The digital rights management (DRM) technology that is used to protect many of the songs downloaded over the internet has been broken by a team of programmers.

DRM technology is used by record companies and online shops such as Napster and iTunes to make sure that when a user downloads a piece of music, he or she can't copy it without permission.

A new program, called FairUse4WM, can strip out the protection code from the music file and leave it able to be played on any computer. It works on most files encoded using Windows Media 10 or 11 DRM technology. That includes files from the Napster subscription service, as well as those from download sites such as MSN Music.

The security breach does not affect Apple's iTunes music store, which uses a competing DRM technology.

A similar program appeared in 2005 which was able to remove DRM code from Windows, but Microsoft swiftly stepped in to stop the breach. The company is expected to do the same with the new program.