Annoying!

[mistressofmuses]

I hate when one very short diversion turns into hours of profound frustration, haha.



"Hey, while I'm waiting for something else, I'll watch that one random AMV that I was thinking about after catching a snippet of the song playing in a store."

"Huh, why can't my computer find that file...?" [five minutes later] "Looks like that whole folder is just... missing. Welp, at least I have my old laptop close to hand, so I should be able to get those without much trouble. Better check which files are for sure missing, though." [five more minutes of skipping through the video files to see which ones are missing.]

Easy enough to find those files once I dig the old laptop out. Takes between five and ten minutes to copy them onto a thumb drive. No big deal.

"Well, while I have my old laptop out, I should try to do that DRM removal that I've been putting off."

You see, foolishly, I had a period in my late teens where I decided to do the ~responsible~ thing and legally purchase music from the artists I most liked from itunes in order to support said artists. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the absolute fucktons of music I got elsewhere, or even just had on CD, but I periodically got itunes gift cards, so that was how I used them. Of course, that means all those files were DRM'd at the time.

There are a few tools that can be used to strip the DRM and convert those files to mp3s, but they all require an older version of itunes than I had on my old laptop, which meant I needed to uninstall itunes and reinstall that older version, which I just didn't want to mess with.

But this time I did it! Got the appropriate stuff downloaded, uninstalled the newer version, installed the old one.

"The itunes library can't be loaded because the file for it was created using a newer version of the program."

*sigh*

[a quick google search] Thank you, 12 year old tech blog post, for explaining how I can rename the files to trick an old version into working.

And it works! The library now loads.

...except in a twist I should have seen coming, it now wants me to log back into my apple account... which is something I can't do. I can't remember my password, and I apparently can't remember the security questions that I set up when I was 15. I also can't get into the yahoo email that the account is tied to for the same reasons. (I SWEAR I KNOW MY FAVORITE AUTHOR, BUT IT DISAGREES.)

I tried anyway, but as feared, it won't convert the files if I'm not logged into an account with permission to play the songs. Which I now can't do on *any* of my devices.

Very, very vague hope that I could try to do it on my college laptop if I could find it, since if I'm still logged in on that computer, then it's old enough I wouldn't need to install a new version... I know I have it somewhere, but it isn't where I last saw it, and a twenty-minute search of the closet didn't reveal it. No idea if I could get it to work anyway - the battery was completely shot to the point it would instantly shut down when not plugged in, and last time I turned it on a few years ago, the screen was also borked in a couple places.

After the fruitless search for the OLDER laptop, I did transfer the missing video files over to my newer laptop, which was comparatively painless... except that I had to manually help itunes find each. and. every. file. out of the 175 or so. Which was quick enough, but still very tedious and annoying. (Sure, I could have batch added them as *new* tracks, but then it would still mark all the old ones as missing, plus it would break any of the playlists that have those files in them.)

Then, because I was annoyed, I spent almost an hour trying to guess the security questions and/or passwords to both my apple account and my old yahoo email, but to no avail, as usual. I keep hoping that somehow it'll work *this* time.

So now I'm back to needing to either repurchase or sail the internet high seas to get functional copies of music that I already fucking bought. (A common complaint! The reason DRM is shit!) But I'm still annoyed!

...and I didn't even watch the AMV that I wanted to watch in the first place.

I laugh so as not to cry, because this is what my brain feels like all the time.

Comments

[which_chick]

Y'know, there was a time in History Back when I purchased seasons of television from Amazon digitally because I could play them on my computer (via browser) and it was handy and faster than Ahoy Me Hearties downloading over my relatively anemic DSL. And then for DRM reasons, the purchased seasons of television that I legit paid for (and that I felt I owned and which worked when I bought them) ceased to work for me and could not be made to work for me without a genuinely significant amount of dicking around like "get a Windows Emulator to run on my Ubuntu laptop" and "Install Internet Explorer version *blah*" and lolnope. I didn't have to do that when I purchased the seasons and they worked when I bought them and I was furious when they stopped working for me along about 2014.

It will be the twelfth of never before I *buy* another digital season of television that can be retconned to NOT WORK for me after the time of purchase. "Owning" things which I can be denied the ability to view or use AFTER I HAVE PAID FOR THEM is not "owning" and I am not doing that twice. I complained to Amazon about the issue and was not ever made whole. They sold me a thing which worked when I bought it, then they changed their delivery system/DRM (after I'd bought the thing) so that it did not work anymore and then they refused to refund my money. Not a fan. Still mad.

Also, just checked, now it works again. For now. LOL.

[king0fcrows]

Could you not contact apple? If you still have the credit card linked to your Apple account, you might be able to have them reset your account to a different email?

On the yahoo account, have you checked that it's not an issue of the password being case sensitive? Like, you need to write the password in all lower case? Or the first and last name of the author need to be capitalized/lowercase?

[olivermoss]

I have had more problems with iTunes than nay other platform. I'd probably have a large media library there if it wasn't terrible. I've had insane problems with iTunes over the years. I haven't even been able to buy content on that platform in ages due to account verification problems, even though I can buy apps for my iPad?

So many formatting / DRM / other problems.

[mistressofmuses]

I've heard that same complaint from a few people! Purchased series suddenly no longer working because the format changed, or sometimes having certain seasons/series as a whole disappear from your library because that service no longer had them available. (Which shouldn't impact something you purchased when it WAS available! That's fucking stupid!)

I feel very strongly about the importance of physical media, even as basically everywhere else is moving away from it. (I think Best Buy just said that they'll no longer be carrying DVDs?) If I don't have physical media, I want actual non-proprietary files that I own and can copy and play on whatever device I want. I do watch most things via streaming, but if there's something I really love, I 0% trust that a digital copy of it is something I can count on.

There are certainly downsides to physical media - disks get scratched or break or simply deteriorate with time, sometimes the needed equipment to play a certain type of media ceases production, like VCRs or basically any game system. But at least I *theoretically* get to maintain my access to those things, rather than having the company I bought it from being able to arbitrarily deny me from using it.

Stuff like this makes me rage, lol.

[mistressofmuses]

Unfortunately, I set that apple account up about 20 years ago! I never attached a card to it, because I didn't want them to have my card info... which is biting me now! I only ever used gift cards to make purchases... so they've also got about $13 of my unredeemed gift card balance held hostage, lol.

The password issue could be something like that, but I've tried running through every caps/non-caps/which-punctuation-mark-did-I-toss-in/did-it-have-a-number that I can think of for the email password to no success. I'm afraid I picked an actually *unique* password and really screwed myself! I've even tried misspellings of the likely author names in case I biffed it when I entered it, lol. I'm again a bit stuck because this was my first "real" email, and there is a non-zero chance that 14 year old me threw in some dumb answer that was funny at the time, or was just the author of the most recent book I'd liked and then left no lasting impression on me or something. And unfortunately, yahoo only offers "premium" customer support by phone, and I ain't paying to try and get in, lol.

I'm wondering if I have any stored passwords on any ancient laptops at my mom's house or anything...

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh. I've mostly not had a ton of problems with it outside of this, in part probably because I've just been copying my same shit from computer to computer for twenty years. There've been a couple problems with corrupted files in the past, though I don't know for sure that it was itunes' fault. I will say that I don't much like the new version that this laptop came with. Its default layout sucks, and fields I used to help categorize stuff have been removed entirely.

I don't think I have any way to verify this account - even if I DO get the password/security question correct, I'm afraid the account has been flagged.

The DRM (and inability to get logged in to play it) is definitely the most frustrating issue that I've had. I know a lot of the stuff is allegedly DRM-free now, but I'm annoyed at myself for ever trying to do it ~the right way~ before, ha. Should have stuck to piracy.

[galadhir]

That sounds intensely frustrating and honestly not your fault. If they hadn't had DRM in the first place you could have had it done in minutes. At this point I am fully of the belief that if they won't let you have your own legally bought copies, then you are morally allowed to get them whereever you can. But that's yet more effort and risk of course. Definitely pining for the days when we just taped stuff off the radio.

[spikedluv]

I hate when things like that happen, one task leading to another to another . . . Sorry you didn't even get to listen to the AMV you wanted to in the first place. (Also, there should be a better way to get into accounts from so long ago.)

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I've been there. Anything to do with iTunes just seems to be frought with problems. I've even DL'd iTunes a few times to re-download music and then it always, always goes and DL'd everything I've never bought which has made my computer unusable a few times by over-stuffing my C Drive. I didn't buy a lot, but I did buy a few TV show seasons a million years ago so I could watch stuff while I traveled, but now those show files have been updated to 4k HD whatever the heck. I just wanted access to a few old, cheap TV shows like the first season of Knight Rider and Apple's been trying to screw up my computers ever since.

[mistressofmuses]

So frustrating! DRM is a garbage thing in general, and I hate that it's causing me problems *years* later! (Insult to injury that it's only a problem because I was trying to do it the "right way.") It's my fault in that I don't remember the passwords to my old accounts, but 20 years down the line, I feel like that's an understandable error at the very least! I do feel like the fact that I *did* buy legal copies makes it feel less bad about however I choose to get replacements. For the more mainstream stuff I'll probably look for used CDs that I can rip, which will likely be reasonably cheap for most of them. For the more obscure stuff (random weird singles and such) I'll probably have to go with whatever I can to find them. Ripping from youtube videos is a whack-a-mole of finding functional sites for it, but can help for stuff that's hard to find any other way. (But if I have to buy from iTunes AGAIN, I'll be pissed, even if they don't have DRM on their files anymore.)

[mistressofmuses]

Right? I feel like that's always how my brain functions, where it just snowballs into more and more to do, and then often leaves the initial thing still undone! It's not an uncommon ADHD complaint, but it's still so frustrating!

The accounts issue is extremely frustrating... I realize that it's just sort of the way it is: can't remember the password, can't remember the recovery questions to change the password, so not much to be done! But still... having no options because I can't remember what 14-year-old me said on a form feels like a stupid problem, haha.

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh, I've seen that complaint before, about how it just auto downloads your ENTIRE purchase history, whether you want it to or not. And that's an extra problem when they've "upgraded" the files, and now you are dealing with huge 4k HD files that you never planned to store. WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS, APPLE? STOP HELPING.

[galadhir]

I can't remember my passwords after a couple of months, so I would have no chance whatsoever. And yes, I don't think you should feel bad at all about trying to get your own stuff back, and honestly YouTube has lost any kind of goodwill with its' "watch ten minutes of adverts before you see your video," policy. I wish you luck with finding easier sources though!

[mistressofmuses]

Right? Lol. I'm terrible at remembering my passwords (especially when I try to be cautious and make each one ~unique~) at the best of times!

Youtube has lost ALL good will - the constant ads, the ways they're trying to prohibit any type of adblocking, the new bullshit with artificially throttling speeds on browsers other than chrome... I've got zero fuzzy feelings for them right now.