J - With shop bought ones it is even harder. Sony pioneered the encryption of digital media and have applied that to MD's aswell. For example if I put a shop bought MD into my MD hifi, and connect up my portable MD recorder via the optical lead it will not allow you to copy. Same if I connect up the portable MD recorder to the PS2 via the optical lead to copy say, a CD, or the music off a DVD film, it won't allow you to copy. The only way to do it is to use analogue cables and then you lose a shit load of quality, which when you burn it to CDR as MP3 it sounds awful.....