Real Media Secure Files

[rainwalker78]

In 2001, when I was in college, apparently I used real jukebox, or whatever they called it then. I think I pretty quickly realized how much it sucked and moved on to other players. Currently, I am pretty happy with WMP and iTunes. Anyway, I ended up with about 20 cds some real media audio format. They were such a small part of my music collection that I never really noticed that they never got played.

Well, a while back my friend asked if I still had a copy of a certain cd. It had various recordings of our friends, including him. He lost the original was hoping I still had my copy. I told him I have it on my computer. But when I looked, I saw that I had all these real audio formats. I was able to convert most of them to mp3 using real jukebox to burn them to a CD, then importing the CD them using iTunes.

Unfortunately, 4 CDs are in a “secure” format (.rmx), and one of them is my friends CD. Real jukebox won’t even play them because I don’t have the license for them. Well, that was 2 computers ago!

Is there any way to convert my songs to mp3 format?

Also, before anyone asks, I can’t re rip from the original, as the CD was stolen either Easter of 2003 or Easter of 2004 (no, I didn’t forget when my car was broken into, it happened two Easters in a row).

I am not asking for anything illegal, I just want to unlock my legitimate music. I don’t even care about the other 3, I obviously don’t miss them, but my friends cd is not really replaceable.

[mks57]

@rainwalker78

I am not asking for anything illegal, I just want to unlock my legitimate music.

Yes, you are. See the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Personally, I think it’s a really bad law, but it is the law.

[rainwalker78]

@mks57

Yes, you are. See the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Personally, I think it’s a really bad law, but it is the law.

Thanks for the link. I see where it states: “it also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself.”

However, I am not sure that it applies in this case. When I follow wikipedias link to 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1) I find this language

(3) As used in this subsection —

(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

(B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

First, no measures were applied by, or on the authority of, the copyright owners. They were all added by realjukebox, and that feature could have been turned off by me, if I had known about it at the time.

Second, I am pretty certain that each song on the cd was distributed with an open license. Free to copy and distribute, I just can’t make copies to sell.

If I were trying to get around the old iTunes DRM, then I think this would apply, but I am not.

Of course, I am not a lawyer, so I could be completely off base, but that is how it reads to me.