“The arrival of iTunes Plus – DRM-free content from Apple’s iTunes Store – has triggered hysteria in some quarters,” Stephen Withers reports for iTWire.
“Certain commentators are getting over-excited about the way such tracks contain the purchaser’s name and iTunes Store account name. Do your homework, guys – that’s the case with ‘regular’ tracks as well,” Withers reports. “The difference is that it didn’t matter with FairPlay protected tracks, as there was no point in spreading copies around.”
“And as for references to Apple acting ‘secretly’ or ‘covertly’ – get real! The information is stored in plain text. If the company wanted to be covert, it would have been an easy task to encrypt the data before adding it to the music file,” Withers reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
@Bloody Hell
What’s with the ridiculous backslashes?
Don\’t see the need \”YOU KNOW\”?
Hey yomomma
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”tongue wink” style=”border:0;” />
MW = industry, just sayin’
they are not watermarked. they have a nice plain text standard tag. many editors let you change these
There is also watermarking in the audio and video channel itself, not just in the tag.
With digital files, all sorts of things are possible. Inserting custom watermarking on the fly before downloading or burning to cd/dvd is very easily done.
And the slashes, means the poster is using a proxy server, filtering out all the *cough* this site generates.
My problem with iTunes Plus is that I still haven’t been able to download an album I purchased — I keep getting “error 504” whatever that is…
There is no watermarking in the audio channel. EFF proved that during their inspection of the DRM free EMI tunes.
There is no video channel in an AAC audio file.
Your BS does not work here.
> So basically what Apple has done here is turn YOU into a policeman.
That’s fine with me. I’d rather police my own action than have someone else police me. Most people are like that…
> Now you can\’t share the music in your small network of 5 computer friends/relatives…
You’re not suppose to be doing that NOW. “Personal use” means you (and your household). Apple gives you up to 5 computers per account because people typically have one computer at home, one computer at work, maybe one travel computer, and maybe two other computers in the household (family members). That’s why the number is 5. It’s not so you can hand out your account ID and password to “computer friends/relatives.” If you are giving out your account ID and password like that, you deserve to be “played” when one of them abuses his/her access to YOUR account.
“There is also watermarking in the audio and video channel itself, not just in the tag.”
reading comprehension can be your friend.
“We compared two DRM-free copies of the track Daftendirekt by Daft Punk. When decoded to PCM/WAV data, both copies produced an identical audio signal (the MD5sum is e40b006497f9b417760ca5015c3fa937). So there is no audio watermark.”
so, umm, no. and as has already been stated, this has been proven. a few times. and even if they did that AND put in tags, there is a simple way around it.
honestly people, get over your fear already.
magic word time! “mother” as in this rumor is the mother of all paranoid rumors!
mw: greater. i find “greater” pleasure in working in my magic word when I see it annoys someone for absolutely no reason. You’re not the boss of me. I’m greater than that!!!
“Working the magic Word into a post is ours.”
It’s also historical that the people who do work the magic word in are retarded. That’s another tradition on this site.
“And as for references to Apple acting ‘secretly’ or ‘covertly’ – get real! The information is stored in plain text. If the company wanted to be covert, it would have been an easy task to encrypt the data before adding it to the music file,” Withers reports.”
The EFF’s complaint is that they _didn’t_ do that. The EFI claim that your name is personal information and so should have been encrypted. Whatever.
One thing’s for sure: whatever Apple did or didn’t do, some tinfoil-hat wearer would’ve said what they’d done was a massive threat, and they should have done the opposite.
Most of us are pleased as getting higher-quality music, free from DRM at reasonable prices. But whenever there’s a party, some grouch resents everyone enjoying themselves. Some people just like pissing in the pool.
Scary thought that Kerry came this close to being president… he is on of the phoniest people I ever heard about… scary!
“We compared two DRM-free copies of the track Daftendirekt by Daft Punk. When decoded to PCM/WAV data, both copies produced an identical audio signal (the MD5sum is e40b006497f9b417760ca5015c3fa937). So there is no audio watermark.”
[bStupid asses. Apple knows the id number, ip number and other things to sign the same watermark to Plus files of different accounts on the same computer or network.
In other words, a more larger sample of Plus files has to be taken to confirm. Also it doesn’t stop Apple from adding the watermark later on.
Most of all it doesn’t explain Apple’s rather lax attention to privacy issues. Oh yea, I forgot, this is the same company that doesn’t encrypt your vital info in Apple website cookies, has a lot of it’s own software “call home” frequently and employed privacy envading EFI firmware.
I saw the magic word and I entered its name
I do run-run-run I do run-run
I used it in my post and then I got flamed
I do run-run-run I do run-run