For Christmas, I recieved 30 songs on Napster. I got a free trial of the premium service for 3 days and I () downloaded over 50 songs for free lol.

I'd recommend Napster to anyone, you download a song in less than 4 seconds, at least for me. The interface is pretty straight forwards and you get a .wma file... Well it turns out that there are two different .wma files with different protection.

The free files have this protection attached on them:
- Protected Content
- Playback expires on 12/30/2003 (5 days)
- Copy to CD not allowed
- Copy to portable player not allowed
- Copy to an SDMI-compliant player not allowed
- Licence backup not allowed

Now those restrictions are acceptable. You get 5 days to enjoy the song. If you like it, you can buy it.

The paid songs have this restriction:
- Protected Content
- Licence backup not allowed

Yep thats it. You can burn those songs as many times as you want to any CD/device. For 99 cents its a great deal! And its so legal.

However, Sony's gay $$$$ing SonicStage won't allow me to burn any .wma file that is tagged with "Protected Content" even if the song's licence allowed me to burn them (I'm talking about the paid files). I complained to Sony and spent 1:30 hours talking to them until I got to level 4 support. The guy told me that there was no way, even if the software was bugged. There will be no patch, no newer version. He told me to forget it, return the minidisc (which I bought 4 months ago), and buy an iPod!

What an idiot! He's supposed to help me! All the time he's giving me this attitude...

So although minidiscs are the coolest things ever made, I will not recommend anyone to buy them simply because of their poor support and their inability to burn paid songs.

What's really ironic is that I used to burn illegal Kazaa-downloaded mp3's on my minidisc and now that I have a legal, paid-for song, I can't burn it! Now I'm forced to burn the songs unto a cd, then burn from the cd (which has no protection) to the minidisc. Its a real pain.

I just thought I'd let people know and if anyone knows how to convert protected .wma files into mp3's, I'd appreciate the help!