I have a few MD recorders lying around. It wasn't just the copy protection that got to me - the Sony ones seem designed to be unrepairable. I had a socket go wonky on me - this should have been a simple repair, new sockets cost a few pence. But the socket was buried at the very bottom of the case where you needed to remove nearly every screw in the machine to get at it. That was enough to put me off ever buying a piece of Sony hardware again.