Japanese hackers vs. Microsoft

A Japanese magazine has published news of an alleged hack that strips the antipiracy protections off files in Microsoft's Windows Media format. But details are slim, and the software that supposedly does the trick--apparently created by an underground programmer known as Lark--has disappeared from the Web.

If true, it could be bad news for Microsoft, which is betting on its digital rights management technology to endear itself to content distributors such as Hollywood studios and record labels. Without verifiable details, it's hard to know how bad, however.

A hacker broke through an earlier version of Microsoft's antipiracy software in 2001, but the company was able to remedy the damage fairly simply through an update mechanism in the software.

A Microsoft representative said the company took the accounts seriously and was investigating them but had not yet been able to verify the existence of the software.

On the plus side, it turns out that Japanese hackers' discussions (as translated by Altavista's Babel Fish) are as weirdly enigmatic as they are surrealist poetry.