Windows DRM from a Mac User’s Perspective
Trying to recapture a classic soundtrack results in hours of anguish when DRM is added to the mix.
So, recently I have been re-watching some classic films from my childhood, The Flight of Dragons and The Prince of Egypt to name but two. Turns out I am quite attached to the soundtrack from the latter but iTunes was a bust – I even tried to buy it from a real shop but it was no where to be found.
A few Google searches later turns up 7 digital, a relatively small and unknown, but well backed, digital music retailer of both protected WMA and the unprotected MP3 formats. Unfortunately for me, The Prince of Egypt soundtrack only comes in protected WMA. “Never mind” I say, “I’ll burn it, and rip it into iTunes!”. So I fire up Parallels and hand over my £8.
After a rather nice page which automatically licenses me for these tracks I think I’m well away and progress to the download page where I try to download the album. 96%… 97%… 98%… 99%… “Error, the connection was reset by the server.” – great. I try again. 96%… 97%… 98%… 99%… “Error, the connection was reset by the server.” – Grr! 4 tries later I give up and download the files using Safari on OS X only to copy them back into Windows to actually use them. At last.
Connect my DVD-RW to Parallels. Pop in a blank CD. Open Media Player. Click burn. “Please attach a burner and restart the player.” – What? It says it’s a burner in My Computer!? Three virtual reboots later and a quick scan of the parallels forums indicates that CD burning from media player is not supported. Great.
Reboot into Windows on the hardware. “Windows needs to be activated to continue.”. OK. Activate over the internet. Nope. What? Why not! I bought this copy of Windows (I really did) – why can’t I activate!? Call support? It’s 10:30 PM, not now. Reboot into OS X, fire up Parallels.
OK, so as you can see not a happy experience so far. So I hunt for some software to remove the protection without burning to CD – which if you haven’t ever done so, while possible requires very specific version of Media Player to even work, I tried three different tools until one finally spat out untagged MP3′s. Good enough. I’ll add the tags myself. Finally, in iTunes and synchronised to my iPhone.
Lets catch up on some TV I’ve missed messing around with this using 4oD (Windows only). What’s that? Automatic updates are turned off? I’ll turn them back on… on. On. On, err, I said on! AVG: “You are infected!”
Yes, I got a virus. A virus. Which I was still trying to remove 18 hrs later. All this for a few minutes of music which I can play on my iPhone!?
Eventually I gave up and blasted Windows away.
The amount of ridiculous access controls and limitations added by Microsoft to this process have ensured I’ll never buy WMA protected music again – even for a Zune. Sometimes I think I should give up – pirating my music and software would be easier!
Disclosure: this incident happened about 5 months ago, but I’ve only just got around to publishing the draft!