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Apple's DRM Whack-a-Mole
Mateo_LeFou writes "Gulf News has a nice piece exposing the last couple generations of Apple's DRM strategy (you didn't really think they were abandoning DRM, did you?). Article focuses on how quickly the tactics are worked around, and how nasty the latest one is: purchased iTunes now have your personal data in them. Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network."
I'm just going to ignore the DRM circumvention garbage that comprises the first half of the article, considering Steve Jobs is by far the most influential person in music, media, and computing to call DRM out for what it is.
...which is what I thought the purpose of calling for no-DRM was. You know, so we could all use our files we legitimately own on any device.
The first half of the article is nothing but an anti-Apple rant, actually insinuating that Apple is on a mission to not let their users burn music to CD, which is completely and utterly false.
Then, the article drops this gem:
Turns out that Apple has been embedding its files with user information. iTunes customers have been downloading files that contain both their names and their email address.
"Turns out"? Let's continue...
How long this has been going on and just why Apple has felt compelled to do so is still a mystery - the company so far has refused to comment
A mystery? This has been going on since day one, and has never been a mystery. And even if it is a "mystery" on the non-DRM files, it was never a mystery on the DRM files, was never hidden, and was never secret. This has been known, never obfuscated, and obvious to anyone who clicked "Get Info" on anything purchased from the iTunes Store, ever.
but the reason seems obvious.
Oh, please. Do tell.
The embedded data won't prevent anyone from listening to their music files
but it might deter them from uploading them to a file-sharing server.
O, the humanity! Really??? It might deter people from that?
Well, let's take a look at the logic, here. It was never secret on the DRM files, and it's not secret on the no-DRM files. But, Apple also never overtly publicized it. So, if it's not even talked about, how is it a deterrent, exactly?
But the message is clear: take our songs public, and we'll take you public.
Oh, that's the message, is it? So we've been calling for no DRM for ages, so we can legitimately and legally use our music files, and now people have problems with not being able to do things with them that are strictly illegal? If you want to bash copyright or the fact that you can't legally share anything and everything with anyone with no repercussions, do that. But don't blame Apple because an incidental name and email address is in a file that you shouldn't be uploading anyway.
And to all the idiots who think this could be somehow "used against them" without their knowledge, it would be easily, easily provable that someone never made such a purchase from the iTunes store. But that's a different argument entirely. All these fringe examples of how something MIGHT be able to abused that makes all sorts of suppositions that aren't necessarily even true - that Apple put the information there for this purpose, or that it would ever even be used that way, by anyone, or that falsifying no-DRM tracks from iTunes and then uploading them to P2P networks will suddenly become routine harassment - are starting to get old.
Sure, encrypt the data. But you know what? if it was encrypted, do you really think all the people howling about this wouldn't be complaining even more? After all, it's still identifying information, and now it's encrypted! Maybe the RIAA has the key, and they're all going to come after you! Why is Apple hiding this information??? Does anyone really think that wouldn't happen?
My favorite quote of all this was from an EFF attorney; to paraphrase: if someone steals your iPod, the thief would have the name and email address of the rightful owner!
Oh, yes, I agree: what a nightmare scenario that would be!
Could we have that in English please?
Personal info has always been there. Didn't anyone notice that Apple is selling DRM-free tunes now? It's not Apple's fault if DRM is there. If it exists, it's because the record company wanted it there. Don't like DRM? Don't buy from those companies. Simple.
Apple gives you a no-DRM file, and slaps a watermark on it so that, if you're so inclined to share it with wild abandon, they can ID you.
That's not nasty. That's fair. It's YOUR music file, and there are no technical limitations on what you can do with it. if you do the one thing you're not allowed to do with it, they'll be able to (*gasp!*) track down that you did it.
So? It's not like you're going to upload them are you? It's sure not a concern unless you do.
However, I do think they should encrypt the watermark, or at the very least use some unique hash to prevent people from placing someone else's name there instead. I mean, things can happen surely.
Remove said personal information from the ID3 equivalent before uploading said file. Or is this information in some weird watermarking system I don't know about?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
and don't forget that you can just right click the non-DRM file now and convert to another format that DOES NOT have your user information embedded in it. it's a very simple, fast process for the paranoid.
Let's see now, how to gain cash over the weekend - I know! The hottest topic in the computing sphere right now has to be Apple - with the keynote at their conference tomorrow. Let's do a hack-job on them...
Strike one - let's paint Apple as stupid - pretend that the company famous for 'rip, mix, burn' don't understand that the code *they* built into iTunes can remove the DRM. [ed - are you sure you're going somewhere here ?]
Strike two - we'll pretend that the bug in iTunes was put there maliciously. We'll claim that Apple were caught out by their users being too clever [ed - I thought Apple acknowledge [Roy B's post] this as a bug, they *are* human you know]
Strike three, they're out. They *embed* your email address into these "supposedly DRM-free" tracks! How are you supposed to upload and spread them around the net if they identify who did it ? That's it! Game over for Apple! [ed - but surely the people who *buy* iTunes music are the people who *don't* download free music from the 'net]
columnist: Trust me, ok, it'll make for loads of ad-hits. $$$ man!
ed: ok, ok. You know the territory, I'm just the business guy
Quite apart from the fact that the personal metadata has *always* been embedded, it doesn't prevent the exact same method of protection-removal if you really want to upload your tracks - lay it down to CD as audio, rip it, "share" it.
Perhaps what we have is simply that Apple didn't *remove* a piece of metadata that was always there, they just delivered on their promise to allow you to migrate your music to wherever you want to play it. But that's not a story that'll deliver ad-revenue...
Y'all just oughta be glad it's not *me* in charge... I'd have embedded the email address as an easy thing to spot & remove, and *also* embedded the binary user-GUID, spread around in the metadata block. Once you *thought* you'd removed all trace of your name, I'd still be able to track who'd uploaded files - enough files... time to emulate a ton of bricks. Given the pay-for timestamp and the appearance-on-the-network time, I ought to be able to tell who's just "sharing" files as a policy after a while...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Holy crap! I haven't seen this poorly of researched or obviously clueless article in a while. Apple isn't suddenly adding your personal data to songs. They've always done that. They just did not remove that when they pulled the DRM.
Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network."Well since such behavior would be illegal in almost every country Apple does business, I'm not sure why people should be so concerned about it. If you're obeying the law, this affects you not at all. If you're breaking the law, well, you're probably not paying to buy music in the first place so you won't have any of this music. If for some reason you are buying songs and intentionally republishing them without a license, well hopefully you're not so idiotic that you can't strip this data off. This data is nothing to worry about in my opinion. It is plaintext and easily removable. If you are a criminal you should be worrying about watermarking of files, which Apple may or may not be doing and which all the other music stores may or may not be doing. That is something a lot harder to detect.
Personally, I'm just not illegally publishing copyrighted works (and not buying from Apple either) so I don't see why I'd care. Note, this is not DRM in any way. DRM stops you from taking actions. This simply might make it easier to discover who took an action after the fact. This is no more DRM than your own upload logs are.
That Mateo_LeFou is an utter moron if he/she can be describe this as a "nice piece". And Taco is just trying to get people all up in arms for posting it.. I beleive the first post perfectly illustrates the innaccuracy and trollish nature of the "article". Nothing to see here..move along
So many injustices..so little time..
to insert a new name and email address so Steve, Bill and a couple of RIAA execs can become the biggest uploaders in the history of filesharing.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This has been discussed how many times in the last month on here?
/. for more intelligent and timely conversation elsehwere.
And you post this piece of flamebait?
Why do you think your readership is down? People have long since
left
...which makes it so damned easy to find and erase that one must conclude that the personalization has *NOTHING* to do with DRM. Honest to god, even the most retarded programmer would encrypt the information so that it isn't easily discovered.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
1. The convert to MP3 menu does not work for these tracks.
2. They're more expensive
3. You can't hear the difference, only 1 in 10 could and it was statistical noise.
4. You can fit fewer tracks on a player because they bigger.
5. Apple are playing a game here.
I'm in favour of watermarking tracks with the sale ID, but Apple looks to be playing a game here, I still can't sign up to iTunes and get music for my MP3 players at the same prices as iPod users.
There is a serious point here. Not particularly about Apple or music. The question really is about electronic media and traceability and reading/viewing/listening habits. To get the potential issue, you have to fast forward a few years. Now most of the press and pamphlets and magazines have migrated online. Some minority book publishing has also. At this point, every book, record or mag anyone buys online has, imagine, a name and address in it that is verified to a credit card.
Do you really feel completely comfortable about that? Do you for example feel comfortable knowing that that little radical publisher whose mag you subscribed to, and that has just been raided for some good or bad reason, has put your name and address in everything you bought from them? Lets say you live in some country where there had just been a change of regime.
I don't. It seems that if someone wants to write his name and (email) address in his books, or on his record or DVD covers, fine, he should be free to do it. But I cannot see the vendor writing it in the copy as a default in a way that needs tools to take it out again.
Its not about Apple - to the extent that this is just repetition of an old story about Apple its silly. But there is a serious question underneath this. To what extent do we want to be buying online exactly the same anonymous stuff we buy physically? This is not a silly question at all.
Just look at the properties of any downloaded iTunes music file (at least on Mac OS X, not sure how Windows Explorer is useful in this regard) and it lists the purchase date along with the name of the person who purchased it.
This is the case for DRM and non-DRM'd files, it's not something Apple added when they scrapped the DRM it's just something they didn't take out.
As it's trivial to alter then it's no way of tracking users, it's just extra metadata.
Nothing like insulting your readers to generate positive responses. I personally read every EULA I accept.
"Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius." -Heinlein
The watermark metadata is presumably in the MP4 container, so surely one could simply extract the AAC stream and repackage it in a new MP4 container? Or are they watermarking the actual AAC stream somehow?
-Stephen
My files were stolen. Prove me wrong.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It may be illegal to share some files, but the practice of file sharing by itself is NOT illegal. Don't go around claiming otherwise.
If I was to name the single most crucial characteristic of a DRM system, it is that it is the system governing my content rather than the courts. A watermark isn't restricting anything, I can reproduce, create derivates, distribute, perform, display, transform, comment, parodize, time-shift, space-shift, format-shift, backup and whatever else as much and as often as I want. If the copyright holders think I'm in violation of the law, we go to court where I might win, they might win but that is determined by law - not the few, if any activities the DRM system chooses to whitelist.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I wish I could use my mod points to mod the article -5, Idiotic.
purchased iTunes now have your personal data in them. Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network.
Perhaps. Or perhaps iit's because they wnt to analyse how many people do share tunes, or perhaps they actually think some people might want to know who the purchaser of the music was (A little like the about box in a lot of software). Or perhaps a programmer thought thye might as well since it would be as easy to add the information as not.
NEWS FLASH! Adobe Hides Customer Information!
From the article:
While many people believe that Adobe products are DRM-free, did you know that they, in fact, have a "poison tip?"
Besides, embedding personal info is not DRM. Wikipedia sums it up nicely:
Digital rights management (DRM) is an umbrella term referring to technologies used by publishers or copyright owners to control access to or usage of digital data or hardware, and to restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work or device.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I encourage everyone to access the firehose and vote this article down.
Sad to say, but whoever wrote that article is clueless, and it does not deserve to be on slashdot (or anywhere else).
I can only think that it made the front page because it mentions both Apple and DRM in the title, causing lots of people to flag it up by reflex. It should be buried.
I lost my sig.
honest!
-- hjw http://puzl.info/
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but is the article saying that we should be putting our DRM-free purchased iTunes songs up onto file sharing networks?
I'm under the impression the whole point of DRM-free content was to allow users to legally use their purchased content to play them or convert them to any device we want. For Apple to put our names and email addresses into the DRM-free content seems okay to me, since I'm not going to be pirating the music out.
Do you really feel completely comfortable about that? Do you for example feel comfortable knowing that that little radical publisher whose mag you subscribed to, and that has just been raided for some good or bad reason, has put your name and address in everything you bought from them?
Hey, dude, if they were raided, the feds already got your name from them *already*. They don't need to dig your name out of a file to do that.
At this point, every book, record or mag anyone buys online has, imagine, a name and address in it that is verified to a credit card.
Which is why the untracable debit cards you can get at any grocery store in the US are so useful.
I mean, you're using them when you buy your porn aready, right?
I agree entirely with this poster. The original article is neither well-reasoned nor well-organized.
As I see it, the Apple encoding lets you do whatever you want with your purchase, as long as you are willing to take responsibility for it. If you believe that music should be free, there's nothing to stop you from standing up for your belief and posting your downloads anywhere you want.
If you do, you will earn public recognition --- and perhaps the admiration of those who don't want to pay for their own downloads --- for sticking by your principles. You may also earn the recognition of the music's copyright owners, and that may be less enjoyable. But if you're not willing to accept the latter recognition, then you don't deserve the first.
Fortunately there's an easy solution; just don't post your downloads. I doubt that anyone will punish you for refraining. You can still enjoy them however else you choose and much more easily than you could before.
Peter
If you think Apple and or Steve Jobs have any opinion on DRM you are insane. He is a business man and a succesfull one at that. He only cares about what will make him the most money and will use or not use DRM as required by the greatest possible profit stream.
If he was really for freedom for customers he would have long since forced disney to stop adding such basic stuff as region encoding or even plain impossible to skip commercials.
He has not.
At the moment his company is experimenting with a new product variation that for a premium offers customer an "enhanced" version. If it succeeds, good, the same product for more money at almost no increase in costs. If it doesn't well he tried, got a few headlines and the costs are minimal.
Steve Jobs is NOT anti-DRM or pro-DRM, he is PRO-Apples bottom-line and will say or do anything (legal) that makes that bottom-line look really good.
All you need to know about Steve Jobs is that the iPod line has a ridiculous profit margin yet is made under dismall circumstances in a low wage country with appaling human rights and working conditions that would shock a european. Well main european, mainland western european. Northen part.
He could easily afford to have the iPod produced in more accetapble conditions BUT that would hurt the bottom-line. So he chooses to do the absolute minimum needed to keep the humanrights watchers from having to much ammo and rolls in the profits.
Steve Jobs is NOT god. He is just another businessman, stop trying to pretend he is something else.
purchased iTunes now have your personal data in them. Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network."
...author ALSO suspects that the big pretty boat in the movie Titanic will sink in the end.
Okay before anyone flames me for this, just as a precursor, I would just like to say I've read the other comments and as far as DRM, or apple trying to trick people or anything like that I agree is just stupid.
However, I do have the slightest concern that if apple is not using encryption for people's personal files on this sort of thing, I am a little worried where else they may not be encrypting this data, I mean if all this information is storedon itunes user infromation databases, I hope it is full encrypted, but it seems a little less likely now.
Once it's been published on Slashdot, the firehose does nothing, except maybe make you feel better.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems that when someone writes something this littered with factual errors the best thing to do is just ignore it. By slash-dotting it we are giving the article some credence.
Developer of Heap CRM and Torch Project Management (WBP SYSTEMS)
I recently purchased a standard from the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO, www.iso.org) and they too watermark the document. The PDF is encrypted and at the bottom of each page your name and date of purchase is printed in light grey letters. Seems logical considering how expensive their standards are and how easily they would be copied.
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
Apple is the greatest company that has ever existed. Every time I see an article critical of Apple in any way, I immediately know it is a hack job full of exaggerations and lies.
Think Different. Think Better. Think Apple!
Parent is Goat.cx redirect !!
I'm reading Slashdot daily since, like, 2002. Lately there are lots of front page articles that point to totally worthless, totally wrong, ad bait content. This article, well, it was really a new low on dezinformation. I'm seriously starting to think "why in the world am I coming to this site, anyway?"
Yea, mod me offtopic. Too bad there's no "+1 Disillusioned"
Sig erased via substitution of an identical one.
Seriously, the purchaser info is RIGHT THERE in the same tab in the "Get Info" window that displays the track length, play count, file format, bitrate, and other data that's clearly, readily, deliberately accessible to users, and IT HAS BEEN EVER SINCE THE STORE OPENED IN 2003.
Any DRM system needs to be able to associate ownership information with a music file, and it's not surprising that iTunes can show you that information. It doesn't automatically follow that that personal information is stored in the music file in plain text, or even stored in the music file at all.
But you're right: personal information is indeed stored in the music file in plain text, and has been for a while. I find that rather outrageous and a serious privacy violation. Not only do I have to worry about my MP3 player getting stolen, I also have to worry about my personal information getting stolen along with it.
Shame on Apple; this is not the right way of doing DRM.
Privacy != Anonymity
(It would have been ironic if I posted this AC.)
It almost doesn't seem like Slashdot! This thread is bizarre in its rationality and reasoned response. WTF!
And, as Daring Fireball stated, the book you buy from 37signals has a name plate in it. The horror!
>> Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network.
It's also for restoring a sense of child-like wonder.
A file with DRM might not be encrypted; it might have a watermark or other internal identification. It might be stored in an unusual format that can only be read on certain devices or with specific software.
In fact, anything that alters the way you can use, copy, or distribute a file according to the wishes of the copyright holder (or his proxy), is Digital Rights Management.
So the $1.39 files you download from ITunes don't have encryption on them. That's nice, but they do have internal identification embedded in them, and they are stored in an unusual format that can't be read by most devices. Any claim that these files are DRM free is demonstrably false.
The claim that you can move the files around your various devices without restriction is true - as long as those devices speak the M4A format they can play the file. But let's put this in perspective: when ITunes first launched, you could authorize 5 computers to play their DRM protected files. Then Apple unilaterally changed this to only 3 authorized computers. Now, they'll let you play their files on an unlimited number of computers - but only YOUR computers, and only if you pay them 40 cents per file.
The only real benefit here is Apple's: more money per file, and less support problems coming from people with multiple computer failures that could no longer access their paid-for content. Us consumers aren't likely to have 3 or 5 computers / players anyway, so increasing that number doesn't benefit the consumer much. Are the files better sounding in their new higher bitrate? Maybe; there is a difference, but it's subtle and not always easy to hear. What IS easy to hear is the difference between an ITunes purchased music file and the same music ripped from a CD. The difference in sound quality is obvious - the ITunes files are inferior.
...purchased iTunes now have your personal data in them. Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network.
No, I think it's because Steve Jobs cares about us and knows us all by name.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Its:
/. articles seem to want. Best /. article ever!
a)Late, this stuff came out weeks ago
b)Wrong, as many posts have already demonstrated
c)Pompous, well, 'nuff said on that one
It's got the holy trifecta that all
Monstar L
... iTunes now have your personal data in them. Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network.No. The author says that it won't prevent them from uploading to a network.
The author (correctly) suspects only that it might deter them from uploading to a network.
It's interesting that even slashdot summaries are erring toward overstating the effectiveness of the industry's "protection" methods.
1) Plug the computer line input into your ipod's earphone plug
2) Record
3) Encode using LAME MP3 encoder at whatever bitrate you wish
4) Share!!
Common users won't have time to do this, but pirates do.
In other words, as long as you let the user HEAR the music, you can let him RECORD it. All the measures you take to "prevent" the user from copying, are actually to prevent the STUPID user from doing so. In the meantime, you end up annoying a lot of your customers for nothing.
You know, after the number of times people have suggested "why not just watermark it, so people can use it however they want, but if it gets fileshared to hell and back, the company knows who to blame", it seems odd that there'd be such an outcry when someone does it.
I bought the PDF version of Programming Ruby. It is watermarked, WITH MY NAME! OMG! WORLD ENDS! FILM AT 11!
The real problem is that, despite previous front-page stories on this, Slashdot keeps running stories on this as though it were news. It's not. We knew. We even asked for Apple to do this instead of giving us DRMd files.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
The real reason that the author of the article doesn't want the his name and email on the music tracks: he doesn't want anybody to know he's the one buying and uploading the Westlife tracks.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Sharing files is not, in itself, illegal. Nor is sharing copyrighted files, or ripping or burning CDs.
It is ONLY illegal to share files which you don't have the rights to share.
And our desire to have files DRM-free has little to do with filesharing, and everything to do with fair use. I want to be able to put these files on my Linux computer, on my iPod, or on some other, cheaper device that didn't pay Apple a licensing fee, or on Xbox Media Center, not to mention, I want to be able to burn as many CDs of them as I need, or send the files over the Internet to other computers that I have, and so on.
I agree that anyone bitching about the *gasp* "personal information" encoded in these files is almost certainly wanting to use them for something illegal, though I don't really see why anyone would care -- it's not as if there's much incentive to upload things to a filesharing network, versus downloading them. I would feel a lot happier if this information was at least cryptographically signed by Apple, so that at least no one could upload a file that I supposedly bought without first stealing it from me, but I'm not too worried about that.
But whoever modded this insightful needs their head examined. ANY DRM reduces legal functionality, unless it's not really DRM. (I don't consider watermarking files to be DRM.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Copyright infringement.
I don't know if Islamic extremists would see the difference, but it's there. Only way this would be stealing is if you somehow managed to download a file, for free, directly from Apple's servers, and then you're only stealing their bandwidth.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
it is obvious, from the greenest newb to the most jaded troll that this article is pathetic misinformation that fails to get even the basic facts right. everyone can see that, right?
so why did someone write it? why is slashdot publishing it? I'll tell you. it has nothing to do with anyone actually thinking the inclusion of plaintext in the meta fields of the file is supposed to be drm.
the real reason this astory was crafted and handed to slashdot is to present an opportunity for slightly knowledgeable people to stand up and advertise the realities of the apple/itunes situation. for free. with vigor.
basically, everyone here standing up in defense of apple has been led there by their nose. suckers! you've played right into the hands of the apple marketing machine.
If most of the posters had looked at the site, they claim that the new version of iTunes attempts to prevent iPods from loading songs that have been burned and then ripped again. If thats true, its just another example of Apple serving their own interests now that they want to be part of the non-drm game.
Sig links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogout?re turnto=Have_a_nice_day
Fortunately TinyUrl doesn't redirect transparently anymore (and Firefox shows the non-obfuscated URL on the TinyUrl page...).
But yeah, dick move.
LOL. Yet one more perfectly reasonable explanation for downloading "illegal" media.
If there was not a rich organization with a small army of lawyers suing children and grandmothers without computers, I might not be worried about having my name slapped onto my music. Sadly, there such an entity and they are not known for calmly and reasonably looking at the evidence before slapping a ridiculous lawsuit on you for a few hundred thousand dollars.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out a scenario where having your name slapped all over your music could come back to bite you in the ass very hard without doing anything illegal. It would only take a single security breach on your computer and a single file to leak out and get tossed up onto a P2P network and suddenly the RIAA has your name. Hell, this very thing happens in college all the time where an idiot with a laptop set up to share on his home network (without any security) plugs it into the school network and people merrily copy his music and toss it up on P2P sites. Is there plenty of room for deniability? Sure, but if it takes a year and a tens of thousands of dollars to prove you did no wrong when you don't own a fucking computer or are a 10 year old child, I doubt that this legal process is the sort of thing that most humans would be willing to risk.
For better or for worse though, the people who realize that this is a lawsuit waiting to happen are exactly the people to actually run a secure system. As a result, the real victims will be the stupid spyware infested mother or kid... the exact sort of people who will download their music from iTunes onto a compromised computer risk paying a very sever consequence for things they don't understand and are not illegal.
I personally will (continue) to avoid iTunes like the plague. Saving a few bucks on music at the cost of DRMed crap or music marked up with my personal information just isn't worth it. There is enough (legal) free music out there to keep me satisfied. If I am really dying for a particular band, I can buy the CD and get my music unmarked, DRM, and at the highest available quality.
Personally, I am disgusted with the entire industry. Legal risks aside, I personally just don't want to support this industry in general. With a few exceptions outside of the major labels, this industry is sick, corrupt, and inflicting legal insanity upon the population. If by some magic the laws on DRM were fully enforced and everyone was made to pay the appropriate fines, the US would be an impoverished third world nation with debt to make Africa look like a fairytale land of economic prosperity.
To sum up my full opinion, fuck the RIAA.
This isn't news. I just went back and checked the first DRMed piece of music I bought in the iTunes Music Store, and it had my full name and email address that I use for my iTunes files. Soooooooooo... how is this news? Or is this just another attempt to RAIL AGAINST THE MAN!!!!
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
from article: "Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network."
your response above: "Well since such behavior would be illegal in almost every country Apple does business, I'm not sure why people should be so concerned about it."
WRONG WRONG WRONG!
File sharing is NOT illegal. I wish you would get this through your head: file-sharing is not illegal, no matter how many times the mafIAA/RIAA/MPAA tries to tell you that it is. If the RIAA has totally convinced all of you readers that file-shring is automatically illegal, then the RIAA has already become victorious on that score!
And i suspect that was part of the RIAA's gameplan, so apparently they're not so stupid, they've managed to brainwash an entire generation of media consumers with this load of propaganda that somehow file-sharing is wrong. The vast majority of file-sharing is completely legal, and YOU are part of the problem if you let them trick you into believing otherwise. [The "problem" being the hindrances to the free and fair usage of digital media or any other communications.]
Apple's evil plan to add personal responsibility to music without restricting your use of it is coming to fruition! Digital music as we know it is over!
Personal information, in the form of you Apple ID, have been in the DRM'd files since the beginning. It's burried as an ATOM in the AAC file.
One thing that I find extremely annoying by DRM is that it makes sharing something with somebody an antisocial act.
If my mother asks me for one of my books, CDs etc, telling her to "go buy her own" *is* antisocial. I perceive it as rather disgusting behavior. None of my friends I've ever asked for any form of digital media ever said "NO, that's MINE, go buy your own". It'd be considered disgusting. Factually, nobody (that I know) behaves this way. People ignore the illegality of the issue and just do what they perceive as right.
This is not new. Microsoft tried capitalizing on this behavior with their share-a-copy-that-expires-in-3-days zune wireless sharing scheme. The problem is that people perceive that as an UNNECCESARY limitation, and it's them, the consumers, who vote for what device they buy, not the RIAA. So Microsoft missed out.
Apple is SMART, and did this in a much better way IMHO:
0. Come to terms that you CANNOT stop social behavior. You will NOT prevent people from giving the song to their mum. Forcing a person to choose between doing something for his mum or for some distant big commercial entity is sheer idiocy. You'll just alienate your clients, turn them against you and lose profits. That's the hole RIAA not only fell into, they're still busy digging, convinced there is something of value to be found underneath.
1. Technically, ALLOW users to behave socially. ALLOW them to give the bloody song to their mum if they so please. Don't technically block them from doing it properly (the hole MS fell into).
2. Place a TRIVIAL and NON-RESTRICTING (i.e. well-known and trivial-to-remove) psychological deterrent from sharing. Assume the vast majority of the population won't bother stripping it , so by large this will remain in place (although I envision an emule or limewire upgrade that automates said stripping by checking a checkbox). Apple doesn't even have to play copyright police and demonize itself. Let the RIAA do that and alienate the labels, while apple capitalizes on the FUD and perceived threat among the public thus created. Fear of the unknown is also a good motivator.
This scores home in two ways. To understand this, think of people one shares files with as two groups - people one acts socially towards - giving mum a song - and people one just give out to because he can, without even knowing them - your upload directory in your favourite p2p app.
They introduce a very mild antimotivator to share your files to just anyone. Low enough antimotivator to be easily overcome by one's desire to share socially, but high enough to make sharing with the world at large to be somewhat deterred (again, on a partial statistical basis, not entirely).
The secondary effect is on the person being socially-shared to. A healthy percent of the time, that person will not go sharing the song giving to him by a friend or relative, for fear of getting friend/relative in trouble. Again, true some of the time, but my guess would be, reasonably significant to the point of not wanting to share that song using p2p (again, excluding the % of population who will go to the trouble of removing the tag and details). In fact, apple may be better off if Joe buys, shares with 10 friends of whom 5 don't share further to avoid hurting Joe, than if 10 friends acquire a non-joe-signed copy of the song (from Joe or otherwise) and 10 now 10 friends are sharing. If joe shares socially, availability of the song on p2p drops. They actually gain something from social sharing.
The reason apple is smart is because their solution is not aimed to be hermetic. They're not to win (over p2p), but for a more favorable tie/stalemate than they already have.
They've realized and come to terms with the fact that hermetically sealing usage is not doable in this day and age, and is anything but good for your profits.
Instead, they engineered a solution that is less perfect, but may very well strike closer to the sweet spot between making more profits with some mild success in mitigating illegal p2p, while not scaring off your paying customers by tying them down.
Personally, I applaud them.
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...change it into a "minimal" headline? Or whatever is the term for that one-line/grey-background/no-summary thing.
I thought I noticed this happen to an article once. Maybe I was wrong, and becoming "minimal" after being "full" is just as impossible.
Though I should obviously have known articles can't be removed completely. Or dupes would not be a problem.
Oh well. Ignorance is bliss. I shall now go and see if I can firehose it again. At least, I'll feel better. Call it therapy.
I lost my sig.
I do not buy music from any site that uses DRM. As for the embedding of the user's personal information in a non-encrypted format, I don't see that as a problem. Here, there's been no attempt to hide what is going on. And as I see it, I don't see it as a problem; it's only going to matter if you're out distributing files. It is conceivably possible that if you lost your iPod or it was stolen someone might be uploading the songs you have on it to file sharing sites, but I see that as a very tiny issue and not very likely; if the files were traced it would allow the theft to be tracked back to the person who has a stolen or lost iPod.
I think the issue of the user identification not being encrypted is a red herring; many, many times people have been unhappy about surrepticious recording of people's information, especially in encrypted and hidden formats. Here, the information is openly being stored; seems like some people are talking out of both sides of their mouth. If it's open they don't like the idea, if it was encrypted they would be upset about hidden information being present.
It's been said that people want the ability to do what they want with music, and I remember reading in at least one other forum - and perhaps others - it was said that one of the things that should be done is not to impose DRM but to mark songs with the original purchaser. It wouldn't penalize people who made multiple copies for their own use (nobody else would see them), it really wouldn't be that significant for people who shared MP3s with small numbers of their friends, it would really only be a problem for people bulk-uploading files to file sharing sites, or either giving them out to lots of their friends, or giving them out to friends who are giving them out to lots of other people.
Paul Robinson — My BlogThe lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Fairplay was intended to allow you to burn playlists to CDs from beginning. It has a limitation on the number of times a given playlist can be burnt (5 I think), but changing the playlist allows it to be burnt again. It is an advertised feature not a "hack" to the DRM. From the beginning Apple has embedded the Apple ID and email address in the songs downloaded from the iTMS (iTunes Mxxxx Store), back to the protected AAC tracks. Nothing new here. And it is well known how to remove this information from the tracks. But why bother unless your intent is to actually upload them to a file server for widespread illegal distribution. It is not like anyone besides yourself will or should have access to the tracks with this data embedded in it... The author of the original cited article needs a clue by four hit and should be better informed.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Apple has for a long time (for a decade?) been using the same strategy to deter users from sharing their QT Pro license keys. When you purchase a QT Pro license key, there is a clear message up front that the key encodes your personal information and distributing the key will risk revealing that.
how does one 'upload to a network'. Please explain. Or don't submit stupid comments
Tag as -1troll... I haven't seen a more flamebaitey/trolly article in a while... and I visit slashdot!
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I had a Sony portable DAT machine during the 90's which I used only to record myself, at jam sessions and songwriting sessions. I was the copyright holder to everything the machine ever encountered in its whole life. Fucking DRM in there made me miserable. A DAT tape is not very rugged, if you record something onto one, you want to make a dupe. However if you make a digital dupe the dupe is an analog tape essentially, the bits are flagged as "do not copy". Then your master gets a glitch and the digital recording is gone forever. Not to mention that the consumer electronics makers deliberately set the DAT sample rate at 48 kHz so that you could never, ever, burn a digital copy of a DAT to CD. The sample rate conversion from 48 kHz to 44.1 kHz is so audibly destructive that it is better to just make an analog dub to 44.1 kHz digital and burn that to CD. Working with a DAT machine was always like playing tug of war with yourself. It's ironic that pretty much only musicians and audio pros ever had them, because as bad as they were, we had a lot of music to record while on the go. The lost productivity, the lost music. Digital audio recording dates back to the 1970's, even the CD was around in the very early 80's. For a songwriter to pay $1000 for a DAT recorder in the 90's and have to fight with it tells you how slow the progress has been.
Similarly, I had a Creative Nomad MP3 player in 1999 or so that had a voice recorder in it. However the voice recorder was artificially limited to a really low sample rate in order to prevent you from making a quality recording. The first iPods with voice recorder attachments were also done this way, you recorded at 8 kHz or 11 kHz just to make it scratchy and prevent you from recording a concert or CD. This is the ultimate poor man's DRM. However when I bought an iPod nano recently and a voice recorder for it, the thing does stereo 16-bit 44.1 kHz recording, same quality as it can play. The worm has turned. You have to sell a functional device now to compete with Apple.
Consumer electronics companies spent the entire decade before the iPod really hit just shooting themselves in the foot over digital audio. It's just too fucking much power to put in the hands of the individual! Ha ha ha ha ha. Good-bye Sony and Creative, it was nice to know you back in the day (yes I just predicted Sony's demise look at the numbers you will hardly believe how bad it is for them, Apple may buy a piece of the body, but Sony is done).
So after experiencing decades of digital audio DRM, forgive me if I don't have any tears for punters who find an email address watermark in a major label download from the iTunes Store to be crippling their music bootlegging potential.
What's worse is that this guy has not even noticed that a 256 kbit/s AAC is much better sound quality than the consumer has ever had access to, including CD. CD's have many legacy problems that we are used to making excuses for, such as poor error-correction, scratches, and if the song skips just once the CD loses. I have participated in listening tests with CD, DVD, MP3, and MP4 (AAC) and at no time were we able to do a whole CD or DVD without a single glitch. On the other hand, MP3 sounded so bad we were willing to put up with a glitch on the discs. But when we got the AAC up to 256 kbit/s we were all like "ahhhhhh." It sounded like the original studio mix file (pre-CD) and it was small and portable and didn't skip like MP3, it is the best of both worlds.
The guy who wrote this article ought to seek out Steve Jobs and kiss him right on the ass. Then find Fake Steve and kiss his ass too. Fucking pathetic.
DRM is NOT identifying the track as bought by you. DRM, that euphemism of "digital rights management" means copy protection through the uses of encryption, which is based on the pairing of the music as downloaded by to the MAC addresses of 5 computers you're allowed to play it. Removing that protection is a great boon to the computer. However, your rights are still not unlimited. Embedded e-mail address or ripped from a CD, they still don't want you to put your music on a P2P, so 10,000 or so copies can be made of it. In the end, there will be very simple editors to remove this id, or change it. If I run it through Fission, now, it comes up as "edited by Fission," even though all I've done is one "Save As..." There may still be legitimate reasons for iTunes to know whether you downloaded the copy from iTunes, and under which account. One: they may update the tracks again, in some way. Only "Purchased tracks," likely, would be eligible. Or it may change other things, like the suggestions in, "You might also like..." Will it also mean that a track you copy from a friend -- not P2P, a friend letting you copy the McCartney album from his purchased tracks to yours? I don't know, and interestingly, nobody who's written these exercises in paranoia has either. I see only some record of some people "wondering". Well, read the damn EULA. Do some tests. Change the purchaser's id in a file or two. Does anything change about how the file is treated? It looks like our computer blog-heads are as bad as, you know, millionaire journalists for laziness. You're supposed to be the scientists, the hackers, the ones with definitive answers. Do your frickin' job, then. Test it. Is it "DRM"? Prove it.
DEAR LORD!!! Apple is trying to prevent users from purchasing music from the ITMS, then illegally sharing them? Those money-grubbing bastards! They said they'd be fine being an accomplice for me! Damn you Steve Jobs!!
come on, this is /. you know that most posters would happily accept being the targets of a surveillance system. so long as it was called iBrother, running iWatchU software and using white, spherical iCams with brushed aluminium mountings. just imagine the foaming and ranting about freedom and privacy you'd hear if it were microsoft cranking up the temperature of the frog's pot a degree.
/. after all, i am not an ms fanboi.
disclaimer, this is
It's not like any of us are sharing our iTunes purchases anyway. Why would I want the world to know I purchased "Ice Ice Baby"? If anything, these tags would prove once and for all, who keeps this bad music distributing across the net.
Agreed!
You buy it-You own it. It is as simple as that.
If you want to pirate your own stuff, then you're an idiot. You're buying a track that you are giving away.
However this raises another issue. If I bought a CD and resold it on Ebay (which is my right to do), then could I do the same with a purchased track? I should be able to do that shouldn't I?
Hmmm....
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
I don't totally buy the argument that personal data is included in order to deter p2p sharing. That struck me as tenuous. This may be a non-story, but the best response is, in my opinion, simply to get away from RIAA music altogether.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I actually had a bit in my submission wherein I indicated that I'm not totally convinced by TFA's reasoning. As I stated above, the safest and best thing is to just get away from RIAA music altogether. I don't have an iPod or use iTunes at all, so I defer to the /. consensus, which is that TFA is making a mountain out of a molehill.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
From what I understand, you buy an iTunes Plus track and once the track is downloaded, rather than wrapping the audio in DRM, the user's email address is added to the meta data and a kind of checksum is created that enables iTunes to tell later whether the email address meta data in a file is what came from Apple or if it has been tampered with.
As has been pointed out many times in many posts on this topic, the user meta data is almost trivially easy for a user to remove. On the other hand, it seems like it would be outrageously hard to add it yourself. If I want to turn iTunes Plus into "generic" AAC I can do that, but if I want to rip a 256 kbit/s AAC from CD and turn it into a counterfeit iTunes Plus track that is going to be hard work.
This leads me to think that the user meta data in iTunes Plus tracks is there as a proof of purchase, to enable the user to upgrade their 256 kbit/s AAC to lossless in a few years. Apple doesn't care if you remove it; they just don't want you to add it to tracks you rip from CD and then later ask them to upgrade you to lossless for 30 cents and they do it. They only want to upgrade actual purchases. Right now they are upgrading the 128 kbit/s tracks to 256 as part of the iTunes Plus introduction. Because of FairPlay it is easy to identify previous purchases, it was necessary to identify them just to play them, however the new iTunes Plus tracks do not have to be identified to be played, only to be upgraded. Unless this is the one and only audio quality upgrade there has to be some non-DRM identification method.
I have to add that I'm terribly disappointed in EFF because they have come off like the worst kind of Napster fan-boy throughout this whole iTunes Plus thing. Not only did Apple put a knife in the heart of DRM, they did it while fighting both Microsoft and the RIAA and all of the major label record company executives that are alive and living today. AND they upgraded their old users for a handling charge instead of selling them over again at full price which is the record industry STANDARD for decades, nobody ever got to turn in an LP for 75% off the price of a CD.
This is probably minor and old hat so far in the conversation. Many valid points above. My biggest caveot is calling the insertion of owner metadata into the file DRM. Strictly speaking, it isn't. There are many watermarking startups around that could explain why. These companies, which focus on embedding metadata within files (either as actual or digital), poise themselves as the solution to DRM. And I would say that unencrypted, unembedded (in the hard to get to sense), un-'watermarked' user metadata in apple files is simply a dummed down, unglorified verision of this very technology (which again differentiates itself from DRM).
But yeah, I mean, I suppose you could call this kind of thing "digital rights management" as long as you concede that the very laws and executive system behind it which deter a body from breaking into your house via a threat of incarceration "analog rights management". I'm sure the guys in jail could complain that nobody told them you can get their finger prints off the door handle, and that fingerprints were only created, with little mention by whoever created fingerprints, to manage their right to or to not steal.
I am named after Rabelais's "Jehan le Fou", who appears in a marvelous fable about externalities and the inability to control their benefits and/or charge for them.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
...and original exact audio watermark is gone!
Only proof of infringement is that the waveform of the original sound signal lies 'in between' the dithered version.
Would this be admissable in a court of law?
It's a known fact the MPAA/RIAA will come after you if you name your non-infinging files after their copyrighted products and share them via P2P.
Replying AC due to divulging a simple anti-copyright, anti-DRM technique much like the 'shift key' trick for loading CDs on Windows PCs without the OS 'running' them (Sony rootkit anyone?)
Slashdot captcha: erasable LOL!!!
If Apple had wanted the embedded names a secret, or if this was some kind of conspiracy, they would have encrypted them. They are there in plain text and can easily be removed if you so desire. In fact, even transcoding them to MP3 removes the names.
Quite frankly, I have no idea why this turned into this huge controversy. I doubt this can even be used to go after file sharers. After all, it's easy to fake the information and embed somebody else's names into an iTunes AAC file.
It's a little "Do not step on the lawn" sign. It doesn't keep you from stepping on the lawn, but it's a reminder that you shouldn't.
To be effective, there is no need to embed personal data in an itunes in an effective watermark as long as the date and time of purchase are embedded.
What Apple wants to discourage is people sharing their entire iTunes collection online, and in cases like these the purchase date of the files would create a unique 'fingerprint'.
I used to have to pull apart the jewel case and write my name on the paper insert inside so that if my CDs were stolen, my name would be on them in a non-obvious place to make recovery of them easy.
Now it's automatic.
What makes the iTunes personal meta-data particularly disturbing is the fact that some P2P software such as Limewire have a setting to share your iTunes music folder. In Limwire this setting is enabled by default. In theory you can be using Limewire to share only public domain files (such as a Linux distro) and if you dont know any better, your legally purchased itunes music is being distributed with your name on it.
Think about this. Your personal data is embedded in songs you purchase:
Now even if you think this isn't the end of the world, you gotta be pretty brainwashed if you don't think that for the consumer, this is a Bad Thing (to some degree or the other)
And then compare that with the way everybody wanted to just rip MS a new one for daring to put the 3 days 3 plays restriction on zune-to-zune song transfers:
Sadly, slashdot (and the world in general) seems to have completely lost it's objectivity.. this post is doomed to be scored 0, never looked at by moderators, thought of as anti-Apple pro-MS trolling, and everybody will continue to believe that DRM is evil incarnate. Unless it's done by Apple.
It doesn't Bash Microsoft, and claim Linux R3WLZ!
No one picked it up. if you care too look it's here
The kind of DRM that we wish to abandon is that which prevents you from making backups and viewing on whatever device you want. Encryption DRM is what we do not want.
Watermarking does not prevent thsee.
So now the DRM will show that "Hugh G Rection" uploaded his songs to several peer-to-peer networks.
At almost the same time, "Jack Mehoffer" was downloading other tunes from Apple with the intent to upload, and so was "Jane Dough".
Yep, Apple throwing all your private info into your music files sure sounds like a winner.
it's at +5 informative, but the central point of the comment has been disproved in a response. take a look.
iTunes purchase you!
You are reading a sig. Cancel or allow?
I think they shall have told the users straight away. Thats the only problem I see in their approach. Maybe it was naive to think that putting them in in plain would not be noticed. But, I think it is good that they didnt put watermarks in ... geez who knows, might be interesting to compare the same song downloaded from two different iTunes accounts ... they should differ apart from the apID and the name. Has anyone tried this?
Well, at least you can simply blind / overwrite the values using a simple Perl script, if you are concious about your privacy or that your iBook or iPod gets stolen.
I described the process and put the script on my Blog at http://vernard-luxe.blogspot.com/2007/06/blind-app les-itunes-user-information.html
I cant wait to see what Meta-Data the future has to offer.