Hacker intends to License iPod Code to Apple Rivals

A computer hacker, Jon Lech Johansen, affectionately known as DVD Jon, claims to have broken the Apple iPod’s copy protection, which stops iPod users downloading tracks from music stores other than Apple's iTunes.

The 22 year old Norwegian, who lives in San Francisco, claims his hack, which actually affects the FairPlay encryption inside of Apple iTunes, allows people to move their purchased songs to other players.

Monique Farantzos, managing director at DVD Jon’s company DoubleTwist Ventures, confirmed the breakthrough. The company said that it planned to license the code to other digital music player manufacturers. However, Apple declined to comment.

Music purchased from Apple's iTunes online music store is only available for Apple products, while songs bought from other online stores typically do not work on iPods. But, Johansen's achievement could potentially free the popular music player making it compatible with tracks sold by other online retailers and could harm Apple's dominance in the online music business.

More than 68 million iPods have been sold worldwide since it was launched five years ago and is only able to play music taken from CDs or bought directly from iTunes.

Johansen's technology could help rivals sell competing products that play music from iTunes and offer songs for download that work on Apple’s digital music revolution, iPod. His San Francisco firm, DoubleTwist said that it would license the programme to Apple’s competitors.

This is not the first time Johansen has succeeded in breaking protection code rather in the late 1990s at the age of 15 he gained notoriety for breaking the copy protection software used to encrypt DVDs. In return of writing and distributing a program that cracked the encryption codes on DVDs he got the wrath of the technology industry and earned the nick name, “DVD Jon”.

After a lengthy trial in Norway by the Hollywood to prosecute him for computer hacking, he was vindicated in 2003.

And in case of Apple, this is also the second time Johansen, who is a self-trained software engineer, has turned his talents to unlocking Apple's restrictive locking mechanism. In 2003, Johansen had attempted to break the encrypted code; just months after Apple started selling encrypted music from iTunes.

About his recent hack, the programmer says he has created a system which is entirely legal because it does not break any of the software pitched into the iPod. His earlier attempts were however nullified by the computer company by making alterations to the Fairplay system.

"There's a certain amount of trouble that Apple can give us, but not enough to stop this. We believe we're on good legal ground, and our attorneys have given us the green light," Farantzos said.

Apple has yet to respond to Johansen’s claims, but it is assumed that the company’s lawyers and software experts are testing those claims to see if legal action can be taken.