Norwegian hacker DVD Jon who broke the security code on movie DVDs and published it on the Net, is back again, this time to torment record companies and their online resellers such as iTunes.
DoubleTwist, a San Francisco-based company that Jon Lech Johansen, aka DVD Jon, co-founded and serves as its CTO, has a software product that enables users to copy and play copy-protected songs from iTunes and other online services on many popular non-Apple devices. They can also share tracks with their friends even though their friends have incompatible devices.
Currently iTunes purchasers must copy the copy-protected track they purchased from iTunes on to a CD and then rip (copy) the track back to the PC in a non-protected format such as MP3. DoubleTwist does it in one quick step.
The company says the product allows consumers to share user-generated and professionally created audio, photos and video clips via computers, certain mobile phones, PSP and all MP3 players.
DoubleTwist lets users share, play and sync tracks. It includes “Twist me,” a social network application that lets users share media directly from their profile pages such as in Facebook.
DoubleTwist users can synchronize media with their or their friends’ mobile devices by “dragging and dropping” media files into a desktop folder that then uses the Net to copy the files onto the mobile devices. DoubleTwist converts files from one format to the formats the destination device uses. Users can then create and share playlists with each other even though they use otherwise incompatible devices.
Compatible mobile hardware includes: Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP), Nokia’s N-series devices, Sony Ericsson’s Walkman and Cybershop products, LG’s Viewty and smart phones that use Microsoft’s Windows Mobile including Palm’s Treo and HTC.
“We’ve built a format agnostic solution that handles the complexity of file and device compatibility so consumers don’t have to,” said Johansen.
DoubleTwist doesn’t really “break” the code of a copy-protected track. Instead it “plays” the song in fast-forward and simultaneously re-records it. So, unlike DVD Jon’s DVD adventure, no copyrighted DRM is being illegally exposed.
“Users can only play back the music they have already purchased and they are authorized to play,” said doubleTwists’s CEO and co-founder Monique Farantzos. A sharer’s friends can listen to what had been copy-protected tracks whether or not the friends had purchased rights to the tracks. Not mentioned was that they can play music that other DoubleTwist users have stripped of its copy protection.
The labels and their lawyers are sure to assert that doubleTwist is aiding and abetting the illegal distribution of copyrighted content. Farantzos said it takes about 30 minutes to convert 100 songs and there is about a 5% sound quality degradation. The company said its product is a legal method for sharing media with friends that won’t cause a surge in piracy.
DoubleTwist says it is not enabling file sharing on a massive scale. “All we are facilitating are friends sending things to one another,” Farantzos said. The friend-to-friend file sharing, she said, is in keeping with what the labels are doing by distributing online music tracks that have no copy protection.
DoubleTwist says it is devoted to helping consumers liberate their media and be able to play their media on all their devices. Its intent, it said, is to empower consumers to share, consume and sync audio, video and photos regardless of device, file format or social network.
Farantzos said, “When you receive an e-mail, you can read it on your Blackberry, Web mail or Outlook. E-mail just works. With digital media such as video from a friend’s cell phone or your own iTunes playlists, it’s a jungle out there. It can be an hour-long exercise in futility to convert files to the correct format and transfer them to your Sony PSP or your phone. The digital media landscape has become a tower of Babel, alienating and frustrating consumers. Our goal is to provide a simple and well integrated solution that the average consumer can use to eliminate the headaches associated with their expanding digital universe.”
It currently works on Windows XP or Vista and is available as a free download. A Mac version is expected in Q2 2008. Support for additional mobile devices will be added on a regular basis, the company said, and requested users to tell it what devices they’d like to see added.
The next thing you know, doubleTwist will be saying their product will actually increase sales of music tracks because it will help promote new songs and new artists. That’s the same claim that the illegal P2P file sharing services such as Napster and Sharman Networks’ Kazaa used to make.
Investors in doubleTwist include Norway’s NorthZone Ventures and Switzerland’s Index Ventures, which invested in Skype, Last.fm and MySQL before those start ups were acquired by eBay, CBS and Sun respectively.
The doubleTwist product comes at a time when the labels are shedding copy protection for the tracks they sell online. Music that comes on CDs, of course, has never had copy protection.
The DRM free tracks that are available online at places like iTunes and Amazon.com have higher audio quality than the copy-protected tracks have.
It still amazes some that the labels removed copy protection from their online tracks when the makers of MP3 players, led by Apple chief Steve Jobs, called for it. Having a large and readily available supply of DRM-free music helps makers of MP3 players sell more units. It’s a case of consumers paying for the razor and then getting the blades for free.
At a time when the labels are suffering financially because music CDs have no copy protection, it would seem to make sense to increase copy protection, not do away with it. Surely the labels are thinking about adopting an optical disk technology that would have DRM built into its inner workings just as the studios have insisted on for movie DVDs and especially for HD optical discs such as Blu-ray and HD DVD.
It is not until the labels control the technology, rather than having the technology’s users control them, that the labels will be able to right their ships financially. It’s either that or figure out how to get some amount each month from music listeners. One possibility is to lobby governments to impose a music tax. Please don’t laugh at that idea. Many countries already have a special tax on physical media – tapes and CDs – and the devices that play them that is given to the industry for compensation. The other possibility is to get broadband service providers – wired and mobile – to add a fee to their monthly charges. Neither seems likely to happen.
Executives at the labels that we talked to dismissed the idea of having control over the media that’s used to distribute their goodies as impractical. Until that happens, however, it’s seems certain that technology will continue to be developed that’ll allow users to share music. The development of technology, as we have all learned, happens at a quickening pace. It does not stop. It does not slow down. DoubleTwist is one more example of technology’s inexorability.