When it rains, it pours. Anyone familiar with the video rental industry may know that both Netflix and Blockbuster have had to make sacrifices, from slashing prices to closing down stores. Unfortunately for Netflix, slashing prices was not enough for one person, which could have devastating results on the company. Recently, someone was able to decrypt Netflix online videos and convert them to another format, meaning they could keep them for as long as he wanted. Now, he’s telling everyone how to do it…

First Netflix slashed its prices. Now the company’s under attack from a hacker who found a way to keep the company’s downloaded movies.

The hacker claims to have cracked the digital rights-management software encoded in Netflix “Watch Now” movies, enabling those who follow his step-by-step guide to keep the movies indefinitely.

In a post on forum.rorta.net titled “How to Rip Netflix ‘Watch Now’ Movies,” a user going by the handle DIzzIE [antikopyright 2007] claims to explain how to save and decrypt the downloadable Watch Now movies from Netflix so that “you can convert them to other mediums and watch them at your leisure.”

If that’s all users could do with their illegal copies of Netflix films, DIzzIE’s crack wouldn’t pose much of a threat. The problem is that, like DIzzIE, Internet users like to share.[more]

Tags: Hackers