“On Monday, January 24, authorities in Norway searched the home
of Jon Johansen, a 16-year-old Norwegian member of the Masters of
Reverse Engineering (MoRE) — the group which created the DeCSS DVD
playback utility for Linux. Jon and his father Per Johansen have
both been indicted by Norway’s Department of Economic Crime.
LinuxWorld talked to both Jon and Per about DeCSS, the
investigation, the controversy — and about why they feel that this
case is at the same time so ridiculous and so important.“
“LinuxWorld: How did this whole thing start? How did you get
involved with DVD and DeCSS?”
“Jon Johansen: Well, I got involved with DVD about two years
ago. I bought my first DVD-ROM and an MPEG-2 decoder card. And,
about at the end of September last year, I got in contact with a
German computer programmer and a Dutch computer programmer, and we
decided that it was time to add DVD support to Linux — and, of
course, to other operating systems, such as FreeBSD.”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.
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