A lawyer who recorded an ICANN meeting with his MiniDisc recorder has discovered that he can't put his recordings online — at least not easily. Sony's MD recorders ship with anti-copying technology designed to keep you from ever moving digital music from an MD to your hard-drive.
After three days of trying to get these files transferred to my PC, I'm still incredulous that Sony deliberately crippled its own product. I keep thinking that someone's going to write and tell me that I just haven't flipped the right switch yet.
The sad part is that the quality of the recordings I made in Amsterdam is excellent. I used a stereo microphone placed in the middle of the conference room, and when you replay the recording in stereo, you really have a sense of being there. Much better than the monoaural streaming of a typical conference call. In order to get these recordings onto the Internet though, I'll have to re-record them to another system, losing much of the sound quality in the process. I'll try to get the first day of the meeting up tonight.
The Sony advertising and packaging talk about how the NetMD device "handles mp3" files and allows "digital recordings." Sony even put "Net" into the name of the product. I picked it up to make recordings of meetings, interviews and conferences, some of which I wanted to make available over the Internet. But don't be fooled (as I was). This product is broken…and falsely advertised.
(Thanks, John!)
