the air

Now that iTunes is offering DRM-free music from EMI’s catalog, I’m suspecting that many folks are willing to share their new music with their friends.

STOP!

I’m not telling you to shop because the sharing of digital music files might be illegal. I’m telling you to stop because those precious DRM-free files actually contain embedded information that could be used to identify who you are. This is actually news that was on Digg earlier in the week and is something that Apple has not publicly confirmed or commented on. Needless to say, privacy advocates are already criticizing Apple for implementing such actions. According to this C|Net article, it is possible that Apple is doing this to provide the industry with information about consumers who may be illegally sharing DRM-free music. In essence, if you share a DRM-free song that was purchased from iTunes, Apple and other music labels will be able to determine that the source of the “piracy” for the file was you.

I can understand Apple’s motive and I will also go further and suggest that this was part of the agreement between EMI and Apple. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense because once these music files are shared freely, it is not in the interests of EMI or the RIAA to sue each individual user. Therefore, by finding out which person the file belongs to, the industry will now have sufficient evidence to prosecute the guilty user. Essentially, this allows the RIAA to pursue the root cause of potential piracy rather than individual users. In retrospect, I can easily see this as part of an agreement between EMI and Apple and the exposure of this “bug” is definitely something Apple did not want anyone to find out about. This could also serve as an effective selling point for Apple to other labels to pursue DRM-free music. In either case, the fact of the matter is that you have no privacy in sharing those beloved DRM-free files from iTunes.

Source: C|Net Article

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