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DVD Jon’s Ad at the Apple Store: The Mystery Continues

Don Clark

It’s up. It’s down. It’s up. It’s down. That’s the brief, updated history of a billboard-style ad posted by the Norwegian hacker Jon Lech Johansen next to Apple’s (AAPL) store in downtown San Francisco, the subject of an item here last Saturday.

To recap: the ad was designed to promote music-management software offered by doubleTwist, a startup formed by Johansen (known as “DVD Jon” for breaking the copy protection on DVDs). The company arranged to have the ad posted on a glass façade next to a stairway leading to the subway operated by Bay Area Rapid Transit, better known as BART. From some angles, the location made it seem like the ad was on the wall of Apple’s retail store.

The ad first went up June 5, three days before Apple’s closely watched developer conference (where this year the company unveiled a new iPhone and Mac laptops). But it was removed before the show; Johansen said that he was told that BART objected because it was too dark, blocking light from the stairway.

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