Jon Johansen, a Norwegian teen hacker, has been indicted for allegedly bypassing DVD anti-copying technology.

On Thursday, newspapers in Norway reported that prosecutors in Oslo have charged Johansen, 18, for violating the country's computer hacking laws in 1999. Aftenposten Nettutgaven reported that the "white collar crime unit" has indicted Johansen on charges of "violating a computer security system." A spokesman for the Norwegian embassy said the decision to indict Johansen "was done as a precautionary measure." Johansen became an Internet icon two years ago, after he and two other programmers wrote the DeCSS (download) utility that unwraps the copy protection found on DVDs. They wanted a way to watch movies on their Linux computers -- the DVD consortium had not released software to do it -- but DeCSS can also be used in the piracy of DVDs. That enraged the movie studios who belong to the Motion Picture Association of America. They sued a U.S. website that distributed DeCSS, and won a stunning victory last November when a federal appeals court ruled that the utility violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Johansen testified at the trial in New York City. He said in July 2000 that he and two other programmers had created the DeCSS utility, and that he was a member of the Masters of Reverse Engineering hacking group. The lawsuit cemented Johansen's status as a cause cйlebre. In January 2000 officials from Norway's Department of Economic Crime hauled Johansen to a local police station for questioning.