'DVD Jon' Breaks Google Video Lock

WillemdeMoor writes "Yahoo News runs a story on Jon Johansen, aka DVD Jon, cracking Google's in-browser video player. Addict3d.org has some more details, including links to Johansen's patch (Win32 executable) and Jon's blog entry at nanocrew.net."

Comments

Interesting to see....

[Norfair]

..Google's reaction. Up till now, most folk have been singing the praises of the nice, friendly, cuddly search engine company. Will this change anything? I personally doubt it.

Another Windows only service.

[caluml]

Windows 2000 or later with latest updates installed; Firefox 1.0+ or IE 5.0+. DirectX 9.0c End-User Runtime.

Cmon Google.

Google and Windows

[aarku]

What's up with Google releasing all these Windows-only apps, anyways? Really, now.

Gah! It's not even useful for most!

[LincolnQ]

Quote:
This means you can publish video that will play on your webpage and will work for anyone who has Google's player installed.

That part is highly misleading! The people who want to view video on your website each individually need to download the patch! It's not very useful to content providers with this restriction.

How about users? Who would download this patch? Well, people who want to watch videos tagged with application/x-google-vlc-plugin that aren't from google. Not too many of these...

It's really disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

If you check out the blog, you'll see that there's a nice goto at the end of the if statement.

Supposedly Google only hires top-coders, so what's up with that?

Too many clicks and chunks there

[DeadSea]

Given code like this:

if(conditional){
do();
some();
stuff();
}

A real hacker would do something like this:

if(0&&conditional){
do();
some();
stuff();
}

(3 added characters)

or at the very least:

/*if(conditional){
do();
some();
stuff();
}*/

(4 added characters)

Currency converter with free form text entry of conversion amounts and currencies

Re:whaaaaa?

[ImaLamer]

Yahoo news posts a story about him cracking yet another protection mechanism, implying parallels with his past work. This news then spreads to Slashdot.

Funny, I found this via my Google homepage - top story, middle column

Never even looked at Google video, never cared. For some reason I *need* to now. Good job Google.

But where are his clones?

[Almost-Retired]

Seriously, does Jon have to do it all? If some states AG gets a burr under his saddle about something like this, they can again incarcerate him and cost him a boatload of sheckles to get clear of it.

My point is, why does it always have to be 'DVD Jon' that does it, the more contributions by others the merrier the party.

And this comment from a 70 year old who really ought to be more of an 'establishment' type.

Realisticly, both patent and copyright has been expanded to protect the guilty until even I can see the falacy of it and its deleterious effects on society and the needless stifling of technological progress.

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.35% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly

Re:Source code?

[dionoea]

Some parts of the patch (the interesting one and mime types) have already been commited to VLC trunk. Nightly builds (http://vthr.videolan.org/~videolan) compiled tonight will surely ba able to play google video content.

The program's UUID (OT)

[shish]

From Google's patch to VLC:

- uuid(E23FE9C6-778E-49D4-B537-38FCDE4887D8),
+ uuid(E23FE9C6-778E-49D4-B537-38FCDE4887D9),

A little offtopic, but who gets to decide these things, to prevent clashes? What's their purpose anyway?

only top coders are qualified to use goto properly

[Xtifr]

Good programmers know goto is harmful - great programmers know when it's not.

Actually, even there I'm exaggerating a bit. Even fairly average programmers can usually be taught when goto is acceptable and when it's not. Anyway, the goto statement in C is much more limited, and much safer than the wide-open, global-scale thermonuclear goto that Wirth originally wrote about.

Highwayman: I know you Wizards have rules against using your powers on civilians, so you don't scare me. Just hand over the money, er...ri-deep?
Ridcully: (blowing on his finger and staring at the new-made frog) It's more of a guideline than a rule, actually.

Re:goto considered harmful !!!

[waterford0069]

_My_ C programming prof once used a "goto" in an example in class, only to look up and see a room full of students with their mouths hanging open.

He quickly pointed out that the reason why goto's are highly discourage (especially to newbies) is that it is often missused (leading to spagettie code). He also pointed out that that single "goto" made the code block he was deomonstrating so much easier to understand (and probablty more efficient processor wise) than the "pure" way, where he would have had to litter the code block with "if"s and add conditions to other flow controls.

And when you go through the exercise of writing the same block of code without the "goto", you get a dog's breakfast. He was right, the "goto" made the code better, in all respects.

He then finished this little sub lesson with the words "Look!!! I'm running with scissors!". The point being that once you get to a certain level and truely understand the reprecutions, you can take certain "short cuts" and break certain rules that are the programing equivalent of training wheels.

btw... Hi Al!

Who is providing the stuff on Google Videos?

[LordJezo]

Um, the entire collection of the Travel Channel's Great Hotels?

The O'Reilly Factor?

The Tony Danza Show?

C-SPAN Book TV?

Is this stuff being provded by the TV studios?

What is the deal with Google Videos?

Where is all the content coming from?

Re:goto considered harmful !!!

[Troed]

What I see in your code are two places you do cleanup (and no goto). Anyway:


fd = fopen("myfile.txt", "a");
if(fd)
{
read_size = fread(&buffer, 1L, 255L, fd);
}
if(fd && (read_size > 0))
{
int err;
fd_out = fopen("myfileOut.txt", "w");
if(fd_out)
{
err = fwrite(&buffer, 1L, read_size, fd_out);
}
if(fd_out && (err > 0))
{
printf("write ok\n");
}
if(fd_out)
{
fclose(fd_out);
}
}
if(fd)
{
fclose(fd);
}

I did this quite fast but I think it'll perform exactly the same thing - and you'll avoid indentation hell. The new code also looks longer than it is due to where I put the braces.