Conversion For Purchased Music - PLEASE HELP!

I've been toying around with this for a long time now and I can't seem to get my purchased music to play outside of the iPod. While I realize that the content is "protected" and that you can listen to the songs, say in the car, by purchasing iTunes adapter type devices, it's still really frustrating. Certainly in the internet world, somewhere out there, maybe there's a shareware/freeware program that can read and convert the .m4p format for us Windows users? (if you know of any, you can e-mail as.STARS.FaLL@gmail.com if you don't feel comfortable revealing these on the boards)

I feel a bit ripped off since I bought the songs (whole CDs in some cases), yet I still don't have the flexibility to listen to my songs where I want to without purchasing the physical CD. If anyone can help with this it would be greatly appreciated.