Apple’s iTunes/iPod is a ended business model, built on two needful premises. One is that songs bought from iTunes will only play on iPod players. The second premise is that songs purchased from other music download sites will not play on iPods.
Now Apple’s business model is under assault – by 26-year-old hacker Jon Johansen. Johansen, of Norway, has decoded iPod’s Digital rights administration (Drm) encryption, known as FairPlay, agreeing to reputable sources.
Ipod
Johansen is development his hack ready – for a licensing fee – to businesses seeking to sell hardware contentious with iPod, and download sites contentious with iTunes.
Note that Johansen’s hack does not remove Drm from downloaded songs. It indubitably adds Drm, to trick iPods into mental that a given song has been purchased via iTunes.
If this hack takes off, will the ended business model fall apart?
Hardly. Johansen’s decision to market his hack 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 corollary 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 charge from Hackers