Entrepreneurial Hacker Decodes iPod
Thursday, October 26th, 2006
It seems a 22-year-old hacker known as “DVD Jon” has cracked the code that Apple uses to associate iTunes files exclusively to iPod players.
DVD Jon has been posting license-circumventing codes on the Internet for several years but now the enterprising young hacker appears to have caught the entrepreneurial spirit.
DVD Jon, aka Jon Johansen, runs a small software shop in San Francisco called DoubleTwist Ventures. Johansen said yesterday his program would fool computers into thinking that any MP3 player was an iPod or that any piece of music or video downloaded from the internet was purchased from iTunes.
Johansen intends to license his wares to media distribution companies, thus allowing their songs and videos to by-pass the iTunes online store, but still be played on an iPod.
Even if Johansen doesn’t get dragged into court by Apple, I’m guessing a simple patch to iTunes would allow Apple to stop the problem.
