A piece of software being distributed anonymously online has successfully cracked part of Microsoft's anti-piracy technology, the centerpiece of much of the giant's recent forays into the audio and video world. Microsoft confirmed Friday that the code, written by a programmer using the pseudonym "Beale Screamer," can strip off the protections that prevent a song from being copied an unlimited amount of times. The company's digital media division has spent much of the day talking to record labels and content partners in an effort to respond to Screamer's software, said Group Product Manager Jonathan Usher. Nevertheless, the damage to Microsoft's overall digital rights management (DRM) software campaign is slight, Usher said. The company has built in a means to update the protections for cases such as this. Some music on the market may lose its locks, but the software as a whole will remain secure, Usher said. "We have been forthright that no technology and no DRM is 100 percent secure," Usher said. "We anticipated...hacks and designed renewability into the system."