‘DVD’ Jon Lech Johansen Selling Reverse-Engineered FairPlay DRM

Liz Gannes:

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.

It’ll be interesting to see who will license this. When Real Networks announced something similar they called “Harmony” in 2004, Apple issued a curt press release warning that it was “highly likely” that future iPod changes would break Real’s unauthorized use of the DRM, and, well, Harmony never went anywhere.

★ Monday, 2 October 2006