Hi, I am having problems with some wmv video files. I have downloaded them, but they are protected and will not play. I keep getting the message 'we're sorry, the clip you are trying to play is not currently available in your area'. Is there any way around this ?
Welcome to the brave new world of DRM. I am not sure whether telling you how to do this is against the rules of this board, even if I knew. It may be a criminal offense! Circumventing digital pretection measures, i think it's called, and while it won't get you life in Leavenworth, it is risky. You could read this page which Afterdawn has helpfully provided http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/6021.cfm
Thanks for your reply, but hey, let's not get frightened of our own shadows ! I don't believe that we should be restricted from viewing or downloading content simply because of the location that we live in(in this case, outside of the USA). After all, this is supposed to be the WORLD wide web. I thought a proxy server could be my answer, and logged in under a US proxy, but that didn't work for some reason. How DO they know where I am ???????
Good thinking ! I tried it though, and sadly, it didn't work. I can toggle my ip address, while in the Firefox browser, but I'm still getting the same licensing error. There MUST be a way round this. H E L P !
There is a program i know of that strips DRM (DRM 10) of windows audio files such as music downloaded from napster. The program is slightly outdated so it will not work if you have MP11. You need MP10, some claim that it will not work with DRM9. This program is not one of those bullshit programs like tunebite that take the recording of what is being played on your sound card. This program completely strips drm off of music files that have DRM10 without playing audio. read this article if you are interested: http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/25/fairuse4wm-strips-windows-media-drm/ I believe the latest version is 1.3
Be aware that this is a common form of spam (as well as injecting virus and malware): Download a file but you can't play it until you buy the license key to view it. Extremely common - almost the rule, in fact - on P2P networks, but elsewhere as well. Since all current DRM-removal software requires a license key, you're SOL unless you buy one. P.S. On the subject of anonymity networks, be aware that because you are piping data through someone else's computer, you are at the mercy of their honesty. Proxy operators are in a perfect position to cull your datastreams for anything useful. In security circles it's called a Man-In-The-Middle situation. Although the Tor network has an excellent reputation, like most proxies, it pipes your data through several different machines in different locations in order to make tracing more difficult. What that means is that there are plenty of opportunities to steal data.
I don't know about that, if you mean all multimedia content. Plenty of avis, mpegs and mp3s out there. However I never bother downloading anything capable of DRM protection eg wmv, wma etc, these days, for this very reason. As for Tor and privacy, I wouldn't ever send anything confidential or private that way.
Dunker, thankyou for your warning. However, the files that I have downloaded and want to play, are from a legitimate site. The video content is free, but is 'area' protected' and that is my problem. Have tried the 'Tor' route, which successfully gave another IP address. However, when I tried to play the files (using media player) I still had problems. I am not really sure why but I'm still trying !!!!
Is there some reason why you can't tell us what the site is? Maybe there is some issue that is known about, concerning that site.
The whole topic of "fair use for Windows Media" is a tricky one these days, what with people using P2P apps and so on.
A.O.L have made several old tv shows available on-line. Some are free to download and some you have to pay for. I am interested in both. The ones I am trying to view right now are the free ones, but are territory restricted (i.e. US only). If you are outside the territory, you can neither view the streaming videos or play them, once they are downloaded. How unfair is that ?
I don't know if your IP not being a U.S. one is the only issue; if you're using Windows (presumably) then there are lots of locale-specific identifiers within both the registry and the internal Windows configuration files. The OS configuration itself is coded to specific regions, not to mention there are tons of give-aways such as language, timezone, etc. Although I doubt the latter (which are changeable under Control Panel->Date, Time, Language and Regional Options) will affect the functioning of DRM, the region-specific coding almost certainly will. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to reliably change this without suggesting that you obtain a U.S. copy of XP, and even then, you'd likely need a fresh format to get everything working right. But if you already have the license key, then Fairuse4WM and the versions of WMP AXT wrote about, you might be able to pull it off even without altering the region-specific settings. If so, I wish you the best of luck at getting your files working.
