A San Francisco start-up that helps Apple iTunes users to circumvent encryption and share their music more easily has won venture capital backing and launched its first products.
DoubleTwist has the controversial “DVD Jon” as a co-founder. Jon Lech Johansen, 24, earned notoriety at the age of 15 for co-authoring software that unscrambled encryption on DVDs, allowing them to be copied. He has also, over the past four years, reverse engineered Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management technology used in iTunes, freeing content to be moved around more easily.
His new venture will announce it has secured funding from Index Ventures, the European venture capital firm that has backed start-ups including Skype, Betfair and last.fm.
It is also releasing a beta version of its DoubleTwist desktop software and Twist me!, a Facebook application. They allow users to share media more easily.
One feature that may concern Apple and the recording industry is Double-Twist’s ability to read a user’s iTunes library and automatically convert purchased songs into unprotected MP3s. They can then be easily transferred to devices other than the iPods to which they are currently restricted.
DoubleTwist’s interface also allows users to “liberate” their music, photos and videos to share with other DoubleTwist users, as well as their personal devices.
“In the past, I’ve worked on things for geeks. The big opportunity here is to reach the mass market,” Mr Johansen told the Financial Times.
“If your parents can use the software you write, then you’ve really succeeded.”
Monique Farantzos, co-founder, argues the industry is moving to a DRM-free model, with Steve Jobs, Apple chief executive, advocating such a move and striking a deal with EMI. Amazon offers DRM-free music with the agreement of all four major record labels.
“When you receive an e-mail, you can read it on your Blackberry, web mail or Outlook. It just works. With digital media such as video from a friend’s cell phone or iTunes playlist, it’s a jungle out there,” Ms Farantzos says.
