Merry Christmas to everyone. I'm off on a two week sabbatical for the festive season.

The Appeal Court in Norway has given Jon Johansen of DeCSS noteriety an early Chrismas present. There are a couple of factual errors in this BBC report in that Johansen did not actually create DeCSS and the MPAA did not bring the case against him, the Norwegian authorities did. But they get the aquittal right which I guess is the main thing. Trying to portray Johansen as a "serial hacker" is stretching things a bit but the MPAA are clearly disappointed at the outcome.