Hacker's firm doubleTwist enables copying of iTunes

Tue Feb 19, 2008


CHAMONIX, France (Reuters) - A start-up co-founded by famed Norwegian hacker "DVD Jon" is on Tuesday introducing a service that enables users to copy and use copy-protected Apple Inc(AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) iTunes songs on many popular non-Apple devices.

The San Francisco-based company, doubleTwist, is releasing a service that makes it easy for consumers to share both user-generated and professionally created audio, photos and video clips via computers, certain mobile phones or PSP game players.

Beyond computer-to-computer media-sharing, doubleTwist lets users synchronize media sitting on their computers to mobile devices they or their friends own, simply by "dragging and dropping" media files into a desktop folder that then drops copies of the media files onto the mobile devices over the Web.

The software initially can share files with Sony's PSP game console, Nokia's multimedia N-series phone line, Sony Ericsson's Walkman and Cybershop lines, LG's Viewty, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile smartphones such as Palm's Treo and HTC models.

Users can choose to share as many or as few media files as they wish with specific friends. DoubleTwist software converts media stored in one file format to formats used by the other devices, making it possible to create common playlists that mix songs from Apple iTunes on non-Apple devices, doubleTwist said.

DoubleTwist's trick for opening up copy-protected formats is to replay a song in fast-forward mode and capture a copy of the audio track by re-recording it. It's essentially the same process as when a user "rips," or copies, a CD onto a computer.


More at: Reuters

Quote:

Johansen, doubleTwist's chief technology officer, has remained on the frontline of such controversies and has had several run-ins with Apple over efforts to help consumers "liberate" music from iTunes' copy protection regime

Wonder how long they are going to stay in business

Grav!ty wrote:

Quote: Johansen, doubleTwist's chief technology officer, has remained on the frontline of such controversies and has had several run-ins with Apple over efforts to help consumers "liberate" music from iTunes' copy protection regime Wonder how long they are going to stay in business

I'd offer him a job if I was in charge of Apple. LOL