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This is exactly as I posted yesterday. No new news - your account name has always been embedded in purchased iTunes since day 1.

I dont like it though

Again, if you weren't distributing legally-bought music illegally, why would you even care?

Magic word: What. What's the big deal?

I was wondering when someone was going to point this out. I've known about the account info on the protected tracks all along. Many files are scrambled symbols when opened in a text editor, but many have readable characters.

cb.

You don't have to buy.

Come on, folks, if it really, really bugs you, you can just use grep (or even textEdit) to alter or remove your name from the header. If you do care about this, take note that your iTunes user name is also embedded in the header. I didn't look closely, but there might be other identifying info contained in the headers as well...

Don't give your songs away to the public and you will be fine.

If your intentions is to use the music files you buy for "personal use," there is nothing to complain about. And don't say, "What if my laptop gets stolen?" If you computer is stolen, you have a lot more personal information issues to worry about on that laptop than your name and iTunes account number embedded on some music files.

next thing you know, Apple will be putting track names in header tags so that they can see what you listen too.....

what? they already do?!? NNNNOOOOOOoooooooo..........

Enough with the f*cking Magic Words, people.

It must a secret code way of stating that you are retarded. You know, the same way that stating that you'd vote for Dennis Kucinich would.

My iPod has my name engraved on the back. DAMN YOU APPLE!!!

@yomomma:

"It must a secret code way of stating that you are retarded. You know, the same way that stating that you'd vote for Dennis Kucinich would."

Agreed. Much like voting for George Bush.

If you dont like it, then carry your ass and buy from someone else. Apple DOES NOT WANT YOUR BUSINESS, and better you just leave.
No more hand holding and diaper changing to you cry babies.

Wahhh, wahhhhh, those mean Apple people are trying to spy on us, wahhh, waaaaaahhhh.

Grow up you jackass crybabies (probably Kucinich types).

honey, come home now, it's time for your prozac

MDN word is came, as in

yomama came in, blew off, blew out

The issue is that none of the people railing about this have met Occam's Razor:

http://thesmallwave.blogspot.com/2007/05/bob-lefsetz-and-itunes-plus-part-ii.html

charlie;

Seeing as How Bush and Kerry went to the same university... and seeing as how Bush had higher grades...
I guess you're inferring it'd be TWICE as retarded if anyone voted for Kerry?
lol

Well put, Tom.

Besides these scaremongers are just unemployed fishmongers and whoremongers.

MW serious, as in, are you serious Yomamma? Does something as benign as a stupid magic word really get you all lathered up.

If so, please find the nearest brick wall and run into it head first, fast.

You mean my drivers license has my info and thumbprint encoded in the mag strip. Damn that sucks - I want to be anonymous.

All you people who don't like the I guess you don't use a Credit Card or a Cellphone either as these track you more than an iTunes song.

to Bob:

I have a feeling you might be pulling your information from thin air (or some other orifice); Kerry and Bush had pretty much same scores at Yale; Kerry was much more busy in extra-curricular activities, though (the real ones, not the 'wink-wink' ones). Regardless, to all guys sparring over Bush/Kerry/Kucinich, please focus on Apple and related matters here.

Bloody FSCKing Hell!!

Why you don\'t see the trouble later on with watermarked tracks?

For instance with DRMed tracks you couldn\'t share them without authorizing the reciepiants machine, limited authorizations to 5 machines and that\'s it.

The person getting the tracks couldn\'t go behind your back and send them out over the p2p networks.

Now with DRM free tracks with watermarking it\'s so much easier for the reciepiant to go behind your back and p2p your songs

So basically what Apple has done here is turn YOU into a policeman. Now you can\'t share the music in your small network of 5 computer friends/relatives without giving them \"the lecture\" \"now don\'t give these songs to anyone else because they are watermarked with my info\"

God forbid if you have a falling out with one of the people you shared these watermarked music files with.

So Apple and the Labels know your going to think this way, so NOW YOUR LESS LIKELY TO SHARE MUSIC. The Labels win and force the others who normally get their music by sharing amongst friends to have to buy the music.

Oh yes folks, you have been very cleverly played.

And no, text editing or converting the format of the song WILL NOT CHANGE WATERMARKING IN AUDIO OR VIDEO. Even analog rips will carry the watermark! Unless you really significantly degrade it to worthlessness.

Now Apple has been quietly slipping a very stringent DRM standard under your very noses. It\'s called EFI, which is a very powerful firmware level that acts like it\'s own OS between the hardware and any other software, including Mac OS X!

Right now Apple leaves it blank, but later on as EFI becomes standard, developers and content makers can:

1: REFUSE TO RUN PROGRAMS UNLESS EFI \"CALLS HOME\"

2: REFUSE TO PLAY CONTENT BASED UPON WATERMARKED FILES.

3: ON THE FLY DRM CHANGES BEFORE YOUR OS HAS EVEN A CHANCE TO LOAD!

Oh yes, EFI isn\'t even run by Apple. But by the UEFI group spun off by Intel.

Ever hear of Trusted Computing? You better.

"It must a secret code way of stating that you are retarded. You know, the same way that stating that you'd vote for Dennis Kucinich would."

it is almost like it is trying to communicate with us....

and to the tinfoil hat wearing EFI nut....

they are not watermarked. they have a nice plain text standard tag. many editors let you change these. i have changed all mine to read "this file shared by the paranoid fool who always posts about EFI on MDN"

could EFI be used to make a locked down system? sure it could. but it hasn't so far, and so far Apple has walked a fine line between treating creators and inventors fairly, and giving everyone else fair use.

if you don't like that they took the "buy one song 25 times" approach and threw it out the window to create "we trust you not act like a criminal, use your stuff your way" and pushed for reasonable use, then take your money elsewhere.

Apple, so far at least, has a history of giving people a fair deal and expecting to get treated the same back. so no, i expect they will never make your paranoid EFI wetdreams into reality.

Apple doesn't even ask for simple reg codes when you install the OS. i could buy one copy and install it on all my machines. that is the reason i buy a family pack! MS on the other hand treats people like criminals (most music on ipods is stolen!) and that is why if i ever needed their damned OS i would pirate it!

people tend to act the way you treat them.

magic word (just for you bigdumbmomma!) is choice. as in i have made the choice to give my hard earned cash to a company that treats me like a person. if they stop, i stop. why invent paranoid dreams in the mean time?

yomomma

Enough with the f*cking Magic Words, people.

Not been on the internet very long, have you? Every community develops it's own traditions and customs. Working the magic Word into a post is ours.

So fvck off.

Magic Word: "twenty", as in "I wish I had a twenty everytime someone betrayed their ignorance of how virtual communities mirror actual communities".

@Bloody Hell

What's with the ridiculous backslashes?

Don\'t see the need \"YOU KNOW\"?

Hey yomomma
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

Dear Douchbags:

Regular iTunes tracks have your name and email address embedded in them. This is nothing new.

Here's a tip, cuntrags...DONT STEAL. STOP BITCHING. BUY MUSIC SOMEWHERE ELSE. APPLE DOESNT NEED YOUR WHINY BUSINESS.