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I have some WMV videos downloaded from Amazon Video roughly 10 years ago. I bought them with an old Amazon account that is no longer active. NOTE - These are offline video files stored on my local drive ... NOT online streams.

Of course, they worked when I watched them initially. I don't remember exactly how I watched them, but I think it was either with Media Player Classic or Windows Media Player.

So now, I'm stuck with a bunch of these files that I paid roughly $100 for, and can't watch anymore because of the DRM protection.

Any way to defeat the DRM ?

P.S. I have tried both Handbrake and ffmpeg, and both failed. Handbrake produced 40 minutes of gibberish and ffmpeg was humble enough to state "Conversion failed."

P.S. I have already spoken to Amazon Customer service and they were as useless as a rock on a beach.

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    Looking at the right-hand side-bar, it seems these questions have long been entertained as 'acceptable' on here - even though the entire subject of 'cracked' software/media makes my teeth squeak:\ That aside, these days because it is so widespread, you could probably pick the videos up online within 5 minutes of a simple google search… & not be stuck with wmv files but modern equivalents. – Tetsujin Dec 02 '19 at 16:53
  • @Tetsujin I have no moral dilemma here. It's an issue between the OP and Amazon. If the copyright owners/managers won't help why should anybody else. –  Dec 02 '19 at 16:57
  • Windows Media Player should still exist in Windows and may be able to obtain a licence to play the video. What happens if you open it in WMP? Rocks *are* useful on the beach, they break up waves by being vaguely movable energy absorbers and a bunch of largish rocks can prevent coastal erosion by breaking up waves before they hit more sensitive soil. Many harbours tend to use concrete caltrops to achieve this. For now I'm sticking with our default of assuming that circumventing DRM is vaguely "ok" per https://meta.superuser.com/questions/8979/can-we-or-can-we-not-discuss-drm-removal – Mokubai Dec 02 '19 at 17:09
  • @GabrielaGarcia - because, legal niceties aside, the original purchaser of that content has a pretty good claim to the right to be able to watch it, no matter what account name was used to purchase it, or whether the original DRM licensing key/decoder is still live on the net. Whether that's the right to rip a CD to your iPod, or a movie to your tablet, I think that is the purchaser's moral right. My moral flip-side is if that's done to redistribute. Personally, I have no moral qualms about downloading some ripped movie if it's one I already have the DVD of. I consider that a practicality. – Tetsujin Dec 02 '19 at 17:24
  • @Mokubai Yes, I have tried playing them with WMP - "WMP encountered a problem while playing the file." All said and done, I will probably follow Tetsujin's suggestion and pick up the videos on YouTube. I was just hoping that someone would have figured out a way to crack these files, but oh well ... –  Dec 03 '19 at 07:20
  • @GabrielaGarcia - Then why did you bother replying here ? :D –  Dec 03 '19 at 07:54

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