SAN FRANCISCO — Jon Lech Johansen, also known as "DVD Jon," certainly knows how to rankle the establishment.
As a teen, he cracked and published the code for breaking the content-scramble encryption system on DVDs.
Years of legal battles later, he's gone legitimate, with big-named investors such as Michael Ovitz and Li Ka-Shing behind his San Francisco-based company, doubleTwist.
Now 25, he's flipped a bird of sorts to the establishment again, this time zeroing in on Apple. His ad campaign for the doubleTwist software promises, "The Cure for iPhone Envy."
Those same words, in addition to, "Your iTunes library on any device in seconds," appear on a giant 15-foot-plus banner advertisement adjacent to Apple's store in San Francisco. "That's a great spot for us," Johansen quipped in a telephone interview Thursday.
"We're trying to convey you don't need to get an iPhone to have a great media experience," he continued. The software, he said, has just moved out of its nearly two-year incubation stage.
He said it was the software's first outdoor advertising campaign, which he intimated was initially marred by Apple.
He suspects Apple had a hand in the ad being removed last Friday, hours after it first appeared on prime real estate adorning a subway entrance next to the Apple store.
"It's pretty obvious what's going on here," Johansen wrote on his blog.
Neither Apple nor Titan Worldwide, the company that markets the ad space, immediately responded to inquiries.
Johansen wanted the ad displayed Monday, the first day of the Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. That's when the Cupertino, California-based company unveiled a host of new products and prices. But it was taken down, Johansen said, because he was told the ad did not allow enough light through the subway station window.
The entrepreneur said he submitted the same ad to Titan Worldwide with a white background instead of a black one. He said Titan rejected that one, too.
Finally, the ad with a transparent background was approved and displayed Wednesday afternoon, Johansen said. Pending another brouhaha, the ad will remain there for months, he said.
He declined to say how much the ad cost. "It was a pretty big chunk of change."
The doubleTwist software, according to the company's web site, allows "All of your stuff, on all your devices, with all your friends – in seconds." That includes video, music and pictures.
It's free. A premium, paid version is coming soon.
It's also legal, he said.
"We have a law firm," he said, "looking at all of our products making sure we are on the right side of the law."
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