DISQUS

Pat Thompson · 11 months ago

I guess I'll play the role of the Apple apologist today. I've seen the huge "uproar" over this the last few days, and have to say I'm surprised. This data has always been in the DRM-free tracks available on iTunes, it isn't anything new added now that the rest of their music is available DRM-free. There was a similar, though much smaller, backlash when the same data was found on the EMI iTunes Plus track a year or two back. I guess I just don't understand why encoding the account used to download the track is such a big deal.

My problem with DRM is that it restricts what I can do with the music that I bought and paid for. If I have more than 5 computers/iPods/etc (I do), I should be able to play the track on any of them. If Apple's server ever goes down, I should still be able to listen to the tracks I bought. I should be able to play my music on any device/OS that supports the format (AAC is a standard, and iTunes allows you to convert it to MP3 easily), rather than just players that support Fairplay (aka Apple hardware/software). By removing the Fairplay DRM from iTunes music, Apple no longer stops me from doing those things.

The only thing tagging my email address does is tie the music to me if I ever put it on P2P networks (or Usenet, or whatever). The simple fix is to not upload my music. The almost as simple fix is just to strip the email address out of the track, which is very simple for anyone who wants to do it. Sure a unique ID number would accomplish the same thing without handing out my email address, but it's still only an issue if the music ends up where it isn't supposed to.

I haven't bought a DRM'd track from iTunes since Amazon started selling DRM-free music. If the music is "iTunes Plus" and I have an iTunes gift card, I buy it from Apple. If a track/album I want is only available with DRM, I go to Amazon and buy it. Everything else being equal, I usually buy from Amazon (cheaper), and my wife buys from iTunes (easier for her to use).

Andrew Herron · 11 months ago

This has been the case ever since the release of iTunes+ and it's not a watermark, it's metadata. If it was an audio watermark you wouldn't be able to find it as plain text within the file.

If you're really paranoid a metadata editor can probably remove it.

patrickd88 · 11 months ago

See what I mean? (I'm referencing my earlier comment about Apple-hating being too easy.)

I used to buy tracks from iTunes, but iTunes kept randomly deleting tracks from my library and Apple kept denying the problem existed. Best move I ever made leaving them. If I buy a track now, I buy it from Amazon as a good old mp3. Hell's yeah.

Christopher Harley · 11 months ago

And why would this concern me? I purchased the music and now I'm somehow entrusted with its provenance? How is finding my name, associated with a music track, in any way an explicit declaration that I will be the track's caretaker for the duration of my natural life?

HelloKit · 11 months ago

I suppose vehicle identification and registration numbers, making you identifiable and accountable when you violate a traffic law, are evil too. We should all be able to break as many laws as we want, and anything that allows us to get caught is a violation of our rights. Better take all the crime scene investigators and homicide detectives and throw 'em all behind bars... how dare they try to find out who committed a crime?! That's for us to know and none of their business!

DaveWhite · 11 months ago

I have to disagree, and that's pretty strange for me. I'm not an apple fanboy (quite the opposite in fact, I never use apple hardware or software) and I hate DRM'd music. The whole point about DRM was that your music wasn't portable. You couldn't stick it on whatever player you wanted, couldn't use it on whatever machines you wanted and you were locked to a limited amount of times you could activate it.

Watermarking MP3s however just makes sense. Its purely about piracy. Its about their right to prevent it, and your legal obligation not to do it. If you don't share your music online then there's absolutely no reason why this should be a problem for you. MP3? Check. Portable? Check. Open standard? Check. Where's the problem?