My friend was trying to record something for me off of my MD player on to his computer, and he couldn't get it to record without distorting. It was not an illegal copy - actually it was a recording of a gig we did a while ago.

Anyways, he finally stumbled across a program called "Silent Bob" which was able to take the output of the MD and record it via the soundcard int the computer.

My friend did some research before finding this program, and apparently MD players have some sort of protection on them that will not allow you to record on to the computer. I'm not totally sure about that (it doesn't make 100% sense to me that they'd be able to copy-protect an analog signal), but in any event, he was able to record is using the "Silent Bob" program.

Hope that helps.