobilize demonstrators in his defense and have him hauled in for a
night of questioning by Norwegian police.”

“At 57 kilobytes, the tiny program is no more than the computer
equivalent of a heartbeat. But what it does is frightening to
anyone with a financial stake in the entertainment industry:

“It enables you to copy movies onto any computer with a DVD
drive and send them out unscrambled on the Internet. As bandwidth
increases it will become easier and faster to download these
movies. And then the question will be, why pay $3.99 to rent
Hollywood’s latest blockbuster when you can see it for free without
leaving your home? And why buy a DVD player if your home PC can do
the job?”

Complete
Story