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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?'"
Let's see how many people are outraged when Apple does something like this, as opposed to say, Sony or Microsoft. I'm definitely not approving or defending any company doing this kind of thing, but I do expect a bit of a disconnect as to the reaction. Call me cynical.
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
What no one thought of is that if you lose your iPod, without much effort you will become the RIAA's brand new Public Enemy Number One..
The RIAA seeded the file sharing networks with watermarked files from the beginning. They could not admit it because it's hard to say you have been violated when you put the content on the sharing network yourself but you can be sure they used it to track down some of the earlier "pirates".
It's only a mater of time before people realize that the "pirates" were right. It's wrong to keep people from sharing.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I believe you are talking about those pirates that used to rape women, murder men and women, steal, maim, and generally disrespect life in general in their call to duty. These are the guys that went rampant on old ships sinking them and pillaging their goods.
You are talking about copyright theft. This isn't the same. Stealing copyrighted content does not keep the rights holder from making a sale on those items. You haven't denied anyone an income nor have you kept anyone from purchasing an item. The law is well established in this area.
Yes, laws are getting tougher and so are the punishments. It is inappropriate to list pirates and those that steal copyrighted works. Yes, it is done but to include mass murders, rapist, and every other form of criminal act with the theft of a copyrighted material is wrong. You send rapist, child molesters, and murders away for life. You don't do the same for copyright theft. They don't have the same economic nor material impact nor the catastrophic impact that a death might have.
You are just spreading the propaganda of the rich companies.
I know you feel it is bad to do take and reproduce these things in this fashion. A lot of people do. You are entitled to your point of view but you need to come to reality. These guys are not committing heinous crimes.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Apple truly is an evil corporation
They gleefully force some of the labels to allow them to release DRM free music to make it look like they're actually doing something to fight the copyright cartel, but instead they've changed DRM into, arguably, the only thing even more evil than that... spyware. They might as well fingerprint you and implant a GPS tracker. What will they use this spyware for? I guarantee Apple will start selling their iTunes customers to the RIAA cartel. Just sacrificing one or two of them to keep the content gods appeased. They can afford a few losses, because iTunes and iPod has created a tidy vertical monopoly for Apple. And we all know how monopolies can be abused... looks like Apple has turned the tables on Microsoft, embrace and extend, right?
Why not just start installing rootkits? Oh wait, Sony has prior art on that one. Keep trying Apple, soon you'll be as widely despised as Sony.
And yes I'm well aware that Apple fanboys have modpoints. But you know there's truth in what I've said.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.