Jon Lech Johansen, also known as "DVD-Jon", will seek compensation from the Norwegian government following his acquittal in an appellate court on charges related to alleged copyright violation.

Johansen is believed to have played some role in the creation of software used to break copy protection on DVDs. He has defended himself against charges laid against him by Norway's white-collar crime unit for four years, and the battle has taken its toll, reports Norway's Aftenposten.

While Johansen is widely reported as being the "lone gunman" behind the creation of the DeCSS de-scrambler, DVD interest sites maintain the DCC code itself was broken by an anonymous German hacker. Johansen, who was allegedly a part of a group known as the Masters of Reverse Engineering, or MoRE, simply helped in writing the program that used the existing CSS crack to de-scramble the discs.

A text file that is said to be distributed with the DeCSS software purports to be a joint statement from MoRE and another group, Drink or Die (DoD), refutes the claim that "DVD-Jon" was the master hacker behind the downfall of DVD piracy protection.

"Jon Johansen of MoRE... had NOTHING to do with the actual cracking of the DVD CSS protection. Yes, it was MoRE who did DeCSS, but the actual crack was not a team effort, MoRE didn't even exist back when the anonymous German (who is now a MoRE member) cracked it," the file reads.

DeCSS allows users to not only watch DVD's from their PC's - including Linux PC's which were previously not able to play and de-scramble DVD content - but also allowed them to copy the content, remove region coding and other protective measures.

The justices did not comment Monday in turning down an appeal from the former Mafia hit man and mob turncoat, who wants to reclaim more than $380,000 in royalties from a book about his life.

"Underboss: Sammy the Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia" was a best seller when published in 1997. Salvatore Gravano cooperated with author Peter Maas in return for a share of royalties.

A court in Arizona, where Gravano is serving a 20-year prison term for his role in a nationwide drug syndicate, had ruled that prosecutors fairly seized royalties from the book.

Gravano argued that his free-speech rights were violated.

"The court's protocol for treating royalties from an expressive work as the proceeds of crime involves the state in a form of censorship that is repugnant to the First Amendment," Gravano's lawyer argued in his Supreme Court appeal.

Gravano, 57, was underboss of New York's Gambino family under John Gotti.

Gravano confessed to 19 murders nearly 10 years ago as part of a deal with federal prosecutors to implicate Gotti, his longtime friend and mentor, and more than three dozen other mobsters.

He served five years in prison and entered a witness protection program in Arizona in 1995. He later left the protection program and had been living openly in Arizona when he charged with running an Ecstasy network with his wife, children, and a group of white supremacists.

Gravano admitted the link between his past crimes and the book profits, Arizona argued.

"Gravano would not have acquired the contract rights and resulting royalties unless he had committed the racketeering acts alleged," Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard wrote in asking the Supreme Court to stay out of the case.

Separately, a reputed hit man faces up to 10 years in prison for plotting to kill Gravano with a remote-control bomb for betraying the Gambino crime family.

Thomas "Huck" Carbonaro, 55, was convicted in Brooklyn in October. Sentencing had been set for Monday but was postponed.

Gravano was called as a witness by the defense, and described himself as an expert hit man who would have made a difficult target.

The case is Gravano v. Arizona, 03-651.

The senate committee at McGill University in Montreal sided last Thursday with sophomore Jesse Rosenfeld, who argued that he should not be required to submit his essays to Turnitin.com, a Web site that verifies originality by comparing documents to thousands of others.

Though the ruling was a boon to student organizations across Canada and the United States who have protested use of the plagiarism-detection site, Turnitin.com insists it is in compliance with all related copyright laws.

The conflict began in October, when Rosenfeld refused to hand in essays for his international development studies class through the Web site. He received failing grades for his assignments.

Rosenfeld filed an appeal with the university senate committee. Afterward, his professor "reluctantly" agreed to grade his papers without submitting them through the online plagiarism-detection program -- giving him Bs and Cs for his work.

Rosenfeld said he had "an ethical and political problem" with the university's policy of submitting student work to Turnitin.com.

"I was having to prove I didn't plagiarize even before my paper was looked at by my professor," Rosenfeld said, according to the Globe and Mail.

Rosenfeld wasn't the only one concerned. Several on-campus groups have voiced opposition to the site, and the national body representing all Canadian student organizations, the Canadian Federation of Students, recently took up a policy position against it.

"Of the 20 Canadian universities currently using the site, not one consulted with students in the decision-making process when signing on with Turnitin.com," said Ian Boyko, national chairman of the CFS. "That in itself shows a lack of respect for students' rights."

Boyko also believes universities should not be permitted to turn over essays to sites like Turnitin.com, which he said makes money off students' work without their consent.

"The student is the author of the work, and deserves to be part of the decision as to where his work goes," Boyko said.

John Barrie, founder and president of Turnitin.com, said such accusations are groundless and made without due diligence.

"This is the first time since our inception in 1998, since millions of papers have gone through our site, that this issue has come up," Barrie said. "We are following the letter of the law, and not one of the 3,000 universities who use our service would have signed contracts with us if we weren't."

Because student work exists in Turnitin.com's database solely as digital fingerprints and not as collections of essays, Barrie disputes accusations that the company makes unfair use of students work.

"The value to our company is not in the collection of words and characters in an essay, but in the series of numbers derived from the essay once we transform those words and characters into digital fingerprints," Barrie said. "In short, the value to us is not derived from the student's actual work."

Barrie says in this way, Turnitin.com does not violate students' copyrights to their work, adding that students retain control over their copy.

"We don't harm the free-market value of the work -- a student can take their Macbeth essay to the market and make millions," he said.

But, according to CFS, sites like Turnitin.com present an even broader political issue.

"We see the use of sites like Turnitin.com as means of cutting corners," Boyko said. "We think they are a poor substitute for trained individuals."

A former professor who launched the site after students complained of the proliferation of plagiarism because of the Internet, Barrie sees little merit in that argument.

"Human beings can't detect plagiarism," he said, and referred to a Rutgers University study that found 40 percent of students polled admitted they plagiarized at least once.

"Unless you apply a digital solution, it's impossible. We have 13 seven-foot, computer racks to determine if a student has lifted one line in an essay from the Internet."