Audio-book disconnect at the BPL
By adamg - Tue, 07/18/2006 - 10:53pm.
It's great that the BPL now offers digital audio books. But as Lyss discovers, you can't play them on the world's most popular digital-audio player:
Our audio titles, provided by OverDrive, Inc., use DRM protection technology from Microsoft Corporation. Unfortunately the iPod (and Mac) do not currently support DRM-protected Windows Media Audio (WMA) files. ...
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There is a workaround
I had the same problem, and it bugged me. I sent e-mail and got a very nice response saying they were considering adding iPod compatible files, but that was months ago.
The DRM feature is relatively new in the industry and is meant to combat file sharing and pircay. There doesn't appear to be any crack out there yet. Although a Goggle search will yield one method that involves a very old version of MusicMatch software. I haven't tried this.
What I have done, and what was recommended to me by the library, is burn to a CD the titles that the DRM allows. "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" allowed this, while "Freakonomics" didn't. After burning them to a CD, I would rip them into iTunes, and voila! they were ready for sync with my iPod. I have about four rewritable CDs just for this purpose.