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The hack emerged last week in a new application, FairUse4WM, that by all accounts losslessly removes DRM from tracks encoded under Microsoft's PlaysForSure programme. This technology is employed by the majority of music download services, notably Napster and Yahoo! Music, though not by the market leader, Apple's iTunes Music Store or by Real's Rhapsody.

engadget discovered that subscription-based downloads from Napster To Go could 'quickly and easily' be stripped of the PlaysForSure DRM. The unrestricted files were subsequently imported into and played on a Mac in QuickTime via the Flip4Mac plugin, which enables Windows Media playback.

'In other words, it's a simple, apparently lossless, one-step method for making your files playable after you're no longer paying fees on your subscription service,' engadget said.

In a letter

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to its PlaysForSure clients, Microsoft acknowledged engadget's part in bringing the software to light, and has released an patch for client applications to ensure that they are 'robust' against the FairUse4WM hack.

Music store DRM hacks are nothing new. In 2004 Real Networks introduced Harmony technology that enabled downloads from its service to be played on iPods, circumventing Apple's PlayFair DRM which ties the portable players into its own iTunes store. Apple responded by accusing Real of having 'adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker' and subsequently has patched iTunes to block Harmony.

In March 2005, notorious hacker Jon Lech Johansen - better known as DVD Jon for cracking the copy protection on DVDs - and two other men opened a back door into iTunes that allowed tracks to be downloaded without DRM. Again, Apple patched its software, initiating a game of cat and mouse that appears to have ended with Apple as Jerry.

Johansens' PyMusique project became Hymn (Hear Your Music aNywhere), which, with a neat sense of timing, may be poised to return to the fray and tackle iTunes 6. A proto-hack is doing the rounds, although reports of its effectiveness are mixed.