If absolute privacy is a concern critics are voicing against Apple's latest move with DRM-less tracks from EMI, they should have filed their complaints over four years ago when the iTunes Store first opened.
The fault with these complaints against Apple's latest non-DRM move runs more than skin deep, however, as this embedding of personal information didn't merely begin last week. Since the first day it was opened over four years ago, the iTunes Store has embedded an owner's email address in purchased files. You can easily verify this by importing a non-EMI iTunes Store track from a friend - iTunes will immediately notify you that your machine must be authorized to play the track, prompting you with a dialog requesting a password and the email address of the file's owner already filled in.
Watch out Cory - all your email addresses are belong to anyone who steals your iTunes Store files; just as they have been for the last four years.
The moral of the story is the same as ever, only a few of the details change this time around: While Apple certainly isn't the first to offer a DRM-free commercial digital download service (In the mainstream that title probably goes to eMusic), they are the first of the major services to take the leap of faith and offer a premium music catalog completely free of DRM. In all likelihood, if you aren't sharing your personally identifiable files over P2P networks, you don't have anything to worry about, and an email address is the last thing you have to fret over if someone steals your iPod. The thief is after your DMP because they want your gadget, not because they want to email you a great offer on viagra.
There is no more of a privacy issue with iTunes Store files (non-DRM or otherwise) than there is with the theft of your computer or mobile phone. Files bought from the store are supposed to remain just as private as the personal information embedded in them. Now, can we all go back to buying high quality, DRM free tracks - and not vindicating the RIAA by sharing them - so more record labels finally invest in DRM-free digital distribution channels like we've been asking for?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-04-2007 @ 9:01AM
flowolf said...
what if someone steals my ipod?
he gets the gadget thats right. but he gets 80 gigs of purchased music too. and he can load this in his personal p2p folder any time.
what happens then? am i responsible for the sharing? is he? after all, it's my email adress that is included in the songs metadata...
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6-04-2007 @ 10:58AM
binaryspiral said...
You file a *free* police report with your iPod's serial number listed as the stolen device.
Keep this record as proof you no longer are in possession of the media.
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6-04-2007 @ 11:20AM
Jarrett Kaufman said...
All this uproar is absurd. All Apple did was call our bluff. We all cried and cried and cried about wanting DRM-free music not because we wanted easier piracy, oh no, but because we wanted less restrictive music.
So they give us DRM-free music, and embed information in it that would affect us only if we were to pirate it, and everyone's up in arms? Puh-lease, people, they called your bluff and you folded.
If someone steals your iPod, you know what they have? Your $250 iPod. THAT's what you should be upset about. They're not going to then go digging through your music to extract your name and e-mail address (as though they're not already plastered all over the internet), they're going to listen to your iPod or pawn it. The average thief won't know how to sync tracks back to the computer, much less get your personal data. And the average thief who steals an iPod is not into identity theft, anyway (again, not that your name and e-mail address will get them far).
Besides, so many people sync their calendars and contacts to their iPods anyway that there's much more valuable info already more accessible on it.
And actually transferring those files BACK to the computer just to P2P them? How paranoid are you people? If they were going to go through that much trouble they would have already pirated those files off the 'net before stealing your iPod.
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6-04-2007 @ 11:25AM
ney said...
yep.. but i take control off all my information. Right now i have a encrypted partition with FireFox profile, ssh keys, gain profile and some other sensitive information. If some one grab my computer, cannot get my email or whatever information.
the point is: I KNOW FireFox, instant messenger and email programs HAS my information (and i do my work to protect me) but i WANT to know my information in music files in order to protect-me. (personal information on music file its a new thing to me)
In this drm-free case, i have 2 options: 1- start to store my personal music in encrypted partition, like my gain profile, ssh keys and FireFox profile ...or... try to wipe-out my info from this files (best option, because i have no encryption on my mp3 player).
anyway... i don't have i-tunes (no Linux itunes as i know) and do not use itunes-store...
just my 5cents to help the world :)
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6-04-2007 @ 11:26AM
LordDaMan said...
The problem with this, is it clearly violates TRUSTe and the Online Privacy Alliance , both things apple is suppsoed to adhrer to. Now go back to when the mini-store came out, and how it was pretty typical spywrae and even after apple annouced what it was doing, they still didn't exatcly tell you where all the information goes.
Apple has really been going the worng way with this stuff. I got a felling you will see worse and worse thbnsg come out of apple.
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6-04-2007 @ 11:55AM
Mike Kelley said...
Bad things can happen even if an iPod isn't stolen. Roommates all over the country will help themselves to each other's music files, and not necessarily with the permission of the file owner.
It is naive to assume that files are released into the wild only with the owner's permission, and the "You don't have to worry unless your guilty" argument about legal issues hasn't held water in these instances ever since the RIAA prosecutes with little to no evidence.
When "innocent until proven guilty" is no longer the norm, then "keep your nose clean and don't worry" is no longer a realistic strategy.
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6-04-2007 @ 2:54PM
nyscott said...
1. A complaint after-the-fact is still a valid complaint. An ongoing offense doesn't invalidate a complaint made today, or tomorrow.
2. If I want my possessions to have my contact information attached to them, I'll do it myself; I don't want it forced upon me, and I don't want it to be irreversible.
3. Apple didn't take a "leap of faith," as your nauseatingly partisan article suggests. If customers have a complaint about your product, you fix the problem. That's not a leap of faith, that's good business (and common sense).
4. I have a safe at home, and one of the things I keep in it is my passport. If someone broke into my home, they could steal things of far greater value than my passport, but does that mean I shouldn't bother keeping it secure?
5. "...so more record labels finally invest in DRM-free digital distribution channels like we've been asking for?"
Record labels don't need to "invest" anything to allow the sale of non-crippled music files; it costs a hell of a lot more to restrict something than it does to keep it open. Secondly, the beginning of the end of DRM is nothing more than a business decision. Record labels aren't moving toward unrestricted music files because we're saying "please," they're doing it because they're finally beginning to understand that non-crippled music is the future, whether they like it or not.
The *real* issue, though, isn't necessarily privacy, it's freedom of ownership. Purchasing an item should give you complete ownership rights of the item, whether it's a CD, an MP3, a DVD, a TV, etc. Would you buy a car if you were only allowed to drive it on specific days, only in specific cities, and only if you had you name and phone number prominently etched under the hood?
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6-04-2007 @ 3:55PM
JSacharuk said...
Give it time. It's not essential data to the track, obviously. I'm sure someone will write an application that garbles the data or removes it entirely, if you want. This is pretty simple stuff, frankly. I'm sure that if they can figure a way around the DRM, they can figure a way to block out a few characters of text that represent your name and email address. :P
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6-04-2007 @ 7:39PM
DonCornelius said...
A couple of years ago, I was staying a nice hotel with Internet service via wired Ethernet. I plugged in my Mac laptop and started up iTunes. Once I was on iTunes, I found someone in the hotel sharing their iTunes library. A wide open library invites curiosity! I started playing some of the songs, until I hit one that was a DRM iTunes store music file. When I double-clicked on the file, the owner's email address popped up and I got prompted for a password. Taking curiosity further, I opened up iChat and added their account name as an AIM username. Wouldn't ya know it, they appeared online in iChat. I sent them a message, telling them I was enjoying their music (not really) and thanks for sharing. When they asked who in the heck I was, I told them I was a guest in the hotel, just like them. Seconds later of coure, the iTunes share dissapeared, and the person was giving me a cautious "goodbye". How's that for privacy invasion, and with DRM on your music files? DRM-less doesn't change much with personal privacy.
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6-04-2007 @ 9:55PM
Jerry Kindall said...
If you're concerned about people discovering your real e-mail address, just open up a free e-mail account to use to buy tunes. Duh. Seems a lot simpler than trying to strip out your address afterward.
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6-05-2007 @ 4:57AM
Joel said...
The whole name and email thingy can be *really* useful. I found an iPod in the road outside the school gates, use senuti to get some tracks off it and played them -- I immediatly had the guy's email and could contact him and return it. If he hadn't have had iTMS tracks on it I wouldn't have been able to find out whose it was and would have probably just handed it to the Police, and it would have been much less likely he would have actually got it back.
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