Legal wmv and licenses on different computers

[daveandstell]

Hi,

I recently legally paid for and downloaded a wmv file to my laptop and I made a note of the license number.

My laptop stopped working and I have had to bin it and buy a new one - now when I enter the license number it says "This number has already been issued" and I can't acquire a new licence number.

Can anyone help please? I paid good money to legally download the film and now can't watch it - and the company filmon.com are just not interested.

Cheers

[admin]

Welcome to the horrible world of DRM. Unless filmon.com helps you out, I think you might be out of luck. Even ripping out the DRM (which is illegal, of course) would normally require that you have a working copy of the file (that is a file that you have the license for and plays on your computer), although Google is your friend if you still want to try your luck with some of these tools (just try the free ones, since some of the paid ones are scams).

If you still have the old laptop, and the hard-drive isn't dead, then the license file should still be somewhere on the computer. It might or might not work, depending on the license, and the instructions are here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/26547

Note that Microsoft removed license management from WMP 11, so if that's what you were using, then this solution won't work, and you'll have to rely on filmon.com to help you out.

[admin]

Just to add that in some countries, it is legal to rip DRM if it prevents playback of legally purchased content, especially if the DRM issuer is useless in providing support.

[daveandstell]

Thanks for the info.

Unfortunately it was a hard drive failure that led to the PC being discarded and I have retrieved the drive and formatted it so although I have the film it won;t play so I can't rip it.

Filmon have failed to answer any emails - even Paypal refused to entertain the claim as 'defective goods' so it lloks like an expensive lesson I have learned.

Thanks for your help.