Music sharers beware: iTunes is watching you

The Electronic Freedom Foundation, an online consumer-rights group, is raising an alarm over iTunes tracks sold under Apple's iTunes Plus system, launched this week, saying the company has embedded purchasers' personal details into the downloaded music files.

The Advanced Audio Coding files Apple uses to distribute music tracks have been found to contain names and e-mail addresses of purchasers.

Purchasers using the new iTunes Plus system pay 30 percent extra for music that does not include digital rights management coding designed to protect against piracy. DRM-free music is of a higher quality and can be played without limit on any type of music player or any number of computers.

Estimates suggest 40 tracks are digitally pirated for every track legally downloaded, the London Sunday Times reported. The music industry has been reluctant to drop the DRM technology, and some see the tagging of purchased tracks with buyers' personal information as an effort to continue limiting boot-legging.

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The Electronic Freedom Foundation suggested the personal information was embedded as a kind of digital "watermark" that would identify the source of music uploaded to file-sharing network. The industry has been rigorous about suing individuals who've copied, or made available for copying, music they have not paid for.

James McQuivey, a Forrester Research analyst, said purchasers of the new DRM-free tracks were mistaken if they thought the unlocked files would be easier to share or allow purchasers to circumvent the users agreement made when purchasing music.

"We should be clear on one thing: Just because EMI and Apple – and more to come – have removed DRM from their files does not mean those files can be shared," he told MacNewsWorld.

"The goal is to make [the songs] easier to use, not easy to steal. Being upset that a product you bought for yourself is traceable to you is a little clueless," he said. "Your privacy is only compromised if you choose to redistribute the track – something you don't have the right to do anyway."

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