Apple iTunes Video Rentals cracked? Not really!

So the guys at Gizmodo started playing around with the video rentals at iTunes trying to figure out a way how they could prolong the time - 30 days to start watching it, 24 hours to watch after starting it - that they were allowed to watch the movie that they rented. Some tests seemed to reveal that one of the oldest hacks of old time would work, that they could increase the time almost indefinitely by changing their computer's system date to the future and back to the present.

This is apparently not working and I figured that Apple would be really lame if they would fall for this and rely only on the renters system date. A simple comparison between the date that the movie was rented (on iTunes) and the computer would be sufficient to stop the trick.

I'm not sure how they check the date if you transfer the movie to your iPod or iPhone because these do not have a permanent Internet connection. So, it must be some sort of local check and it's probably easier to hack it on these devices. It will be only a matter of time I guess until someone creates a software that removes the DRM from the movies so that they can be watched indefinitely.

I was never such a big fan of online movie rentals in first place, mainly because I do not like to watch movies on the computer. I do not watch lots of TV, maybe 2 hours a week, but I do like to watch movies on the TV and not on the computer. Might be ok if you are alone but I tend to watch movies with friends because it's more fun and that is not really nice if you use the computer monitor to watch it.

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