DRM-buster DVD Jon has a new target in his sights, and it’s a big piece of fruit. He has reverse-engineered Apple’s Fairplay and is starting to license it to companies who want their media to play on Apple’s devices. Instead of breaking the DRM (something he’s already done), Jon has replicated it, and wants to license the technology to companies that want their content (music, movies, whatever) to play on Apple devices. This may not be good news for iTunes the store, but it could make the iPod even more popular.
Jon Lech Johansen became famous for hacking encrypted DVDs so they would play in Linux when he was 15, making him the target of criminal charges for which he was eventually acquitted. Last year he moved from Norway to San Diego to1 work for Michael Robertson2. But the work — a digital locker for music — didn’t captivate Johansen, so he struck out on his own at the beginning of the summer.
Twenty-two-year-old Johansen moved to San Francisco3 to work with Monique Farantzos, who had contacted him after reading a Wall Street Journal profile of him last fall. The two now live in the Mission District and devote their time to DoubleTwist Ventures4, which is Johansen’s first major attempt at commercializing his hacking. They haven’t raised any outside money because they have already found at least one (undisclosed) paying customer.
Johansen isn’t much of a swashbuckler; he barely touched his Heineken when we were out at drinks last week. But he has a lot of chutzpah, and related the story of how he emailed Steve Jobs and set up a lunch meeting in January.
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