BleepingComputer.com: Whatever happened to DRM ripping

I recently attempted to watch a recorded online video stream, and found I could only play upon the acquisition of a (free) license. Figuring this stream was DRM protected, I attempted to remove the DRM by using mirakagi, drmdbg and fairuse4WM. This failed. I could identify the license, but Windows Media Player crashed right before playing the video (possibly owing to a dialogue box from the content provider). The tools I used were a year old. I did some more looking around, and at the doom9 forums it was concluded that, with the new version of DRM, DRM ripping was dead. It was advised to acquire the license, play the stream and record from the screen.

This seems an extremely tedious solution to a problem that essentially still is an (easy) decryption task? The stream is encoded (I played it in VLC and got only garble) but can be decoded by the key (license) (which is what happens in WMP). Hence, for this new DRM version, a program can be advised that does exactly this.

Has perhaps M$ implemented a new mechanism to idle DRM decryption attempts? Am I missing something else? Or is there another reason why DRM ripping is dead?