DVD Jon adds DRM instead of removing it

'DVD' Jon Lech Johanson has been talking to the world's press about his new company, DoubleTwist.

Jon is famous for cracking Apple's Fairplay DRM, as well as his previous exploits opening up DVD encryption. Now, he's going rather in a new direction.

Obviously, breaking Apple's DRM is illegal in the US, under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. But what Jon has done is replicate it - created a compatible version of it, with his own code, which does the same thing.

What's the point of that? Well, it means that content providers can use Jon's company to encode their own content with Apple-compatible DRM for playback in iTunes and on iPods. Currently, companies have to go directly to Apple to create iPod-usable files, since the Fairplay DRM is not an open standard.

However, Apple is picky about who they work with, and also drives a hard bargain when it comes to financial deals. DoubleTwist will provide a competitor to Apple for licensing its own technology.

Jon claims that this is all legal and above board, and even claims that he's had dinner with Jobs to talk through the whole matter.

Do you think Jon can pull it off? Or will Apple sue him out of existence? Give us your thoughts over in the forums.