Netflix Watch Now Hacked?

TV Squad is reporting that the Netflix Watch Now encryption might have been cracked, Hackers discover how to download streaming movies from Netflix.

I'm not violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to verify this story, so use the information at your own risk (is it really worth stealing movies that are "near DVD quality?").

Comments

[Matt]

If Netflix does, indeed, add uniquely identifying watermarks to each person's copy of the video, this hack would still prevent anyone from distributing the DRM-free copy, unless they wanted to be caught. Such technology would increase the load on Netflix's servers, since they'd not just be serving up copies of a movie, but effectively processing it as it's transmitted.

Seems like more trouble than it's worth, unless you're running an unsupported OS like MacOS or Linux.

[type-cast]

Sounds like FUD. Watermarks won't prevent us from making copies for friends. Professional pirates wouldn't be dumb enough to use their own accounts. Any watermark they can add can be removed or obscured. A smart pirate would use a fake credit card and a P.O. Box, which would protect their identity. Getting caught pirating some crummy streaming video is like being caught using a camcorder in a theater. Only pathetic amateurs would be that stupid.

[Hunter McDaniel]

What typecast said.

This just sounds like some techie showing off his hacking skills, IMHO. When DVDs themselves are so easy to rip (and I don't know of anything on WatchNow that isn't on DVD too) I can't see why anyone would go to the trouble of hacking the stream (which can only be done at the speed of one hour per hour).

[shinji]

Anyone can rip a stream. I constantly get videos off websites even if they seem to be protected from downloading. Lately Apple's own trailers section has been victim of my attempts. Yahoo's music video section is a hard pain in the butt to do but it is possible as i did do it once. I needed a certain download manager program as they use the windows media mss protocol for the streaming.