Hi All, hope someone can help a not-too-pc-savvy type:
I recently loaded up my CD collection onto a hard drive in preparation for an overseas posting as I didnt want to lug 500++ albums halfway around the planet. I used the Media PLayer on line service to pull down the track listings where available.
At first Media Player would not let me play many of my wma files, insisting I needed a licence. I seem to remember choosing an option to download a licence initially, and only then being able to play them. On trying to do anything with about half my wma files (aside from playing them in Media Player ), I get a message "Protected Content". On checking the "Properties" section is reads the WMA files are all protected. I do not know if this is what is referred to as "DRM" protection or not.
Please note about half of the 4,500 wma files are now marked protected, the remainder are not. It affects whole albums (ie an album is either entirely protected or entirely unprotected)
This is particularly annoying because many of them are old vinyl jazz albums I burnt to CD myself (and still own the originals!!!) Even more galling is that some of them are my own recordings of myself (i am a wannabe muso). So I cant load them onto my MP3 player or load them into Audacity for doing some "mashups" for my own amusement. Te remainder are largely older CDs with no protection on them.
Someone out there needs their backside whupped. I am Royally p......ed off as all my music is in storage and I wont be accessing it for at least 5 years (far too long to go without any Zoot Sims or Sonny Stitt on my MP3).
Ive never bought music online (and am even less likely to do so now!), so there should be no protected content on there (well maybe one or two snuck on from a friends CD, it is possible). Most CDs were burnt/pressed before copy protection and on line licencing were even concepts.
I was using XP to load up the music. I now have Media Player 11 but do not know what version I used to load up initially. Im now on XP Professional,on a laptop Centrino dual core 1.6Mhz CPU, 1 MB Ram. The hard drive is connected via a USB cable - 80Gig (sorry dont know the brand)
If someone could shed some light on how to correct this I will be indebted. I tried to find a prog called "FairPlay" or similar but all links I tried were invalid.
Thanking you in advance!
