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Friday, June 01, 2007

Anger over DRM-free iTunes tracks

iPod fans find out there’s no such thing as a free lunch

The launch of music tracks free of digital locks on iTunes has been overshadowed by the discovery that they contain data about who bought them. Some fear this data could be used to identify the owner of the tracks if they turn up on file-sharing sites.

The tracks from record company EMI cost more and are of a better quality than standard iTunes songs.

Apple has yet to comment on what it plans to do with the information embedded in the music files.

The tracks without the digital locks, known as Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, officially went on sale on 30 May under the iTunes Plus banner. The downloads cost $1.29 (99p) rather than $0.99 (79p).

Apple uses a technology known as Fairplay to limit what people can do with downloads. Fairplay can be circumvented by burning tracks to a CD and then converting them to another format.

News site Ars Technica was among the first to discover that downloaded tracks free of Fairplay have embedded within them the full name and account information, including e-mail address, of who bought them. It suggested that this information could be an anti-piracy measure as it could help work out who was putting downloads on file-sharing sites. But it also added that the user information was found on all the tracks that people buy on iTunes whether free of DRM or not.

It was not clear, said Ars Technica, whether the data was part of Apple's administration system for iTunes or something else. It said because the data was easy to spoof Apple needed to explain why the data was present.

The BBC has contacted Apple seeking comment but so far the company has not responded.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6711215.stm

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