[highlight]this guy kinda looks like Rob's brother
[/highlight]
Now Johansen claims he's mastered the inner workings of the iPod and its FairPlay encryption technology, allowing him to remove many of the restrictions Apple places on its users.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/digital-music/apples-ipod-code-cracked/2006/10/24/1161455702584.html [highlight]**update BELOW**[/highlight]
Hacker To License iPod Code
Parmy Olson, 10.26.06, 3:00 AM ET
London -
Just months after Apple Computer was found guilty of breaking Norwegian law with its iTunes downloading service, a native of the nippy European country has just returned the favor.
John Lech Johansen, a 22-year-old hacker known to those of his ilk as "DVD Jon," claims to have cracked the code that Apple uses to tie iTunes files exclusively to iPod players.
He has typically posted license-circumventing codes on the Internet free of charge, having most infamously release a software system that scrambled DVD licensing codes when he was 15. Seven years later, it seems the young techie has caught the capitalist bug.
Johansen intends to license the code to media distribution companies, allowing their songs and videos to by-pass the iTunes online store, but still be played on an iPod.
DoubleTwist Ventures, a tiny, San Francisco-based company which Johansen joined in June of this year, told The Associated Press that an unnamed client was already due to use the technology.
The company has already consulted attorneys about licensing the code and believes that while Apple could give it a "certain amount of trouble," it won't be able to put a stop to things.
In a nutshell, Johansen has reverse-engineered the Digital Rights Management system that resides in Apple's iPods, known as FairPlay. Rather than remove the copy protection, however, his code applies FairPlay to other music and videos files, making them "fool" the iPod into playing them.
Other outfits like RealNetwork's RealPlayer Music Store, have already tried to dodge Apple's copy-protection technology, but haven't gained much traction.
Ovum technology analyst John Arber believes that Johansen's attempt will, like its predecessors, prove to be a flash in the pan. "Apple will stamp on any anything that might allow competitors like Yahoo!'s Yahoo! Music, Rhapsody and Napster, to take a bite out of its revenue," he said. "And whether any of them even take Johansen up on this offer is a different matter, because the legal status is unclear."
Even if Johansen doesn't get dragged into court by Apple, the Cupertino, Calif.-base company could simply end up releasing a patch or software update for iTunes that stops the program, Arber said. "I would have thought they have some kind of contingency plan for this."
