“Norway’s best known IT export, DVD Jon, has hacked encryption coding in Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, opening up content broadcast for the multimedia player to alternative devices on multiple platforms,” Gavin Clarke reports for The Register. “Jon Lech Johansen has reverse engineered a proprietary algorithm, which is used to wrap Media Player NSC files and ostensibly protect them from hackers sniffing for the media’s source IP address, port or stream format. He has also made a decoder available.”
“The hacker hopes his move will make content streamed to Media Player more widely available to users of alternative players on non-Windows platforms,” Clarke reports. “His latest hack was done to make Media Player content available to the open source VideoLAN Client (VLC) streaming media player. VLC is available for download to 12 different operating systems and Linux distributions and has seen more than six million downloads to Mac… Johansen told The Register he’d acted following requests for NSC support in VLC. One developer is already hard at work integrating Johansen’s decoder into the VLC. Johansen said: ‘Windows Media Player is not very good and Windows and Mac users should not be forced to use it to view such [NSC] streams.'”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Resurrection Day comes quickly for PyMusique – March 22, 2005
The day the PyMusique died; Apple kills DVD Jon’s iTunes Music Store hack – March 21, 2005
‘PyMusique’ lets users buy songs without DRM from Apple’s iTunes Music Store – March 18, 2005
Say what you will about Slick Willie. He was not “stupid”.
Niether is W. A complete ass maybe. A little slow on the uptake. A corporate tool. A backwards redneck. Grandson of a Nazi sympathizer. Son of CIA. Next in line at the Carlyle Group maybe.
Not stupid.
Most people: cattle.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t DVD Jon the same person that cracked the iTunes encryption algorithm?
I hope he works on iTMS DRM soon. Now that’d definitely be good news!
I hope he works on iTMS DRM soon. Now that’d definitely be good news!
I hope he works on iTMS DRM soon. Now that’d definitely be good news!
“i don’t get why there are still a lot of people backing/adopting Microsoft technology after all that we learned about Microsoft and its business practices. the virus factor alone should be enough reason to abandon the platform completely.”
Because people are stupid.
“Niether is W. A complete ass maybe. A little slow on the uptake. A corporate tool. A backwards redneck. Grandson of a Nazi sympathizer. Son of CIA. Next in line at the Carlyle Group maybe.
Not stupid.”
No, he’s stupid as a stick, trust me.
muntz,
I thought it was the states responsiblilty to first take care of natural disasters and then call in the Feds if they can’t handle it.
Let us not forget that W is an iPod user.
Why is it that neither G. Bush senior not Jeb Bush have the “good ol’ boy, down home” Texan accent? Is Dubya faking it?
How come this guy isn’t in prison.
And why are all you Apple fan boys saying how great it is, yet when he cracked iTunes you were all over him like a rash?
Dear All,
This may in fact be really old news. I’ve been using this version of VLC (0.8.2) for over a month. Just subscribe to http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/ and you get all the updates sent to your email account.
Oh, and by the way VLC rocks; it’ll play just about any movie format. It still needs work but anyone who understands software numbering systems knows that this is still in the beta stage. As for Apple’s DVD Player there is no excuse. Try Nice Player instead. Yes it’s still in beta stage as well but between the two they leave Apple’s player for dead. My two bob’s worth.
where are you?,cowboys,ww2 soldiers,men on the moon,today all my dreams about you…where are we going to see to find new dreams ?.
“anyone who understands software numbering systems knows that this is still in the beta stage”
And anyone who understands projects like these knows that it will probably never leave the beta stage. I swear, the unwillingness of some open-source projects to suck it up and call a release “1.0” astounds me. I use VLC often and it’s easily worthy of being called 1.0. Sure there are some bugs, but they’re minor, and what 1.0 release doesn’t have bugs?
i dont get it how does this work
VLC — a shining example of open source greatware. MW: peace.
inferno10:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t DVD Jon the same person that cracked the iTunes encryption algorithm?
Ummm, no. He cracked DVD encryption, hence the name.
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Where can I reach this DVD Jon. I may have a little job for him.
Concerned,
Thank you for pointing out, yet again, MDN’s short memory and tunnelvision in the face of hypocracy.
MDN flip-flops worse than John Kerry. Oh, and speaking of stupid Presidents – John Kerry fiiinally released his Yale transcripts and he had a lower GPA than Bush. Hmmm….
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student?mode=PF