Looking for a new way to use FairUse4WM? Have a Netflix account? If so, go on and roll your sleeves up, as a crafty (and acrimonious) fellow has managed to find a workaround that enables you to not only decrypt the DRM-laced "Watch Now" movie files, but save them to your hard drive for future viewing. Admittedly, the process is somewhere between painless and potentially frustrating, but the gist of it involves Windows Media Player 11, FairUse4WM, Notepad, a Netflix account, and a broadband connection. Through a series of hoop jumping, users can now strip the "Watch Now" files free of DRM and watch them at their leisure and on any video-playing device they choose. Granted, there's certainly issues of legality mixed in here, but where there's a will, there's a way. [Warning: Read link language potentially NSFW]

[Via TVSquad]

We haven't had a chance to play with BBC's nifty new iPlayer online video service yet, but we're hearing that FairUse4WM strips the files of their DRM -- anyone try it out yet? Let us know in comments!

[Thanks, Chris]

Oh, IT'S ON. After months of eager anticipation, it looks like either Viodentia has finally come out of hiding, or s/he's passed the torch on to another (Doom9 forum user Divine Tao?) -- but either way it looks like MS DRM IBX components up to version 11.0.6000.6324 are good to go with the latest version of FairUse4WM, v1.3 Fix 2 (read: this is the update we know you've all been waiting for). We haven't yet confirmed ourselves, but feel free to tell us whether you got a sweet taste of DRM freedom without having to continue using XP and Windows Media Player 10 with that subscription music service.

[Thanks, Abdul and Adam]

Hey Viodentia, you can come out of hiding now -- we have good news for you and the rest of the DRM-hating world. Microsoft has gone home with its tail between its legs, and very, very quietly dropped their lawsuit against you. (In official terms, they filed a notice of voluntary dismissal of all claims with the Seattle Federal court.) For those not in the know, Microsoft charged Viodentia with "copyright infringement" after they showed the world how easily FairUSE4WM could circumvent its PlaysForSure DRM. Microsoft's reason for dropping the charges? Simply enough: they couldn't find Viodentia. Hey Microsoft, instead of trying to shackle those of us interested in the fair use interoperability of our music, why not redirect your substantial legal resources to negotiate some DRM-free music (and video while you're at it) with the majors? We hear EMI might be interested.

[Thanks, Steven J.]

It's roamed relatively unscathed for a few months now, but it appears that BackupHDDVD -- the app that helps bypass the AACS copy protection on HD DVDs -- has been hit with its first major setback, drawing a DMCA takedown notice and vanishing from its perch at SourceForge as a result. Speaking to Wired blog 27B Stroke 6, SourceForge parent company VA Software's General Counsel Jay Seirmarco revealed that the AACS's complaint centered on copyrighted cryptographic keys allegedly contained within BackupHDDVD, which he says was verified to be true, giving SourceForge reason to remove the software. He added, however, that SourceForge would be willing to host a version of BackupHDDVD that did not contain the keys in question. This course of events will no doubt be familiar to anyone's who's followed the FairUse4WM saga, in which Microsoft issued a similar notice demanding that the software be taken down from its host site. Of course, BackupHDDVD isn't the only bit of software that messes with the copy protection on HD DVDs, although, as of yet, it's main rival AnyDVD HD remains untouched and readily available, albeit for a price.

[Via Slashdot]

Legal analysis courtesy of Scott McMillan, Zachary Sharpe, and Trevor Adler of The Columbia Science and Technology Law Review.


The press and blogosphere have recently been abuzz over programs that remove copyright protections technologies known as Digital Rights Management (DRM) from purchased or rented media files. These DRMs restrict a consumer's use of the media – morality notwithstanding, they are the only thing preventing you from copying your music or video files onto all of your friends' computers. DRM-stripping programs remove such restrictions from the file (and typically violate your terms of service agreement, to say the least). In September, Microsoft filed suit against the hacker(s) responsible for one such DRM-stripping program, FairUse4WM, purportedly created by the now notorious Viodentia. Other such programs reportedly target the DRM protections of the iTunes Music Store and AllOfMP3, among others. What will become of Microsoft's lawsuit? What does this have to do with "fair use" and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)? What follows is a brief overview in two parts. In the first, we'll discuss current issues surrounding fair use with regard to the DMCA, and in the second we'll approach Microsoft's legal actions against Viodentia for FairUse4WM.

What fair use is, and how it works alongside the DMCA

"Fair use" is a doctrine under US copyright law that permits certain acts that might otherwise be considered copyright infringement. Copyright law gives authors the right to exclude others from their work, and can sometimes get in the way of the ultimate goal of copyright, which is to promote progress in art and science. The theory here is that without copyright protections, many artists and authors would be discouraged from distributing their work. The fair use exception allows copyright protections to remain in place while enabling consumers some degree of freedom in their use of purchased media. For example, it was generally understood that ripping CDs for personal use was legal because it fell under the fair use exception. However, fair use was dealt a serious blow with the enactment of the DMCA in 1998 and the widespread use of DRM protections. Indeed, fair use is not a defense to a DMCA claim.

After yesterday's news that Microsoft was launching a lawsuit campaign against the John Does responsible for FairUse4WM, we weren't expecting the next volley to come so soon. So it's somewhat contrary to expectations that Viodentia has released the newest version of his software to counter Microsoft's latest PlaysForSure IBX update (dated 9/23, regarding the memo which we recently printed). We asked Viodentia about Redmond's accusation that he and/or his associates broke into its systems in order to obtain the IP necessary to crack PlaysForSure; Vio replied that he's "utterly shocked" by the charge. "I didn't use any Microsoft source code. However, I believe that this lawsuit is a fishing expedition to get identity information, which can then be used to either bring more targeted lawsuits, or to cause other trouble." We're sure Microsoft would like its partners and the public to think that its DRM is generally infallible and could only be cracked by stealing its IP, so Viodentia's conclusion about its legal tactics seems pretty fair, obvious, and logical to us. An American megacorp swinging around bogus indictments in order to root out a hacker? Surely you jest!

Instead of our usual run of interviews with industry luminaries and the like, today we're aiming the camera a different direction. We had a few things to ask the person whom we've identified as Viodentia, the creator of FairUse4WM -- the thorn in Microsoft's (and Yahoo's, and Napster's, and Real's, etc.) digital media business for a month now. Seems at once likely and not that the big DRM scheme developed by the largest software company was broken and broken again by a single person, but here we are -- and here's what Viodentia had to say about the digital music business, where Microsoft went wrong with PlaysForSure, and what s/he thinks about this latest memo and patch.

Thanks for granting this interview. So FairUse4WM caused quite a stir. How long did it take you to crack Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM? Was anyone else involved?

Finding a way to extract key information took about a couple of weeks of spare time. Going from a prototype to a more general tool took a couple of months. I am the only developer, although my friends served as early beta testers and sounding boards, and with the initial release I've gotten to know some very helpful people.

So apart from any ideological or political distaste you may have for DRM, do you have any personal reasons for wanting to crack Windows Media DRM? Like, are you a Rhapsody or Napster subscriber?

No, due to geographic location, I'm unable to subscribe to those services. Only my selfish rationale is the challenge in pitting my skills against the industry leader.

Without revealing the secret sauce, what were the fundamental flaws with PlaysForSure that allowed you to break it? Did Microsoft know about these flaws?

Once code is released, there's really nothing secret anymore -- Microsoft didn't follow standard security practices, and left sensitive data unencrypted on the stack while calling routines out of kernel32.dll. Even when they fix this by changing malloc() to alloca(), it'll still be a big task to audit other sensitive routines for DLL calls. On a theoretical level, they have to send the decryption keys outside of their control, and their only defense is through obfuscation.

The last time we heard from Microsoft on the topic of FairUse4WM, the infamous PlaysForSure stripping application, it was a red-alert memo after the release of version 1.2 pledging to patch that version as they had the first. Now, it occurs to us that once the floodgates have been opened there might not be any going back, but read the latest memo for yourself -- we're reserving judgment, namely because we're not DRM (or anti-DRM) developers.

As the war wages on between Microsoft's Consumer Media Technology group and the creators of FairUse4WM, so continues the march of memos and software updates being passed around to Redmond's partners in the business who are making use of the ailing PlaysForSure DRM scheme. After Microsoft fought back by readjusting the individualized blackbox component (IBX) in an attempt to shut down FairUse4WM, the DRM-stripping appsters created a second version (1.2), which circumvented that protection. Well, we have our hands on yet another Microsoft memo on the topic -- this time much more vague -- reasserting their commitment to patching this issue by dedicating "teams working around the clock" to it. Ouch. We suspect future memos may come watermarked, or... wait for it... DRMed, so don't be too shocked if the trail turns cold on communiques. War is hell, people.

Mere days after Microsoft started pushing a new IBX version for "protecting" PlaysForSure files from its users, the FairUse4WM guys have thrown down a new version that deals with that and other little DRM-circumvention obstacles. The new release -- version 1.2 -- knocks out DRMv1 files you've ripped yourself with protection, breaks down individualized WM9 files and has a workaround for WM11beta2. Of course, we're guessing it won't be long until Microsoft has another quick update to break FairUse4WM again, but it seems like a more drastic update might be in order to shut down this hack for good. We're sure you're well familiar with our stance on this whole issue, and hope that version 1.2 treats you right.

Leave it to the Hawthorne Effect, right? It's been three days since we spilled the beans about the PlaysForSure-stripping FairUse4WM app, and already Microsoft's Windows Digital Media Division is issuing notices to its PlaysForSure licensees regarding patching up the problem. It's a little difficult for the likes of us to decode, but check it out for yourself, we've printed the letter in its entirety (sans email addresses) for your perusal. From what we can glean, Microsoft's prepared to combat this "new circumvention tool" by patching the individualized blackbox component (IBX) in PlaysForSure either as a push down through the software, or as an update available in the near future to Windows users. We won't butcher the technical nuances of this one any further though, so we'll let you guys see what's what and figure out how to keep everyone in the Fair Use fair use loop. Either way, guess it looks like Microsoft wasn't listening to our pleas; are you there Bill? It's us, Engadget.

We know that you're already probably working to fix the, um, hole that's been discovered in Windows DRM 10/11, but we're going to ask you this anyway: please don't stop consumers from using FairUse4WM to remove copy protection from music they've downloaded.

We understand why you put DRM on these files in the first place – the major labels won't grant you (or rather the companies that are using your DRM) a license to sell their music without it – but there are some good reasons why you should let this one slide.

So far as the yet very quiet forums are claiming, a new app called FairUse4WM can be used to strip Windows Media DRM 10 and 11 (i.e. PlaysForSure, but not WM DRM 9). Yes, yes, we know, we've heard this song and dance before. But before we proceed, let's just be totally clear on how the system works: providers like Napster and Yahoo Music Unlimited provide subscription service for unlimited access to Windows Media DRMed files; stop paying the fee, stop getting access to the files -- but you already knew all this. We tried FairUse4WM and we can verify that it quickly and easily stripped the DRM from our Napster To Go tracks, and made them freely available to play on our Mac (which, of course, has Flip4Mac installed). In other words, it's a simple, apparently lossless, one-step method for making your files playable after you're no longer paying fees on your subscription service. The app didn't work on our Vongo videos, but we can verify with all certainty that yes, Windows Media DRM can now be easily and quickly stripped from PlaysForSure media services. Now watch as Microsoft shuts down the forums and runs damage control in order to prevent an digital media entire platform from collapsing. Click on for a couple more pics of the app in action!

P.S. - Kinda goes without saying but we take absolutely zero accountability for what you may do with FairUse4WM, ok?

[Thanks, Frank]