Hacker's firm doubleTwist enables copying of iTunes

CHAMONIX, France (Reuters) - A start-up co-founded by famed Norwegian hacker "DVD Jon" is on Tuesday introducing a service that enables users to copy and use copy-protected Apple Inc iTunes songs on many popular non-Apple devices.

The San Francisco-based company, doubleTwist, is releasing a service that makes it easy for consumers to share both user-generated and professionally created audio, photos and video clips via computers, certain mobile phones or PSP game players.

Beyond computer-to-computer media-sharing, doubleTwist lets users synchronize media sitting on their computers to mobile devices they or their friends own, simply by "dragging and dropping" media files into a desktop folder that then drops copies of the media files onto the mobile devices over the Web.

The software initially can share files with Sony's PSP game console, Nokia's multimedia N-series phone line, Sony Ericsson's Walkman and Cybershop lines, LG's Viewty, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile smartphones such as Palm's Treo and HTC models.

Users can choose to share as many or as few media files as they wish with specific friends. DoubleTwist software converts media stored in one file format to formats used by the other devices, making it possible to create common playlists that mix songs from Apple iTunes on non-Apple devices, doubleTwist said.

DoubleTwist's trick for opening up copy-protected formats is to replay a song in fast-forward mode and capture a copy of the audio track by re-recording it. It's essentially the same process as when a user "rips," or copies, a CD onto a computer.

"Users can only play back the music they have already purchased and they are authorized to play," said Monique Farantzos, 34, doubleTwists's co-founder and chief executive.

One hundred songs can be converted in half an hour or so. DoubleTwist estimates the trick results in about a 5 percent degradation in sound-quality, similar to CD duplication. Friends can listen to copy-protected songs that doubleTwist users have shared with them, whether or not they own the rights themselves, the company said.

DoubleTwist said it has created a legal technique that balances consumers desire to share media with their friends without unleashing a new wave of wholesale piracy of copyrighted content from Napster-like file-sharing services.