Jon Lech Johansen
Jon Lech Johansen Harstad , November 18, 1983 , aka DVD Jon , is a Norwegian hacker who was involved in the development of the DeCSS program . In 2002, he was brought to trial in his country for this, but he was not found guilty of any illegal behavior. On March 5, 2003, a second trial took place with the same result.
Judgment
The process was led by Økokrim , a Norwegian unit investigation and prosecution of economic crimes, following a complaint by the Association of control copy of the DVD (DVD Copy Control Association, DVD-CCA) of the United States and the American Film Association ( Motion Picture Association, MPAA). JL Johansen denied writing the DeCSS decryption code , claiming that part of the project was started by someone from Germany.
His defense was supported by the Fundación Fronteras Electrónicas (EFF). The trial was opened in the Oslo District Court on December 9, 2002 with a request for a maximum sentence of two years in prison for Johansen . He ended acquitted . The defense argued that he had not illegally accessed the information of third parties, since JL Johansen owned the DVD . They also said that under Norwegian law, it is legal to make copies of data for personal use. The verdict was delivered on January 7, 2003, exonerating Johansen from all charges.
The ruling of the lower court was appealed by Økokrim on January 20, 2003 and on February 28 the appeals court agreed to review the case. On March 5, the court decided that the film industry’s arguments merited a repeat trial.
The second trial Johansen of DeCSS began in Oslo on 2 December 2003 and ended in acquittal on 22 December 2003. Økokrim announced on January 2, 2004 would not appeal the sentence.
Chronology
2003
In November 2003, it released QTFairUse , an open source program that dumped the “raw” output of a QuickTime AAC stream to a file, which was a way to bypass Digital Rights Management (DRM): a program used to encrypt music content from media such as those distributed by iTunes , Apple’s online music store . Despite the fact that the resulting AAC files were impossible for most music players to read at the time, it represented the first attempt to bypass Apple’s digital restrictions . One of the programs capable of reproducing these files is foobar2000 .
2004 Johansen is now a VideoLAN developer , reverse engineering FairPlay and writing help documents on VLC’s FairPlay . It has been available since January, but the first version to include support for FairPlay is VLC 0.7.1 (released on March 2).
In April 2004, it released another program: DeDRMS . Written in C #, this 230-line program also serves to remove the copy ban.
Johansen]] did not stop there. On July 7, 2004, it released FairKeys , a program that can be used to obtain keys that DeDRMS needs for the servers of the iTunes Music Store . On August 12, he announced on its website that had mocked the encryption AirPort Express from Apple , which allows users to send data files MPEG4 Apple Lossless your AirPort Express .
On November 25, 2004, it released a program that allows Linux users (via VLC) to view video files encoded with the Microsoft WMV9 proprietary codec . With Microsoft protections broken, Linux users would be able to view high-quality WMV9 content thereafter , which had previously been impossible. Microsoft has been pushing for its codec to be included in the next DVD standard.
2005
In March 2005, he released PyMusique , a Python program that allows you to download files purchased from iTunes without DRM protection .
On June 26, 2005, Johansen modified the embedded Google video player in the browser (which was based on the free VLC media player) in less than 24 hours after its launch to allow playing videos not hosted on Google servers. . The importance of the modification has been exaggerated by the media on the Internet.
Johansen appears in the documentary Info wars .
He has also reverse-engineered the communication protocol used by the JazPiper MP3 player , allowing Linux and BeOS users to use their Piper players .
2006 On January 8, 2006, he announces that he will try to hack the protection of future DVD successors: HD DVD and Blu-ray . These formats will come with an encryption system known as AACS . He even announces on the project’s website the date by which he hopes to have achieved his goal.
Also in October , Johansen and DoubleTwist Ventures announced that they had deciphered by reverse engineering system DRM from Apple for iTunes , called FairPlay . Instead of allowing people to remove rights management system, DoubleTwist would license the ability to use the system FairPlay to companies that want to offer their media to be played on the iPod without having to sign a distribution agreement with Apple.
2007
“DVD Jon” hacks iPhone the day after its release [07/05/2007 – 08:00 CET]
Norwegian super hacker Jon Lech Johansen , also known as “DVD Jon”, has designed a trick that allows you to use the iPhone phone without having to subscribe to a phone operator.
Ti Journal: In your website, Johansen explains how to use the iPhone of Apple as an iPod and browser with WiFi , without activating a subscription card or SIM .
The novelty for the case of “DVD-Jon” is that in the event that Apple opted to update the iPhone , the offline functionality would disappear if the phone had not been activated. The Johansen hack would allow to retain such functionality in the event that Apple decided to disable it.
In principle, the iPhone is marketed with an AT&T subscription. By disabling subscription mode, of course, the phone cannot be used to make phone calls.
“I have found a way to activate a brand new iPhone , which has not previously been activated, without giving away money or giving personal information to AT&T.”
