DVD Jon's is back to once again make FairPlay fair
As much as we'd like to hang on to the importance of PlaysForSure -- and its rather timely compromise -- at the end of the day, it's only about 10% of the digital music market. The other 90% goes to Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme, which is probably why over the years it's been such a massive target for such projects as Hymn, JHymn, PlayFair, PyMusique, myTunes and myFairTunes6, and the original FairPlay circumvention tool developed by DVD Jon et. al., QTFairUse, as well as FairKeys (which spawned the similar but not Jon-developed QTFairUse -- we missing any?). Now that Apple's latest iteration of iTunes is fairly wide open, however, DVD Jon is back in the game -- but this time he's looking at FairPlay for more commercial means. Like Navio and Real before it, Jon's new business, DoubleTwist Ventures, based in San Francisco, intends not to sell users means by which they can unlock their digital music library; instead, they intend to sell partners the ability to DRM their media with FairPlay, cutting Apple out of the media vending food chain. Not a new concept at all, but when Real tried it, Apple were quick to put the kibosh on their efforts, and the impending possibility of a lawsuit was enough to eventually get them to stop fighting the man. As far as we know, Navio has neither been taken to court, nor actually licensed its artificial FairPlay technology to any partners. But for someone as high profile as Jon Johansen to move to the Bay and start up a business that undermines Apple's digital media sales business right in their own back yard, well, let's just say we're hoping DoubleTwist set aside some cash for possible legal expenses.
