Full Story @ Scotsman.com
A young Norwegian who became a global hacker hero by writing and distributing a program to crack DVD security codes appears to have struck again, this time against Apple Computer’s ITunes online music service.
Jon Lech Johansen, 19, faces a new trial next week after prosecutors appealed his acquittal for violating Norway’s data break-in laws with his DeCSS program.
Now, a new security ripping program called QTFairUse was posted – along with the message So sue me – on an Internet home page under Johansen’s name.
The new program circumvents ITune’s anti-copying program, MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding, by legally opening and playing a music file, but then, essentially, draining the music into a new and parallel file.
Posted by Muddy at November 26, 2003 06:01 PM | TrackBackIf it can be devised, it has a demise.
The irony of the dvd piracy debacle is that serious piracy, on the level that costs hollywood so much money is accomplished simply by finding a shady employee at a pressing plant. All you need is one authentic copy...
As far as music piracy goes, hey, I don't like piracy in any form, but obscene pricing doesn't help. I'm used to paying 12-15 bux for a new cd at home in Atlanta, but here in Cali, I see prices upward of 20 dollars. Knowing that is costs about 25 cents to physically manufacture the cd and case, the artists sees about 7 cents and about 1 dollar of the first 50k-100k copies pays for production (for an average artist that is, obviously some albums have unbelievable production costs.) Someone is obviously making some pretty obscene profits in there.
Posted by: skywalker at November 26, 2003 09:00 PMdude 20 bucks tell me where you shop!!! CALI sUCKS BALLS!
Posted by: kevin at November 29, 2003 03:29 PMWell, it's more an issue of their "leadership" or rather lack thereof taxing them to death here! You know that even though I didn't work in this state for most of the year, if I was not military I would have had to have paid state incomet axes in California for what I made here AND in Georgia, and then paid on that same money in Georgia too! Thank God I'm military! No joke either on that one.
Posted by: skywalker at November 30, 2003 06:19 PMI didn't mention the obscene sales tax either...it's 9 or 10%! At home we bitched because it was 7%! It'll soon be back down to 5%.
Posted by: skywalker at November 30, 2003 06:20 PM