Thursday, January 17,2008 @ 11:10pm
Apple squashes 24hr movie rental workaround
Apple has corrected an issue where users were able to circumvent iTunes' 24 hour time-limit on its new movie rentals service. Earlier today Gizmodo reported that changing the system time -- on either Windows-based PC or a Mac -- by moving it forward or rolling it back, effectively allowed users to continue to watch the movie past the designated 24-hour period. In a follow-up report, Gizmodo notes that Apple has now disabled the circumvention technique by adding an additional check in iTunes. Changing the date/time, now yields a 5103 error from iTunes, according to the report.
"Alright so it appears to no longer work. Here's what happened on our end. Before, we had set our computer date to 2009, and started playing Ratatouille (and Benny started playing The Simpsons) to start the 24-hour timer in 2009," the site wrote. "Came back to 2008, everything was gravy. We go to play it again just a few minutes ago, and it tries to connect to iTunes, and then gives us a 5103 error. Benny gets the same deal."