Famous Norwegian hacker Jon Lech Johansen has released software which allows the sharing of songs bought on Apple's iTunes on other devices, among other features. Known as DVD Jon, Johansen has reached worldwide fame when he cracked the DVD encryption system at age 15. He now owns software company doubleTwist with partner Monique Farantzos.

"When you receive an e-mail, you can read it on your Blackberry, web mail, or Outlook. E-mail just works," said DVD Jon's partner Farantzos in a statement.

"With digital media such as video from a friend’s cell phone or your own iTunes playlists, it’s a jungle out there. [...] Our goal is to provide a simple and well integrated solution that the average consumer can use to eliminate the headaches associated with their expanding digital universe."

Great, I say! However, there are also some who think otherwise. Let's see... Apple! The fact that the software is available as a free download from the company's website doesn't help either. DoubleTwist doesn't think there's anything wrong with their software's legal status. "Users can only play back the music they have already purchased and they are authorized to play," said CEO Monique Farantzos.

The program works by fast-forwarding the file while recording it. This allows users to drag-&-drop copy protected media to other devices, and the software performs format conversions automatically. One hundred songs can be converted in about half an hour through this procedure. However, there is a quality degradation associated with any re-encoding process. The company estimates a quality loss of around 5 percent.

The software handles a plethora of multimedia formats, and is not limited just to audio files. Users can share with the friends they want photos, audio or video. There is plug-and-play support too. The company said that when a user connects a digital camera, mobile phone or PSP, media files are found and displayed on doubleTwist desktop.

There is only a Windows version available, but a Mac OS X version will be coming soon.

Check out their website here:
www.doubletwist.com