SAN FRANCISCO A solitary computer hacker has entangled Microsoft in a high-stakes battle of wits by repeatedly releasing a free program that strips away the software lock that the company created to protect digital movies and songs from being freely copied by Internet users.
While Microsoft has publicly sought to portray the contest as a nuisance, the affair escalated to become a genuine challenge to one of the company's significant businesses this week after BSkyB, the British satellite broadcaster, suspended its film download service amid fears of illegal copying.
The Microsoft system is designed to prohibit Internet users from making illegal copies of movies or songs played in Windows Media 9 or 10 formats. It is used by digital content distributors that include BSkyB, MovieLink, RealNetworks and MTV's Urge music subscription service.
In July, the computer programmer, who identifies himself as Viodentia in Internet postings, released an online tool to remove copy protection from movie and song files. It was a refinement of an existing program, making it easier to use. The program, he stressed, was intended only to enable purchasers of digital media to exercise so-called fair use rights in copying material they had already acquired. Since then, it has been downloaded tens of thousands of times.
The cat-and-mouse game began Aug. 19, when Viodentia released a first version of his program on Web sites around the world. Nine days later, Microsoft responded by patching its system to prevent the hacker's tool, called FairUse4WM, from working. But within three days a new version of the code- breaking program was circulating, sending Microsoft programmers back to the drawing board.
The latest version of FairUse4WM has apparently been more troubling for Microsoft. It has been more than two weeks since the company's last attempt to patch, and Microsoft has still not released a new fix. It said Wednesday that it was not ready to announce when the service would be patched again.
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