Liberate iTunes (and all your media) with DoubleTwist

A couple of years ago a kid from Norway, named Jon Lech Johansen, broke the encryption put on DVD’s to stop people from coping them onto their computers. A year or so later he did the same thing to the iTunes music store and made it possible for folks to share their music purchases. He was pretty unpopular with the big media companies but geek-boys the world over loved him, so he went legit and started a venture backed company. However, going legit isnt what it used to be. His latest application, let’s you share your music and other media with friends and family no matter what device they might be using. The new application called doubleTwist allows you to convert all your iTunes purchases to plain old mp3’s for you can shares them across devices. and it help you manage that process. The application is still in beta (early beta if the number of crashes I’ve had is any indicator) so you might want to check out the PDF press release here , the blog reaction here or the early articles here and here.

Thanks to the erudite scholar and gentleman, david touve for the tip.

Judge Orders TorrentSpy to Spy on Users For MPAA

CNET.com is running an article about a secret order issued by Armenian dictator US Magistrate Judge, Jacqueline Chooljian. The order would require TorrentSpy to log all user activity on the site and turn the logs over to the MPAA, for review in their ongoing witch hunt battle against Torrent sites. The order was issued and sealed on May 29th but on Friday Hon. Judge Chooljian stayed the order giving TorrentSpy until June 12 to file an appeal. In the CNET article a TorrentSpy representative says that they will block US access to the site before they allow users to be tracked. They have also posted a short message on their site about the court case and how they plan to tackle it. US courts have wrestled with the issue of websites being held responsible for files/material they neither distribute nor control and only point to several times, and I’m pretty sure generally these sites cant be touched. Lets hope it stays that way. But just in case you might want to get familiar with Anonymizer and check here, here and here for simple ways to change your MAC address.