Recently I wrote about a DRM and Anthropology debacle asking for help for a fellow friend whose files are basically in limbo-land, totally stuck, in a format that can’t be converted. I asked for comments but, brilliantly, did not open the comments. So here is one useful one passed along by email:

Here is a small, not completely cheap box which can take the protection code off the digital audio, at least at some situations of usefulness in a digital chain.

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/CO3-main.html

It could help your situation, I think. However, Sony, if you have been following the news recently, hires all sorts of incompetent people to design their DRM things.

So I think there is no way to find out for sure except to have someone pretty capable with digital audio try some things with your locked-out backups, probably just the other digital audio gear you have, and this box.

They may have to think a little to get it to work out, so find one person or more who like to be clever.

Good luck. And thanks for bringing this out…

update
And then I got this from Patrice R today, refering to the fact that many famous anthropologists lost thier data:

M.N. Srinivas “The Remembered Village” , I think the nicest case of lost date got
best book. And if I am not mistaken Fernand Braudel’s “La Mediterranee” is also the
result of lost data (FB in a German POW camp, MNS in an arson at Stanford)