DRM

DVD Jon has done it again. First he said “@%$&* You” (in Norwegian, of course) to the MPAA when he hacked the DVD code in 2000. Then in ‘05 he claimed to have hacked his way through the bramble called iTunes DRM. Now he has claimed to have hacked through the iPhone.

I’ve found a way to activate a brand new unactivated iPhone without giving any of your money or personal information to AT&T...The iPhone does not have phone capability, but the iPod and WiFi work. Stay tuned!

So now what? If DVD Jon does in fact work his way around AT&T and Apple with the iPhone, will it really make a difference? Was the barrier to purchase primarily the carrier the iPhone was on? Yes and no.

I would argue that although AT&T has a bad reputation for dropped calls and poor customer service, the barrier to success was price, not carrier. I heard nothing but bad things about AT&T yet did it stop me from buying the iPhone? No way.

But that’s me. For those in other countries where… more...

This past week at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft announced their very own DRM format for cell phones called PlayReady. It seems that Microsoft might just be planning something big with this Zune phone after all. According to ITWire, “PlayReady promises to be compatible with Windows Media DRM 10 and the PlaysForSure DRM format. Microsoft will also provide an interoperability program so content may be transferred to “qualifying DRM and content protection technologies - which means it could be compatible with Microsoft’s new Zune MP3 player.”

[Via ITWire]

British firm, Omnifone, today announced at the 3GSM Congress in Barcelona a new service which aims to take the iPhone and iTunes combination out of the picture. The service is called MusicStation and allows users to download musical content onto their mobile phones through their mobile network operator - read the lines my friends, no computer required.

The service will allow users to browse the charts, sample songs, download songs, create playlists for others to download and read the latest music news via an OTA (Over The Air) service running on both 2.5G and 3G platforms for just £1.99 a week.

The service will be available to over 23 network providers in Western Europe covering a total of 40 countries and almost 700 million users on the latest mobile handsets running Java or a Symbian operating system. Apple, beware!

[Via Computing News]