Sonic Stage help - Authorisation problem

[synner]

Hello all,

Retired my 'ol battered iPod on Saturday in favour of a shiney HD3, ripped close to 800 songs from CD into ATRAC3Plus 256kbps, everything peachy !

Being used to iTunes, I then downloaded a few tracks from the Connect service, however, when I tried to transfer these to the HD3 I was informed by Sonic Stage that my HD3 was not authorised. Tried to authorise, but as I'm not in the US Sonic Stage would not let me... Grrrrr !

So I contacted Sony tech support through Sonic Stage and they sent instructions, 1) download a patch (Which appeared to remove settings), 2) re-download & install Sonic Stage Europe 3.1. Initialise HD3's HDD, re-connect and bingo! should be sorted.

I followed the instructions to the letter, re-connected my HD3 and guess what..... NONE of the music I spent nearly 48 hours ripping and converting will now transfer to my HD3 !!! I've now got 100 tracks on it (MP3's I imported from iTunes).

Any advice....... ?

EDIT: I've just tried installing Sonic Stage on my laptop and importing a CD (One which was previously on my desktop and now refuses to transfer). The CD transferred fine to my HD3... guess it's the lovely Sony copy protection which is stopping my listening to my own purchased music! Any idea how to remove all traces of sonic stage from my main comp (I know I'll have to re-copy my CD's but it's better than a re-format !)


Thanks in advance

Brian

[synner]

Evenin' all,

I've had a reply from Sony, which may help any others in a similar situation:

We currently have an issue where the DRM (Digital Rights Management - Copy Protection) requirements by the labels are different between US and EU, for this reason there are two versions of SonicStage. In order to use CONNECT-EU content an EU version of SonicStage must be used. Unfortunately once you remove a version of SonicStage, the associated Terminal ID, which makes up part of the license is also removed and hence renders content invalid.
However it is not all bad news, the tracks ripped from CD should be restored if you run C:\Program Files\Sony\SonicStage\ojbsir.exe This should reset DRM functionality. When running this utility you must make sure that you are connected to the internet, and that the utility is not blocked from accessing the internet by firewalls, or virus checkers.

I hope this helps someone (too late for me as I just gave up and re-ripped my CD collection !)

Regards

Brian