The FairUse4WM utility released by the hacker known as Viodentia has led Microsoft to file a federal lawsuit, which the company will use to try and track down the person behind the DRM-cracking tool.
Mystery Hacker Sued by Microsoft
Only through access to illegally accessed source code could Viodentia's FairUse4WM be so effective at stripping away the DRM on music obtained as part of subscriptions to services like Yahoo and Napster, according to the report on ZDNet.
A Microsoft lawyer cited in the story described Microsoft's belief that Viodentia has an advantage over other DRM crackers:
"Our own intellectual property was stolen from us and used to create this tool," said Bonnie MacNaughton, a senior attorney in Microsoft's legal and corporate affairs division. "They obviously had a leg up on any of the other hackers that might be creating circumvention tools from scratch."
Viodentia has denied Microsoft's claim of source code theft or access:
FairUse4WM has been my own creation, and has never involved Microsoft source code. I link with Microsoft's static libraries provided with the compiler and various platform SDK files.
Microsoft's legal attack has the company demanding information from Internet service providers provide information that could lead to tracking down Viodentia. The company also wants sites hosting FairUse4WM to take it down.
A music subscription service allows the subscriber to download songs for personal use. The catch is the subscription; if it is canceled the songs become unplayable thanks to Microsoft's "PlaysForSure" DRM software.
FairUse4WM removes the DRM from the songs. Devoted users of subscription services and their "all you can listen" downloads use the utility to turn a single month's subscription fee into thousands of songs they can now use after canceling the service.
Partners who have bought in to PlaysForSure for their music services are not pleased with this turn of events. Neither is Microsoft, which will use a different DRM scheme for their forthcoming Zune media player. The Zune will have an accompanying subscription service, but won't use the PlaysForSure Microsoft licenses to its partners.
iEntry 10th Anniversary
RSS
Archive
Del.icio.us
Digg
Yahoo! My Web
Furl
