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Apple Hides Account Info in DRM-Free Music
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?'"
There is always a little line written in 4 point at the bottom.
Living With a Nerd
Actually, this is nothing more than the vague copyright that cartographers used for quite some time. They'd put obscure curves into the road, small enough they won't affect anyone trying to navigate, but large enough that they'd know if one of their mapmaking competitors merely copied their waypoint data.
If you're not breaking the law, no need to worry about these cameras, right?
Please explain how a username EMBEDDED into the AAC file itself is equivalent to a camera monitoring somebody?
Apple can't use the embedded username to monitor someone's computer. The only thing they can do is watch P2P sites and the like to see if any tunes on those sites were purchased from iTunes and they can identify the user.
Cue all the responses claiming "well someone could have broken into their arch-nemesis's computer to frame them" in 3..2..1..
make world, not war
> Unless you're actually planning to break the law by sharing the songs,
Or buying them for a friend, or have had your PC/MP3 player stolen, or sold the songs on after you bought them, or had your PC/Wireless router hacked and files stolen...yeah, apart from that you should be ok.
But what if you no longer wish to own that track (you got sick of it, or bought the wrong track, or whatever) and decide to exercise your right of first sale and transfer ownership of that one (1) copy of the track to someone else? You are certainly allowed to do that, and it is NOT copyright infringement. It doesn't even fall under Fair Use because you are transferring ownership of a legally-purchased artistic work, just as you would a CD, vinyl record, book, or VHS tape. Also, what if you buy a bunch of tracks off of iTunes for your friend for his or her birthday, burn them to CD (destroying your local copies of course, even though it may otherwise fall just inside of Fair Use) and give them to your friend? It's a gift; ownership was transferred LEGALLY. However, the record companies will cry foul because Jane Doe will be seen playing tracks purchased by Joe Sixpack.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I don't see what the problem is. In fact this issue seems like a good way to distinguish between those who are against DRM because it restricts their rights to legally use their music, and those who actually just want to pirate music but use rights-based DRM arguments as a cover
You don't see what's wrong because you have your head shoved too far up the MAFIAA's lie. The question you should ask yourself is why you pay taxes to "protect" this content. The RIAA and MPAA have made it virtually impossible for non members to proffit from broadcast media, so copyright reduces to simple extortion. It's unnatural and immoral to keep people from sharing but digital restrictions will do that forever. The extreme lengths the industry has gone to protect their government imposed monopoly only highlight how wrong the laws are to begin with. You would be hard pressed to find anyone, let alone a majority of any population, who would jail their neighbor and confiscate their house because their neighbor gave them coppies of movies and songs. Yet that's what the law prescribes, $500,000 per offense and jail time. How can you fail to see what's wrong with that? Do you think libraries should be burnt before they go digital?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A smart P2P client should be able to strip out the identifying tags automatically. Not that I would ever advocate copyright infringement, just hypothetically speaking.
Atleast in Finland we pay outrageous prices for blank media so that we could legaly make copies of music.
Funny enough, I think it's still illegal to copy music. It's a weird situation. But Teosto and Gramex are the evil brothers of copyright.
Those are the local RIAA. I'm member of both and it's not even easy to resign from them. I tried once but was told to mail in my resign letter in certain time frame when they "process such requests". Surprisinlgy enough, I never remembered to do it at that certain time. I think they have a ton of guys like me who have like one registered demo tape from their teens. Atleast they can boast to have beeelliyons of members whose intellectual property they are protecting.
Oh yeah. If I register a song with them, I'm not allowed to even publish it on my web page anymore without paying royalties. Royalties which should be paid to me ofcourse. In reality all the small guys pennies will go to a common pool which will be divided to the artists "fairly" based on other visibility. eg. The big artists take the 2 cents which would be rightfully mine!
Bot Assisted Blogging
Or, you could use AtomicParsely or MP4Box to clear out the atom that contains that information, without affecting the quality of the music.
Xerox a book then tell the publisher about it and see how fast your ass is sued.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
a) I don't expect to be tracked by items I purchase forever after purchase.
b) I don't want every song in my collection that might be shared (legally over say iTunes sharing) to contain my email addr;
c) If I paid extra for DRM free music I should be able to do whatever I want with it within the same bounds as ripping a song from a CD. That is what I thought I was paying extra for.
Wow. You do know that it's not that Garth Brooks isn't popular, but instead it's that he retired? That's why you don't see any new recordings. Has nothing to do with some imaginary backlash against his stance on people reselling his CDs.
Also, the "30-day waiting period"* isn't about controlling resale of used CDs. It's about cutting down on petty theft. If, when some jittery twitchy dude comes into the pawn shop with three hundred CDs in a whole slew of genres and six car stereo head units with their wiring harnesses ripped out and no cans, maybe the pawn shop owner might think twice about buying these goods if there is a good chance he'll end up having to hand it over to the police because it's obviously stolen.
* - BTW it's not a 30 day waiting period, like you have to come into the pawn shop and give them your information then come back in 30 days to sell of your collection of spice girls and brittany spears CDs. The pawn shop has to hold the goods for 30 days. Oh, how terrible. God-damned fucking politicians interfering with our constitutionally protected rights to sell stolen property. How dare they.
File a police report stating that your mp3 player or laptop was stolen which included your vast collection of music in digital form. Voila. Now they'll have to go the extra mile to prove that it was you (via an ip address or whatnot) that made the file available and not the thief....
Like any stolen good which could involve you vicariously in a crime, you should report it.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
It's especially irritating when you own more than one computer. I have two macs, and I'm the only user of both of them. Why should I have to buy software twice just to use it on both of my machines?
Most shareware doesn't seem to be locked to the specific machine, and none of the software I use has had this problem yet, but if I ever come across something I want and the seller insists on my buying two copies to use on my computers, he won't get a single dollar from me.
-Z
Putting your email address into music that you download means that if you put it on a large pirated-music sharing network, then anybody there can see your email address. So not only can the RIAA's lawyers send you nastygrams asking for $3000, but all those Nigerian Dictators' Widows can send you mail about how you've won the Microsoft Herbal V1@Gra Lottery and if you provide them with your bank account and snailmail information they'll send you your share of the winnings, a hot stock tip, and a bottle of their latest pills.
This will cost them a less than actually bothering to sue anybody, and it's probably a *lot* more annoying
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
1: Adopt EFI, Trusted Computing for new Mac's.
( a powerful firmware level intended for DRM schemes sitting between OS/software and hardware, that has it's own partition on the drive, can access the internet and download, do just about anything without a OS, without your knowledge for most people)
First off, EFI is a replacement for an ancient BIOS that most x86/x64 machines still slug along with. Since Apple could start with a clean slate, why not adopt the modern firmware for a mainboard over something filled with 20 years of legacy Apple didn't need? You can spin EFI in a bad light all you want, but really it's more of a new replacement for something old, just as PCI replaced ISA.
Also, the Macs currently shipping lack the TPM chip needed to implement Trusted Computing. Apple did initially ship them, but didn't do anything with them. Vista can use the TPM chip though for bitlocker encryption.
You can spin whatever spook story you want, but try to at least do it with real facts and not just sensational Slashdot headlines.
What you are describing is an attempt to create artificial scarcity.
That is precisely what the "sellers" of intellectual property want you to believe. That the license/item/product you purchased is scarce that it's value should be higher than what it is really worth. There is only one problem: this approach doesn't work in a digital world with digital assets (like songs, movies, etc).
The music publishing industry (RIAA) is currently built on artificial scarcity through control of the supply chain. That works in the real world where you have inventory and "real" CD's (and real costs too). But the entire idea of "scarcity of digital assets" is nuts because things can be copied and transferred so easily in the digital world. What this means is that the actual value of what they provide is lower than what it was, say, 20 years ago. Much lower. However, they continue to try to make you think that artificial scarcity (and therefore, higher value of them) is an achievable goal.
It isn't. The digital world does not work that way. Attempts to control it will be met with route-arounds, just like they always have.
Eventually, an equilibrium will be reached. Customers will be charged what the item's value really is, and over time, society will eventually agree on what that value is. Right now, it is a one-sided discussion, with the RIAA (and its congress critters) doing all the talking -- so we go through some pain and society routes-around accordingly. Someday we won't have to route-around....but not until prices come down to reflect the real value of what we are getting for our money. Right now, we're not getting enough. So route-arounds continue...
EFI is a great replacement for a crappy old BIOS, any day of the week. With that said..
:-)
I am a new Apple convert. I bought an Intel iMac with the Core 2 duo, and a MacBook with the Core Duo this year. I was a heavy Linux geek and I have been a programmer on MS systems for the past 12 years. I have to say that I love OS X. It is really great.
Seeing things about DRM and Apple makes me a little nervous though. I will quickly sell both my Intel Macs and jump back to Linux if I think Apple is trying to push DRM crap on me. However, so far, that doesn't seem to be the case. For example, there is no crappy MS "activation" crap with OS X. I could use my OS X install DVD's and install OS X on any number of Macs, no questions asked, and most importantly, no crappy "activation". So as of now, it seems that Apple is trusting its users to buy the right number of licenses to install their OS. That is a far cry from what MS does with their activation junk.
Even though I love OS X, I do have some problems with iTMS and iTunes. Out of the box, iTunes doesn't play many non-Apple or non-proprietary formats. Thanks to projects like Perian that can be taken care of, though I personally just use VLC which blows away Quicktime. The biggest problem I have had is that all the TV shows I have bought from iTMS has been trapped in a DRM-only format. I wish Apple would provide a way to transcode to a DVD MPEG-2 format so I can watch the shows on my TV. No, I don't want to have to buy an AppleTV to watch my iTMS-only content. If AppleTV allowed me to watch the Divx/Xvid rips I made of the DVD's that I own, then hell yeah, I would buy it.
So to sum up and get off my soap-box, I love OS X, I am just very weary about where Apple may go in the future WRT DRM. I really hope they do not take the Microsoft path. If so, I will get rid of all my Mac's and switch back to two PC's. One with Ubuntu Linux and one with WinXP. Though I hope I don't have to do that. After 6 months with OS X, I really don't want any other OS. Though, my freedoms are worth more than any OS to me.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
Do you know if giving music, not fixed in a tangible medium (like a CD), is legal? These tracks are licensed, not sold. So are you just complaining that Apple's actions make it less convenient for you to perform a possibly illegal act?
In countries like Germany this is perfectly legal (unless you break a copy protection scheme). There, Apple's behavior might even be a violation of privacy laws.
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