DVD Jon Is A Masochist

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DVD Jon, the guy who cracked DVD encryption, has set up shop in California as DoubleTwist Ventures. His goal is to pirate license technology enabling iTunes to play on non-iPods and non-iTunes DRM-ed tracks to play on iPods (how’s that working out, Real?). It would be nice if Apple’s copy protection scheme (aka FairPlay) was made available to other devices, however they’ve been reluctant to share… and probably won’t until a court orders them to do so. Until then, I expect they’ll go after Jon and anyone brash enough to integrate his work into players — it’s no accident his blog is titled So Sue Me. I don’t know how the Norwegian legal system compares to America, but I hope he’s got backers with deep pockets…

Fortune writes: Johansen has reverse-engineered FairPlay, the encryption technology Apple uses to make the iPod a closed system. Right now, thanks to FairPlay, the songs Apple sells at its iTunes store cannot easily be played on other devices, and copy-protected songs purchased from other sites will not play on the iPod. Johansen has written programs that get around those restrictions: one that would let other companies sell copy-protected songs that play on the iPod, and another that would let other devices play iTunes songs.

5 thoughts on “DVD Jon Is A Masochist”

  1. “…..I don?t know how the Norwegian legal system compares to America, but I hope he?s got backers with deep pockets?”

    Other sites reporting this same story, are also saying DVD Jon now lives in San Francisco..
    If this be true, the Norwegian legal system would be a non-issue.. wouldnt it ?

  2. Yup, as I mentioned, his company is based in California. I was specifically referring to the trials he walked away from in Norway (see link above) for cracking DVD encryption. An American DMCA legal battle could play out differently… (His company is an LLC, which may offer some personal insulation.)

  5. So why would I use his system to decrypt from iTunes DRM and then recrypt (is that even a word?) the music?

    Wouldn’t I just use one part of the equation? And isn’t that already out there?

    There’s a market for this?

  6. I think the idea would be that 1) third party hardware could play the original iTunes content, and 2) that iTunes content could be decrypted without quality loss from transcoding.

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