There is a workaround for this that I used a couple of weeks ago. In iTunes, burn an audio cd with the music you need. Then play that audio cd in Windows Media Player 10 and rip it to mp3. It's as simple as that.

You lose substantial quality by doing that because of the re-encodings.

Eugenia, technically it may indeed loose quality, but the music certainly sounded ok and usable for my project.
Second, when I bought the music on iTunes with the purpose of using it in one of my homemovies, I was really disappointed there was no straightforward way of doing this. I bet it would work on an Apple computer with iMovie or Final Cut, but oh no, not on a Microsoft machine!
A couple of years ago, I decided to stay away from illegal downloads, and I still do, but sometimes the business itself is screwing things up in a major way.

Well, the law is the law. Even if we don't agree with it. I don't like how the "fair use" law is so restricted either, but I can't use copyrighted music not even for my own homemovies, at least in USA. This is the same as not being allowed to rip a DVD for your own iPod. It's illegal AFAIK.

This is why I use Creative Commons music. Creative Commons music is suitable for homemovies, as long as they are not licensed under the ND sub-license ("non-derivative"). I cleared this with the Creative Commons own lawyer a few months ago, the non-derivative clause prohibits the "synching" of audio and video. If you are going to share your video on web sites that have advertising, then you can't use the NC sub-license either (non-commercial). All other CC licenses are suitable, so I don't see why not go to www.jamendo.com and download a suitable music piece from there. That's what I do at least to be at the right side of the law.

I had never heard of Jamendo, but the music seems quiete interesting.
Still, I notice that you need to install either an Emule or Bittorrent client to download albums. As far as I know, installing these is like 'haleluya, I'm in virus heaven'...
I've been dowloading music from Acidplanet.com, which is very straightforward, but I've never bothered checking for copyright matters there. After all, I make homemovies and I don't make money with them.

No, you don't get viruses by downloading the Bittorrent client and downloading ONLY the music you need from jamendo. You only get viruses if you download and run infected software.

Besides, there is a trick to download music from there without bittorrent. That's how I do it. I right click on the .m3u playlist file of an album, I save it down, I open it with a text editor, and then I fetch the URLs listed there that end in *.mp3. The saved file is the actual .mp3. It's a bit more laborious than using a client, but it's a sure bet.

The only things you need to be careful when choosing your music is to not have the ND clause in the license that prohibits the A/V sync, and the NC clause *if* you are going to upload it in a site that has advertising (e.g. youtube). Any other song in there is legal to use on your home movies.

My latest movie uses a Creative Commons "Attribution" licensed song:
http://one.revver.com/watch/368891
This license asks you to give attribution to the artist by name, and either linking the license or the album/song, so I do so. Your video can be licensed either a similar license, or not. The Attribution CC license is the most liberal of all.

Eugenia, I've been looking into the revver website and plan on rerendering some of my movies with unlicensed music.
I've have also checked out some of your movies (Stanford and the zoo), and I must say they are pretty impressive. Seems to me the Canon HV20 is really amazing to work with. I have dowloaded some HD footage of yours a couple of days ago, and that is really jaw dropping. How I 'd love to have onen myself, but my budget (and my wife!) would never allow it: besides the camera, I'd need a ninja pc to edit comfortably, and a HD TV to play it back. Well, I guess I 'll keep on dreaming, and in the mean time, continue fumbling with my entry level canon md101 and acer portable ;-((