Hacker cracks Netflix copy restrictions
Found on The Register on Wednesday, 08 August 2007
A hacker has found a way to crack digital rights management restrictions in major movies streamed by Netflix, allowing those with a valid account to save, copy and share the videos.
Using only Internet Explorer, Windows Media player, notepad and a program called FairUse4WM, a user by the name of DIzzIE offers step-by-step directions on Rorta, a message board for hackers.
The crack requires finding the URL of the video file, downloading it, obtaining the license key and then stripping out the DRM. The 14-step process sounds like a fair bit of work, even if the restrictions imposed by Netflix (requiring movies be consumed in a browser rather than on portable devices) are onerous. Translation: this hack is likely to appeal only to geeks.
The workaround for Netflix' fix to this has also been posted. So much for DRM. Again.