The Change Mariner

Cyber-pirate back to harass Hollywood Cracks iTunes

SMH:
A hacker famed for defeating Hollywood in a cyber-piracy trial has rejected allegations he has illegally unlocked a code that enables unauthorised copying of music files from the internet.

Jon Johansen, a 20-year-old Norwegian computer programmer who was cleared of piracy charges in January, has developed a source code for copying music and posted it on the internet less than a week before he is due to appear in an Oslo appeals court.

Johansen's code allows users of Apple Computer Inc's new iTunes online music store to break digital rights management (DRM) technology that prevents people copying files downloaded from the service.

On an internet site named "So Sue Me", Johansen said critics had "failed to understand that by buying into DRM they have given the seller complete control over the product after it's been sold", calling them "clueless about copyright law".

The new program circumvents iTunes' anti-copying program, MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding, by legally opening and playing a protected music file in QuickTime, but then, essentially, draining the unprotected music data into a new and parallel file.

There are other programs that can circumvent copy protection schemes by capturing analog audio, though that typically causes a loss in quality. The program on Johansen's site appears to capture unprotected digital data, which could be used to make perfect copies of an unlocked tune.