Apple's iTunes/iPod is a accomplished firm model, built on two critical premises. One is that songs bought from iTunes will only play on iPod players. The second installation is that songs purchased from other music download sites will not play on iPods.
Now Apple's firm model is under assault - by 26-year-old hacker Jon Johansen. Johansen, of Norway, has decoded iPod's Digital ownership administration (Drm) encryption, known as FairPlay, agreeing to reputable sources.
Ipod
Johansen is development his hack available - for a licensing fee - to businesses seeking to sell hardware competitive with iPod, and download sites competitive with iTunes.
Apple iPod touch 8 GB (4th Generation - Newest Model) - REFURBISHED + 6 Pc iESSENTIALS KIT Specification
- Kit Includes: Auxiliary Cable, Car Charger, Travel Charger, Headphone Splitter, USB Data Cable, Stereo Headphones
- This 8GB iPod touch includes standard Apple earphones
- Up to 40 hours of audio playback or 7 hours of video playback on a single charge
- 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen Multi-Touch display with 960-by-640-pixel resolution (326 pixels per inch)
- Support for AAC, Protected AAC (iTunes Store) and other audio formats; H.264, MPEG-4, and Motion JPEG video codecs in M4V, MP4, MOV, and AVI formats
Available Stores
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Note that Johansen's hack does not remove Drm from downloaded songs. It unquestionably adds Drm, to trick iPods into thinking that a given song has been purchased via iTunes.
If this hack takes off, will the accomplished firm model fall apart?
Hardly. Johansen's decision to market his hack straight through licensing agreements means that your median teen music-lover is not suddenly going to find his music variety iPod-compatible. Instead, she will have more choices of legal music sites, to download songs that will be iPod-playable.
The result of this may be to lower the industry-standard pricetag of $.99 per song. Apple could face real competition from other sites that can now sell legal music to load into those insatiable iPod hard drives.
Something to think for Microsoft Zune... If the hack was figured out for iPod, can a Zune hack be far behind?
iPod/iTunes: Under strike from Hackers
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