So I bought a phone with MP3 playing capablilities, and was told that it will have NOT play MP3's with copyright protection or whatnot. Does anyone know how to remove said hindrance from MP3's, so that I may play these on my phone?

Uh....Mp3s can't have copy protection in the first place.

-Joshua

Actually, there is a bit in the MPEG header that can be used to indicate copyright status, but I don't think anyone, even places that provide samples, ever set it.

Not that it would be hard to hex it or dump the frames if you were feeling unscrupulous.

I'd check the specs to find the offset for you, but I got rid of all of my MP3s last year, so I have no samples to test.

-Edit-
I forgot that digital audio is now sold legitimately over the Internet (having never used such services for reasons related to compatibility, a hatred of DRM, and a desire to actually have CDs), so it's possible that those files have the bit set.

I'm sure they mean that your phone will not play:

WMA files (from Napster To Go, Yahoo Music Unlimited, SoundBuzz, and a ton of others)
AAC files (from iTunes)
ATRAC3 files (hahaha sony)

All of those are inherent to services that allow you to download music for a fee; they're all DRM protected.  DRM protected files are never (legitimately) sold in MP3 format.  no, Allofmp3.com does not count; those cost money, but they're not protected in any way, as far as I know.

I seriously doubt you will have any difficulty putting any MP3s at all on that phone, if they're mp3s you downloaded from friends or whatever, or ones that you ripped yourself.

Where are you getting MP3s from that have "copyright protection" on them, anyway? :)

Please don't even bring up Sony's lame ass atempt at a music format, I'm still having nightmares about the minidisc player I once had.

My problem is this. Many tracks from my computer I have ripped from CD's that I own. And many of these tracks simply won't play. I get an error message saying that playback has failed. I simply assumed it was some sort of anti-piracy mechanism.

Other tracks work just fine. I have no idea how to fix this. They're all mp3 format, so if it isn't possible to have copyright protection or anything on it, then I have no idea what's wrong.

Sorry if it sounds like a dumb problem, but it's frustrating.

*shudder*

Same here... The minidisc came in handy for recording voice lessons and recitals but ATRAC3 was like a nightmare that I never woke up from (and the less said about SonicStage, the better...)

There are different ways to encode MP3s.  Maybe the ones you're trying to play use variable bit rate? (VBR) or perhaps the bitrate is simply too high?

Compare the tracks that work to the tracks that don't.  Figure out what the differences are.  There's no doubt that you should be able to rip tracks from your own CDs that play back okay.

What's the model of the phone you bought?

For reference, there ARE plenty of places that sell Mp3s, unprotected, legally. eMusic.com being the biggest (bigger than any other place, save iTunes)

And AllofMp3's Mp3s aren't protected either...

-Joshua

Okay, so I've looked at the bit rates. All of the songs that didn't work have a bit rate of 128 bps, and an audio sample rate of 44khz. Strangely enough, although every single song that didn't work had those stats, but many of the ones that do work do as well.

And the songs that I've ripped from CDs are precisely the ones that don't work. All of my Michael Jackson stuff, and a good deal of Initial D: 4th Stage eurobeat tunes, as well. Some Gundam stuff doesn't function, too.

And my phone is a Sony Ericsson W810i

Hahaha? Sorry...

If the ones you've ripped yourself are the ones that aren't working, it's possible that your encoder is writing a header/frames that your phone can't parse.

Check your encoder to see if there's something like a "force ISO MPEG compliance" option (note that this is a clear patent violation, not that Fraunhofer's claim doesn't cover enough of the spec to make every derivative disputable), or maybe something related to stereo separation. It's probably just some little, seemingly insignificant, detail that your phone can't handle, so encode random samples until you get a working file.

-Edit-
It's also possible that you're using an ID3 spec that your phone doesn't support.
It may only support ID3v2.3 or lower, or even just ID3v1.

Yeah, yeah. After all that shit I talked about the PS3. I dislike Sony in regards to their game systems, but this phone, aside from said problems is pretty good.

I apologize, but I don't understand any of that. Technologically speaking, I fall in between a brick and a bag of salt in terms of know-how.