[ssliberty]

I have an imac g5 20" 2 gig ram with all current software updates. I have used itunes to copy my cd's into the itunes library and onto my ipod mini without any problems. My son had a science project which required him to produce a powerpoint (student/teacher Mac Office 2004) presentation on West Nile Virus. The background music he wanted to use was not in our cd collection, so we went to the itms for the first time and purchased the song. The song was locked. We could transfer it to the ipod. But we could not copy it to powerpoint nor could we copy it to garageband for editing. The song could not be dragged and dropped...it would spring back. The song could not be moved or copied using any other instructions either. I opened the song info window and changed the settings to everyone has read/write priviledges...no luck , still locked. Does this also mean I won't be able to copy this song onto a cd? This doesn't seem right. How do I unlock this song so it can be copied onto the powerpoint presentation and copied onto garageband and later a cd? Thanks in advance for your help.

[Ebby]

The song is encrypted. You can burn it to a CD and re-import it, or you can use a program called Hymn to decrypt the song to use in your presentation.

[Luca]

I don't think there's a version of Hymn compatible with iTunes 6, though. The website does not make it entirely clear, though JHymn's website does have a warning that Hymn and iTunes 6 don't work together.

There's another way, though. Burn the song to an audio CD, then use iTunes to rip the song to a regular MP3 (or AAC) file. That might degrade the quality slightly, but it'll remove the DRM. And really, unless you have picky ears or a high quality sound system, you probably won't notice the difference. After all, the original music is already at a low 128kbps bit rate, so if you're an audiophile you probably wouldn't buy from the iTMS in the first place.