Big bother: DVD Jon has Steve Jobs in a twist

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This was published 14 years ago

Big bother: DVD Jon has Steve Jobs in a twist

By Asher Moses
Updated

If there was any doubt that DVD Jon was Apple chief executive Steve Jobs's No.1 nemesis, it evaporated this week when the renowned Norwegian hacker released his competitor to the iTunes Music Store.

Jon Lech Johansen, who became known as DVD Jon after he cracked the encryption used on DVDs when he was 15, has released a new version of his doubleTwist software that allows iPod owners to completely bypass iTunes and iPhoto when buying and managing their music, videos and photos.

The release of the software comes just months after DVD Jon erected a giant banner ad on the side of the flagship Apple Store in downtown San Francisco that encouraged passers-by to bypass iTunes and the iPhone.

The ad placement, in a cheeky position that appeared to be right outside the store but was actually plastered beside a train station exit, was timed to coincide with Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference. The ad was modified and removed at the request of transit authorities several times, most likely due to pressure from Apple.

The ad, plastered on the side of an Apple Store but pulled down this week and, inset, DVD Jon.

The ad, plastered on the side of an Apple Store but pulled down this week and, inset, DVD Jon.

In a further slight, Johansen released a clip parodying Apple's famous "1984" ad for the Mac, which portrayed IBM as an Orwellian overlord and Apple as the leader of the rebellion. The original was directed by Ridley Scott.

In Johansen's version, made 25 years after the original, it is Jobs who is the oppressive Big Brother figure. The clip quickly went viral and has amassed hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube.

"No other choices shall detract from our glory," Jobs says in the clip, before a voiceover announces "on October 6, doubleTwist brings you ... choice."

doubleTwist's co-founder Monique Farantzos told the BBC that, while Apple used to symbolise the rebel, "I see Apple as the new Microsoft and so it felt natural to do this advert this way."

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Farantzos said a "darker side" of Apple was coming out and pointed to examples including the company rejecting iPhone applications such as Google Voice for questionable reasons and Apple blocking the Palm Pre handset from syncing with iTunes.

The doubleTwist software is cosmetically very similar to iTunes but, unlike Apple's software, allows owners of iPods, BlackBerrys and hundreds of other devices to manage their media libraries and even buy music downloads via Amazon.

It allows iPod users to break free from Apple's locked down iPod-iTunes ecosystem and play their iTunes music library on any device.

Over the years Johansen has also broken Apple's wireless encryption and iPhone activation process.

"To put this into context, doubleTwist debuted not just as an alternative music manager for people with or without Apple players, but as a giant, coded jab at iTunes, Apple and the way they do business," wrote gadget blog Gizmodo.

Another influential technology industry blog, TechCrunch, proclaimed: "It's probably safe to say that the new doubleTwist music store is actually easier to use to download music than iTunes is, simply because there's so much less going on.

Johansen, who has built his career around opening up closed systems via software hacking, is the perfect antidote to Jobs, whose own success has come partly from locking customers in to closed, proprietary ecosystems that are completely within his control.

doubleTwist counts Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing and former Disney boss Michael Ovitz among its investors.

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