iTunes Plus scaremongering

Stephen Withers
Friday, 01 June 2007 05:40

Your IT - Home IT

The arrival of iTunes Plus - DRM-free content from Apple's iTunes Store - has triggered hysteria in some quarters.

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.

The difference is that it didn't matter with FairPlay protected tracks, as there was no point in spreading copies around. If anyone was planning to distribute iTunes Plus songs (and that would really encourage other labels to catch the DRM-free wave, wouldn't it?), this embedded data would act as a disincentive unless they found a way to remove it first.

That's probably not technically difficult, and if that's the case it wouldn't be hard to edit in someone else's details before offering the file over a peer-to-peer network, if you wanted to be nasty.

So it's hard to see why Apple included the data in the first place. It sounds rather like the Bozo bit in early versions of the Macintosh system software that instructed the Finder not to copying a file - 'only a Bozo would be defeated by such a simple form of protection.'

About the only reason we can think of is that it gives a way of identifying protected tracks that will no longer play on a particular computer after someone else (eg, an ex) has deauthorised it from playing protected music purchased on their account. The Get Info command within iTunes shows the purchaser's details.

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.

Another over-excited reaction comes from people who haven't read the terms of service carefully enough and seem to think that the 'five devices' and 'seven burns' rules still apply to iTunes Plus content. They don't.

Apple clearly states (at least in the Australian terms of service) that those and other clauses don't apply and that "You may copy, store and burn iTunes Plus Products as reasonably necessary for personal, noncommercial use." Interestingly, iTunes Plus video products may be burned to disc.