article: MS digital rights management scheme cracked

[Rodney K]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/22354.html

An anonymous coder named 'Beale Screamer' claims to have broken the Version-2
Microsoft digital rights management (DRM) scheme, and has produced the source
code and a DOS utility to un-protect .WMA audio files. 

The author's zipped file contains a well-written and lengthy description of 
the MS DRM weaknesses, a philosophical tract explaining why he thinks it 
necessary to crack, the source code, and the command-line utility. 

The alias Beale Screamer, incidentally, derives from the lines of 'Howard 
Beale' in the movie 'Network', we're told. "Just yell to the publishers 'I'm 
mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'" 

The motive here is said to be an assertion of fair use and a check against the
abuse of copyright for purposes of consumer extortion. 

A DRM scheme "used to give the consumer more possibilities than existed 
before," Screamer tells us. "I think the idea of limited time, full-length 
previews, or time-limited Internet-based rentals is excellent. If DRM was 
only used for this, in order to give us more options than we previously had, 
I would not have taken the effort to break the scheme. What is bad is the use 
of DRM to restrict the traditional form of music sale. When I buy a piece of 
music (not rent it, and not preview it), I expect (and demand!) my 
traditional fair use rights to the material. I should be able to take that 
content, copy it onto all my computers at home, my laptop, my portable
MP3 player....basically anything I use to listen to the music that I have 
purchased." 

Well said; a tremendous amount of thought and effort has obviously gone into 
all this, and we have to wonder who this crusader is. A university connection 
seems all but certain. We've got a few feelers out, and hope very much that 
he'll submit to an interview soon. 

There's clearly more to this story than meets the eye. For one thing, the 
quality of writing in the text files exceeds that in the code files, 
suggesting more than one actor. Readers are encouraged to share their 
insights as they read through the texts and fiddle with the code, using the 
byline link above. ®