iPod "FairPlay System" has been Hacked

That's right readers, the "lovable" Fairplay system has been hacked. Now the hacker who hacked the code, Jon Lech Johansen, says that instead of publishing the hack on the net, he will be selling the crack to MP3 companies through his company called, DoubleTwist. This crack will allow MP3 companies to allow their users to buy songs from iTunes and then put it on other "non-iPod" players. For those of you are are unaware, here is a brief run down of what FairPlay is...

FairPlay is a digital rights management (DRM) technology created by Apple Computer, built in to the QuickTime multimedia technology and used by the iPod, iTunes, and the iTunes Store. Every file bought from the iTunes Store with iTunes is encoded with FairPlay. It digitally encrypts AAC audio files and prevents users from playing these files on "unauthorized" computers.

FairPlay will allow a protected track to be used in the following ways:

* The protected track may be copied to any number of iPod portable music players.
* The protected track may be played on up to five (originally three) authorized computers simultaneously.
* The protected track may be copied to a standard Audio CD any number of times.
o The resulting CD has no DRM and may be ripped, encoded and played back like any other CD. However, CD's created by users do not attain first sale rights and cannot be legally leased, lent, sold or distributed to others by the creator.
o The CD audio still bears the artifacts of compression, so converting it back into a loss format such as MP3 may aggravate the sound artifacts of encoding (see transitions).
* A particular playlist within iTunes containing a protected track can be copied to a CD only up to seven times (originally ten times) before the playlist must be changed.

(wikipedia)