[x]Blackmoor Vituperative

Wednesday, 2006-09-27

Microsoft sues over alleged code theft

Filed under: Intellectual Property,Technology — bblackmoor @ 12:47

Microsoft has filed a federal lawsuit against an alleged hacker who broke through its copy protection technology, charging that the mystery developer somehow gained access to its copyrighted source code.

For more than a month, the Redmond, Wash., company has been combating a program released online called FairUse4WM, which successfully stripped anticopying guards from songs downloaded through subscription media services such as Napster or Yahoo Music.

Microsoft has released two successive patches aimed at disabling the tool. The first worked — but the hacker, known only by the pseudonym “Viodentia,” quickly found a way around the update, the company alleges. Now the company says this was because the hacker had apparently gained access to copyrighted source code unavailable to previous generations of would-be crackers.

(from ZDNet, Microsoft sues over source code theft)

I see two possible explanations for this. Either it is inconceivable to Microsoft that anyone could break their Digital Rights Mafia scheme without having inside information, or they are subverting the legal system in order advance their corporate interests (again).