Trial date set for DVD hacker

A date has been set for the trial of Jon Johansen, the Norwegian hacker who created the controversial DVD descrambling tool DeCSS.

The trial will start at a Norwegian district court on 9 December and will be headed up by one judge with the help of two lay assessors.

Johansen was indicted in January, more than two years after the Motion Picture Industry Association of America (MPIAA) filed for a criminal investigation over the creation of DeCSS.

The trial was due to take place this summer but was postponed while the court tracked down a judge with enough technical knowledge.

DeCSS, which has become a thorn in Hollywood's side over the last few years, was originally created to allow the DVD format to be played on Linux machines as industry-endorsed players only ran on Windows.

But after it emerged that DeCSS allowed for the descrambling and copying of the DVD format, Hollywood issued a slew of lawsuits against anyone caught publishing or linking to the DeCSS code.