Slashdot Mirror
Hulu Munging HTML With JS To Protect Content
N!NJA writes "Hulu has started encoding the html that they send to people's browsers, and then decoding it using javascript before rendering it. [...] They then run the character stream through a series of javascript functions to convert it back into plain text before pushing it into your browser using DHTML. That's quite a lot of effort just for fun, so I assume that is to stop screen scrapers from parsing content." I really can't understand all this effort. Boxee displayed the Hulu advertising perfectly. I suspect Alec Baldwin is to blame.
they're aliens. that's how they roll.
It sounds like there's something ROT-13 in the state of Hawaii.
...ended at midday yesterday. Though I have to admit that this is far funnier than the "stories" that Slashdot ran at the time.
a marketing major or MBA course. that's what makes them think it'll be more dificult.
What ? Me, worry ?
Shut up! That's why.
Make the viewer fill it in every ~2 minutes to keep watching.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
I sure hope not.
If it is, then what's the difference between obfuscated code and horribly written code thats difficult to understand? Or code thats been run through a minifier to make it smaller?
So you mean all Perl!??
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
I used to wonder why you cannot mod a Slashdot editor's comment "Funny", but now I see that it would be an unused feature ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
only if the decoder is american though.
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
This is not actually the worst web DRM. I once found a site where the top of the code had a comment that said "Source code not available" followed by a bunch of blank lines. In order to get the source, one just had to scroll down some.
Which, of course, would make the scroll bar an anti-circumvention device.
A month, a friggin month to unplug from a 100mb switch port and plug into a 1gb switch port.
5 minute change if you include the exhaustive checks, and double checks, and tripple checks to make sure there is not a problem.
Change Management at its finest!
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
What is "book"?
This is probably to stop Lynx browsers from properly displaying content. I'm betting this move was backed by bribe money. Clearly this is aimed at reducing compatibility with Lynx. MS is just trying to steal away market share.
The XBMC guys already made a plugin [lifehacker.com] after the last hulu change. It'll take a few hours and a new one will be made.
Those slowpokes, I've already configured my videocamera to record my computer screen, the plugin took only 30 seconds (and the only reason it took that long is because I didn't have a flashlight and it was dark under my desk.)
Not only that, but I bet their version won't encode to high-quality VHS tape format.