The world's largest software maker is suing the developer of a program that allows users to circumvent digital rights protection from Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) song format.

For more than a month, Microsoft has been combating a program called FairUse4WM, which successfully strips anti-copying guards from WMA encoded songs.

The WMA format was developed to be a safe medium for studios to distribute their songs through, with the promise that if the DRM was ever compromised, it could be easily fixed. The company has issued a number of patches to thwart FairUse4WM, however the hacker, known as Viodentia, promptly releases new versions.

Because of the speed in which new programs are released, and persistent effectiveness of the hack, Microsoft now alleges that the programmer has access to proprietary source-code, filing suit in Seattle on Friday.

In a Web posting on Wednesday, Viodentia denied using any copyrighted Microsoft code, and released an updated version of his tool.

FairUse4WM has been my own creation, and has never involved Microsoft source code, the developer wrote. I link with Microsoft's static libraries provided with the compiler and various platform SDK (software development kit) files.

Microsoft Software