From the people who brought you DeCSS

[Loser]

Jon Lech Johansen has done it again.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/interne....ap/index.html

Gotta love those Scandinavians. Actually, it may just be the Finns and the Norwegians. I can't remember any Swedes getting in on the Computer Anarchy Movement.

[Atrocities]

Why to go little man. Break that code!

[PvK]

[Baron Munchausen]

This seems to say that he's found a way to capture the raw data from the QuickTime player rather than independently broken the encryption. It's the same old problem of trying to control content on a general use computer. I'm sure there will be derivative programs that produce shareable MP3s in short order. And I'm sure he will indeed be sued again over this. If not by Apple then by the company that produces their codecs. Besides breaking into iTunes music, it will also be possible to convert QuickTime movies to any other format you want with this. The people who own those codecs will not be pleased. They get a cut from the sites that show QT movie trailers & such.

[Fyron]

It is not as if the Quick Time movie format is in any way superior to the better free movie codecs out there...

[Baron Munchausen]

Heh... of course not. MPEG, RealPlayer, Windows Media and several other formats all have good encoders. It's almost always a matter of the quality of the encoder software and the competance of the original content producers rather than a question of the codec/format.

Instead, it's like this company inventeded this codec/format for Apple and signed a bunch of contracts with them in order to make money. If someone starts converting all those cool movie trailers and other exclusive features to other formats then people cannot be forced to install their player anymore, and the sites relying on the draw of QuickTime features to enhance their traffic and so advertising revenue will suffer. The pain will travel up the food chain and the original company (who's name I have spaced) will also suffer. Therefore: This guy has 'damaged' them financially by breaking into their lockbox and he's going to be sued.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

so? there's a free, downloadable Version of realplayer, isn't there? still stolen music. they have a right to encode the music any way they want.

[Fyron]

There are alternative programs that use the QuickTime and Realplayer codecs already... have been for quite some time.

[Loser]

Second trial: shot down