Tech aware trendies know the name DVD Jon. Jon Johansen became a widely known name after developing a crack for CSS, the content scrambling system used in DVD publishing. His DeCSS became the foundation for DVD viewing software on alternative operating systems, and many applications distributed outside the US use essentially the same crack today that Jon created years ago. His new project, DoubleTwist Ventures is selling something that lies in a questionably grey legal area but could be a very hot ticket : The ability to encode FairPlay yourself, thus opening Apple's "FairPlay" stranglehold on over 70% of the digital content market. GigaOm spent some time with Jon recently and came away with the impression, "Johansen doesn't think what he's doing is illegal; he's adding DRM rather than breaking it.
I can actually hear the ice melting under Jon's feet, although I think the splash is going to be a spectacle to watch.
[via GigaOm]
1. As a little guy... this is something that I have been waiting for, for a long time. This would enable stores like mine to obtain licenses from the giants while enabling our songs to play nicely with the market leader.
Now only if the encoding can be done cheaper than with the Windows Media DRM.....
I'm looking forward to this...
Posted at 10:05PM on Oct 2nd 2006 by Musica360.com