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Hulu Munging HTML With JS To Protect Content

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the escalating-arms-race dept.

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.

9 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. what do you expect? by antibryce · · Score: 5, Funny

    they're aliens. that's how they roll.

    1. Re:what do you expect? by punkmanandy · · Score: 5, Funny

      They are doing this to confuse, to better mush our brains.

  2. With apologies to Shakespeare... by Bieeanda · · Score: 5, Funny

    It sounds like there's something ROT-13 in the state of Hawaii.

  3. April Fools Day... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...ended at midday yesterday. Though I have to admit that this is far funnier than the "stories" that Slashdot ran at the time.

  4. Re:Cat & Mouse. by C0vardeAn0nim0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    a marketing major or MBA course. that's what makes them think it'll be more dificult.

    --
    What ? Me, worry ?
  5. Re:Cat & Mouse. by schmidt349 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Shut up! That's why.

  6. Plan B: CAPTCHA by derGoldstein · · Score: 5, Funny

    Make the viewer fill it in every ~2 minutes to keep watching.

    --
    Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
  7. Re:Phase One is Over by derGoldstein · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  8. Fail by Chlorine+Trifluoride · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.