DVD Jon Twists DRM

Filed in archive Apple , People , Privacy & Security , Technology on October 5, 2006

Photo - DVD Jon by Irina Slutsky

Jon Lech Johansen, aka DVD Jon, is back. He's the programmer who gained fame cracking DVD encryption. He now has moved to the U.S. and turned his attention to Apple's Fairplay DRM, which has little do with being fair to you, the customer.

DVD Jon has moved from pirate to corporate. Instead of publishing cracked code for the masses, he's selling his gained expertise to secure the same content for others. In a novel twist he's adding DRM, not removing it. DVD Jon has replicated Fairplay. He's licensing it to other companies to securely sell content on iPods.

In the process he's disintermediating Apple media. He's freed content providers from having to go through Apple to put secure files on the iPod. His reverse engineering has created an open platform. Ironically the effect will only benefit Apple. More and more profitable iPods will be sold at the expense of fewer and less profitable iTunes sales.