Virtual CD-R Drive

[insertwackynamehere]

Are there any free utilities to create a virtual CD-R drive? I need to "burn" some stuff but I want to burn it to my harddrive, by selecting the virtual CD-R drive as the drive to burn the stuff to. I can't just make an ISO or image of the cd, because the whole point is I need to burn the data in order to unprotect it. I could use real CDs but that would be a bunch of CDs and I'd rather "burn" the stuff to my HD (where it will be unprotected). Thanks :)

[Bloodshedder]

How do you know that this method of bypassing the copy protection even works?

[Planky]

*mumbles something about alcohol 120% and runs away*

[insertwackynamehere]

It's iTunes and they're copy protected music store music loses protection when burned to an audio cd. I have done it before and it is well known, and Apple seems to not care. Basically, when music is burned to audio cd format, it can be ripped as whatever you want, because audio cds do not have protection, so burning your purchased songs kills the protection allowing you to rerip the music to your desired (unprotected) format, as you would with any audio cd. However, I already did this with a bunch of cds, but I dont want to waste anymore for my new stuff, and it would be great if I could point itunes to a virtual cd drive where i could "burn" everything and then "rip" it back out unprotrected.

edit: i looked into alcohol, i dunno if it would do my job. I need to point an application to a cdr drive for burning, it has to go through that application and the application must "burn" the cds in order for this to work.

[Bloodshedder]

All "virtual drive" software I've seen installs a virtual DVD-ROM drive, not a virtual CD or DVD burner.

Stupid question: why can't you use a CD-RW?

[insertwackynamehere]

im pretty sure i tried that but either my drive or my cdrws suck and give me horrible write speed, the kind of slow writespeed that makes you want run around screaming with all the extra energy the writespeed lacks

also such a program I want exists here but I am cheap and would love a non-shareware one if possible :P I was asking around here cause thats the only one I could find, and I thought maybe someone knew of another one.

[Bloodshedder]

That program does not appear to even support what it is you want to do.

[Bucket]

Looks like you have to deal with slow burning speeds. I'll have some starving Ethiopian children with AIDS call you up to console you.

[Fletcher`]

Bucket said:

Looks like you have to deal with slow burning speeds. I'll have some starving Ethiopian children with AIDS call you up to console you.

She's probably smarter. Them Ethiopians are sly like that.

[pilottobombadier]

I use Daemon Tools, but so far as I can tell, it requires a disc image. It's mostly for running copy-protected games from your hard drive, though.

[DeumReaper]

Use AnyDVD for removing copy-protections
http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html
(Trial Version) I use it when ripping DVDs, but it also works for CDs too I believe.
Edit: Dammit, I just missed the whole point of the thread; sorry folks :/

[wildweasel]

The only way to un-protect iTunes songs, to my knowledge, is by re-recording them - or if you're using Winamp, the Nullsoft Disk Writer plugin would be able to do that too (and then you could use WinLAME to convert the results to MP3 files).

[Ralphis]

I don't know. There are tons of ITunes plugins for converting songs on there to MP3.

[exp(x)]

There are so many programs for unprotecting iTunes m4p files into m4a (assuming your computer is authorized for those songs). Here is one of them. Once it is unprotected, you can convert it to whatever you want.

[insertwackynamehere]

I know about Hymn but once you upgrade to iTunes 6 it doesnt work. And you cant downgrade cause Apple hijacks all your music files after the upgrade :( They are now working on breaking iTunes 6 DRM but I dont see an end in site as of now.