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.

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There are 9 additional comments
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Quote this comment Reply to this comment #1 Posted by necrosis on 09 Aug 2007 - 13:37
To bad this still doesn't let you use this service on mac...
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #2 Posted by zerolimit on 09 Aug 2007 - 14:51
so its basically saying you can keep the movie?
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #3 Posted by JiveMasterT on 09 Aug 2007 - 14:59
Heh why is this news? Hasn't FairUse4WM been around since some time in 2006?
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #4 Posted by ThePitt on 09 Aug 2007 - 15:42
Quote -
Netflix updated the Individualized Blackbox Component used to wrap DRM around the files - presumably in the hope it would render the hack ineffective
(2 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #5 Posted by vetRitsuke on 09 Aug 2007 - 16:16
Could also setup a camera and tripod to record the screen. So silly...
Quote this comment #5.1 Posted by Xsabin on 09 Aug 2007 - 16:23
This guy just wrote a small guide on the steps to download the WMV file from netflick.. this isn't anything special.
Quote this comment #5.2 Posted by JaredFrost on 10 Aug 2007 - 04:41
Quote - (Xsabin said @ #5.1)
This guy just wrote a small guide on the steps to download the WMV file from netflick.. this isn't anything special.


Didn't know you? the term hacker is now applied to script kiddies that write guides
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #6 Posted by Engine Skight on 09 Aug 2007 - 19:04
Quote -
This hack is likely to appeal only to geeks.

Oyh, I think so.
Quote this comment #6.1 Posted by +mrbester on 10 Aug 2007 - 09:19
Until someone releases an automation program to do it for you with just a couple of clicks. Wrap it in a NullSoft installer package and you don't even get the hassle of extracting a zip to a folder and doubleclicking the executable...
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