14 DAY TRIAL // Apple may have launched iTunes Plus and started selling DRM-free music, but that does not mean that they have given pirates a free hand. Regardless of whether or not the songs you buy from the iTunes Store have DRM, they do have tags that identify you as the buyer of that song.
Those thinking that the new DRM-free music available for download from the iTunes Store is 'free music' should think again. Each and every track can be traced back to the person that first bought it from the store. Should any copyrighted track end up on file sharing networks, it will be easy for it to be traced to the person that broke the license agreement to let it loose in the wild.
The information embedded in the files is easily seen through use of the Terminal by following these steps: 1. Launch Terminal. You'll need to be comfortable at the command line to perform this check. 2. Navigate to one of your iTunes plus downloads. If you have a US iTunes account, you can download the iTunes plus "Ooh La" single of the week. 3. Use the UNIX "strings" command to look at the text in your data and grep to search for your name. e.g. strings 01 Ooh La.m4a | grep name 4. Alternatively, open all the strings in TextEdit: strings 01 Ooh La.m4a | open -f.
News of this has stirred quite a reaction from people that feel Apple is violating their privacy by including this information in the files they download. However, despite such protests, Apple has always branded songs in this way, and will most definitely not stop now that the songs are also without the protective blanket of DRM. There is simply no way that they, or any company for that matter, can sell unprotected songs without this information. They might support DRM free music, but that does not mean they support piracy. Furthermore, it would not be surprising if Apple also had additional protection that is much harder to detect in the tracks it sells.