I'm ropable

Samantha from iTunes Music Store Support got back to me about the ticket I raised with them. Her form letter suggested I try upgrading the video to iTunes Plus. A good suggestion that I hadn't thought of. In my line of business, it's like someone buying a fridge and it being faulty on arrival, and then me offering to upgrade them to a functional model for a small fee. Can you imagine how quickly Consumer Affairs would shut down my shop if we operated like that?

Anyway, I downloaded the latest version of iTunes (actually, I already had a copy that I used with WINE), installed it onto Windows (got a creepy feeling while clicking the "Agree" button, remind me not to read the EULA again!), and tried the iTunes Plus upgrade procedure.

Fantastic. NOT! For $1.50, I could convert 3 songs (out of about 70), and no videos. Two of those songs were the Spice Girls' single Stop, which I had bought from iTunes solely because of the Stop To The Top campaign (I already have a CD single of it). The other was the Moby & Mylene Farmer duet, which I could already unprotect with QTFairUse (that program rocks!).

I have e-mailed Samantha back, telling her that it doesn't work and that I need another option, and hopefully she'll throw her hands up at this point and say "Sorry, can't be done". At which point, I take it up a notch.

I'm aware that I could download the video from Youtube, and in fact I tried a few minutes ago, but parts of Youtube are down at the moment. But it's the principle of the thing.

I WILL get the music video in unprotected format, no matter how long it takes or how many people I have to hassle. Hopefully I'll inspire a politician or a judge to make DRM illegal in this country.