Apple Hides Account Info in DRM-Free Music 669
Alvis Dark writes "Apple launched iTunes Plus earlier today, the fruit of its agreement with EMI to sell DRM-free music. What they didn't say is that all DRM-free tracks have the user's full name and account e-mail embedded in them. Is this to discourage people from throwing the tracks up on their favorite P2P platform? 'It would be trivial for iTunes to report back to Apple, indicating that "Joe User" has M4As on this hard drive belonging to "Jane Userette," or even "two other users." This is not to say that Apple is going to get into the copyright enforcement business. What Apple and indeed the record labels want to watch closely is, will one user buy music for his five close friends?'"
American laws do not apply outside the US (Score:3, Informative)
jhymn? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
First, why would you have to prove that you did not put them there? Your name on them is not proof that you did, and if you can show that a device that may have had the files was stolen you'll walk unscathed from even a civil suit.
This whole thing seems a bit weird to me. Apple's license forbids them from sending the data back to headquarters for analysis to catch casual pirates. They've been including this data in all the files they've sent for a long time. This is in the mp4 format so nothing stops a freeware program from erasing or changing them. Heck I can grab your e-mail address from a dozen places now and add it to mp4 files on P2P networks. That doesn't prove you put them there.
So, it is 100 times easier to grab these files from P2P for purposes of piracy than it is to steal a player or get them some other way. Who is planning on uploading files they have purchased anyway? That's just dumb.
Re:The advantage then of buying real CD's (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Just strip it out (Score:3, Informative)
I don't understand why this is a story at all -- every song sold from iTMS has these same markings, since day 1. All the old tools from decrypting old-style iTMS songs include a provision for removing this data, and I suspect that bit still works on the new-style files.
Re:More details, please (Score:1, Informative)
This is exactly what the HYMN Project would do by default, too. It was specifically designed to leave your user information in the files. The assumption was that if you're using HYMN legitimately, that you wouldn't mind taking ownership of the files you have decrypted.
Bill Gates, LOLZ (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, the files might be watermarked in other ways, obviously more difficult to detect.
Of course it's entirely possible that Apple has actually decided to use this information in some way, which will affect mostly non-technically inclined people who are unaware of the tagging. And would be supremely stupid.
Imagine if they managed to trace back all those Bruce Wayne Campbell [andrejkoymasky.com] tracks in your collection? Oh the humanity.
Re:American laws do not apply outside the US (Score:2, Informative)
-S
Re:Trivial to remove (Score:5, Informative)
All that's left are the uni-button skating rinks on their laptops, but I can't imagine that they're going to stay that way much longer. Besides, those can use gestures for scrolling and what not.
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_data_compressi
Re:the acid test (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The advantage then of buying real CD's (Score:5, Informative)
Even better, they've been doing exactly this ever since the iTunes Music Store opened. The HYMN Project was specifically designed to leave your user information in the file. The idea was that if you are stripping the crypto for legitimate purposes (backups, interoperability, etc.), you wouldn't mind having your name attached to the decrypted files.
This is the very definition of not-news. It's like that guy on Full Disclosure earlier this month who was going on about how Macs clamp the output of 'ps -aux' to the terminal width and how this prevents users from seeing the full process name. The 'w' flag was probably added before that clown was born.
Re:Apple, Sony, Microsoft.. (Score:5, Informative)
The only people this affects are those who use the file in an illicit manner (distributing it on P2P). It's not like DRM where it punishes legit users significantly, often forcing them to piracy just for the sake of compatibility.
Oh, and it's nothing new. The old DRMed files had it too. In fact, back in the days of PyMusique and whatever that program was that stripped Apple DRM after the fact (as opposed to PyMusique not applying it in the first place), neither program did anything about this identification data because unlike the DRM, there was no legit reason to remove it. It's always been there, albeit in many cases encrypted.
Re:Lame acid test (Score:3, Informative)
How so? This itunes thing is not a law, it's a product. And it can hardly be considered draconian.
No, buying a music file means buying the music file you are offered. Sometimes that means DRM, sometimes that means a watermark. You don't have to buy it if you don't want to.
Good for you. But what's wrong with people choosing to buy this, knowing what they are getting? How does that harm you? How is it draconian? It's just business. If the market rejects it, then Apple will fail. Not to mention that software companies have been doing this and much worse for years, including such things as "dongles" for protection - and in some cases, licenses that include a clause that allows the company to audit your business. Yet you don't hear much outrage over that. But for some reason, a simple of ownership on an almost disposable audio file is more heinous than all of those software protection methods. Even though it won't suddenly break your audio file like DRM can, or cost your business thousands of dollars if it fails, like dongles or audits can.
So? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes.
Are they at a higher bitrate as advertised?
Yes.
Is there any physical restriction on what you can do with them?
No.
When you buy a DRM-free song, are you buying a "share them with teh intarweb" license?
No.
Is there a whole batch of metadata in the songs you buy from iTunes, protected or not?
Yep.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Re:Just like a used car (Score:5, Informative)
Truth is, somebody decided long ago that they'd use this sort of nonsense to criticize what's really an industry-changing development. I don't know how you possibly see it as underhanded. The file has some informational tags... duh.
you're still breaking the law (Score:4, Informative)
And that's still breaking the law. If this makes it easier to catch you, so be it. Don't break the damn law. If you want your friends to hear the song, then you have many valid choices:
(a) iTMS has a song preview, which have definitely affected by purchase decisions
(b) point them to Imeem.com or a site like it
(c) tell them to quit being cheap asses and pay the $1 for the song
(d) play the song the next time they're over
Plenty of options that don't make you a criminal.
digital copies, RAM, and copyright law (Score:3, Informative)
pop quiz: did you know that it's illegal to run a binary of a program you have on your hard-drive unless you are given permission from the copyright holder? It has been ruled that the copy from the hard-disk to system memory counts as a copy in terms of copyright law. Lame? Yup. Still legally valid? According to the federal courts, sure is.
Further reading on the topic:
http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise20
Re:More details, please (Score:3, Informative)
DRM-less for $0.99 + the cost of a blank CD (Score:2, Informative)
No $.30 upcharge, or DRM hassles...iTunes practically coaches you on how to do it. The CD-RW disk can be reused many times, so there isn't even a cost. Or even if you use a regular CD, it's good to have a hardcopy audio CD of the albums you buy anyway.
The whole process takes almost no time at all.
-h
Re:The advantage then of buying real CD's (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The advantage then of buying real CD's (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, any jpeg rotation/skew/stretch/shrink WILL destroy your hidden data.
--jeffk++
Re:Much ado about nothing... AAC itself is --LIAR! (Score:1, Informative)
You must work for Microsoft.
AAC is a 100% open non-Apple audio standard codified by the ISO (all countries)
AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is one of the audio compression formats defined by the MPEG-2 standard.
Have you ever heard of MPEG 2 audio ?
MP3 (MPEG-1 Layer 3) is provably less quality than MPEG 2 AAC
That is why Apple chose it.
Apple did not ger to a market cap this week of over 103 billion dollars and thus the 52nd largest company in america by being idiots.
Even Microsoft market cap this week is under 3 times the size of apple.
Read abook sometime and quit being a liar-troll
Re:Mod me up please!! (Score:4, Informative)
Note that this is `widely supported' as in 'supported by a lot of platforms' not 'supported by a lot of systems.' To my knowledge, there is no OpenFirmware implementation for x86. OpenBIOS has started, but not finished. Since they went to Intel to get a complete solution (motherboard, chipset, and CPU), writing their own firmware would have been somewhat counterproductive.
That said, I'll take OpenFirmware over EFI any day of the week.
Re:Mod me up please!! (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter10/tpm/ [osxbook.com]
There are no guarantees, but it's not looking like Apple is keen to enforce the TPM on Mac users.