Filed under: iTS, Terminal Tips, TUAW Tips
TUAW Tip: Don't Torrent That Song...
Sure, you can now download music from the iTunes store without DRM but that doesn't mean you should just willy nilly start sharing that music with your friends. For one thing, it's illegal. For another, your account information is embedded into that m4a music file. Don't believe me? Try this yourself.
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
Alternatively, open all the strings in TextEdit:
strings 01\ Ooh\ La.m4a | open -f.
Bottom line: DRM-free doesn't mean that Apple suddenly supports piracy.
_thumbnail.jpg "Take a stroll down memory lane")
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 5)
Mac said 1:57PM on 5-30-2007
I think some of you are missing the point. The username or email tag in the file, is just that, a tag. no one is getting into your computer and looking at your files. They will only see this inforamtion if:
1. you illegally share the file with others.
2. you allow them too.
3. you make your computer open to the internet, e.g. through a web server or ftp server, of which you would have to have a file or shortcut to your itunes library in that space that is served to the web.
iTunes keeps track of what you buy and download on their own servers, yes. this is good, because if you ever have a disk failure and your itunes library is not backed up for some reason, they allow you to re-download everything you've bought from them ONE time.
don't sweat it, don't do anything illegal, and you have nothing to worry about.
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anthony.picciano said 2:00PM on 5-30-2007
Just think of it like the free laser etching. Now you name can be etched onto each song as well as your iPod. For free!
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Irwin said 2:00PM on 5-30-2007
I'm somebody who wants to work on stripping this protection, if anyone else is interested contact me at irwin@live.com (MSN or E-Mail)
Take care ;)
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JiN said 2:02PM on 5-30-2007
@14 - I take my wallet out of my pants when I drop it off at the dry cleaners. Once I got $5 dollars back which the owner claim was in my pockets. Not sure but I think I always carry more than $5 but I wasn't going to argue with him cause I left the money in my pocket.
There is no way that Apple/EMI can track you with this bit of data in the song but they can track if you are sharing it.
I buy PDFs online all the time and I prefer it over e-books that expire or require auth. software. The PDFs have my name embedded all over the book. It appears more times than the author of the book.
Note: Don't trust anyone with your data. Worked at a laptop repair center and even your photos are critiqued.
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Brandon said 2:09PM on 5-30-2007
What a nice way to expose pirates, I guess. Whether this was intentional or not, I don't agree with it.
http://www.sh0ck.com
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Dalton Cummings said 2:09PM on 5-30-2007
Well, why couldn't you just hex that information yourself? Although, I'm sure there's cheksums and other data in there(if not, wow, what a mistake), but someone ought to reverse engineer it all. It's not important enough to me. ;)
--Dalton
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ra1n said 2:11PM on 5-30-2007
I imagine this is the same with DRMed tracks, but this is not a great problem, if you give this to friends and not on p2p :-)
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Niklas B said 2:50PM on 5-30-2007
For those in doubt: This is part of the ID3 standard: http://www.id3.org/id3v2.3.0#head-3c67d23d7cfecadd0253293fada37fbba5c6f1e1
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Chris said 2:51PM on 5-30-2007
I think this is a great idea. Piracy is bad, straight up..artists deserve the royalties.
The problem with DRM is that it didn't allow you to use YOUR music that YOU bought the way YOU want to. "I can't pirate my music now" is a pretty shitty argument against watermarking.
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joseph schafer said 2:56PM on 5-30-2007
Note to self: re-tag all files downloaded to reflect the following account: Steve.Jobs@apple.com
Problem solved!
P.S. I don't use itunes and I don't share files, but anyone who is should surely know the consequences of being caught.
Also, I'd be more worried about a code hidden within the music itself. I'm sure a few people are familiar with the concept of a canary trap using embedded serial numbers in pictures or music... That's the real threat, not a simple tag.
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Joshua said 3:06PM on 5-30-2007
Who is stupid enough to share a DRM song over torrent anyway? Nobody can play it without logging in!
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Mike said 3:26PM on 5-30-2007
there are two specific pieces of embedded metadata Apple puts in the file to identify you -- the account name and your personal name. They also have the purchase data and a file type of "purchased AAC Audio File" but those latter two do not personally identify you.
I used a hex editor to simply find and replace the account name and user name with "x" characters, and then copied the file to another machine; it plays fine. So it is 100% technically feasable to do this and not very hard. It will get easier obviously when a drag and drop ID stripper comes out.
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jerem43 said 3:28PM on 5-30-2007
About the wiretap comment, that comment reminds me about "private" telephone numbers: even if you block your phone number or have a "private" number, the phone company can still track your usage of it. Making a prank call to a local store asking if they have Prince Albert in a can? the store owner can still log your number with a *57 code and have you arrested for harassment.
Just because a tool is there does not mean it is Orwellian in nature. The point is that you have to to ensure that the government does not pull a Bush-Gonzales and use the tools without permission. If you break the law then the government can come after you, illegal file sharing is a crime. We have to be ever diligent on our oversight on our governments and make sure that they do not abuse the tools we give them, and if they do we have to take them away.
my ramble ends here
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Jordan said 3:45PM on 5-30-2007
It's trivial to remove strings from a compressed file. This is not a problem in the slightest bit. It's silly on Apple's part, but then again so is limiting what a consumer can do with his or her purchase.
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Jeremy said 3:46PM on 5-30-2007
I can't see as anyone mentioned it yet, but this also is a violation of the European information laws.
You can't leave someone's name in a file without explicitly telling them it's there and also providing a means for it to be removed. It's illegal in Europe and in most modern countries (except the US of course.)
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Lint said 3:57PM on 5-30-2007
Very clever from Apple
Now I'm gonna go find the itunes' user from people who I don't like and alter all my bittorrent-shared files metadata, then let's watch they getting sued by apple...
Imagine a friend of yours asking to you to send the mp3 version of a song he used to have in CD... it would be legal since he already have the right, just don't want to bother finding the cd and encoding, but then he upload to torrent and YOU get busted without knowing why/how/when/where... Yeah, now you gotta keep track of music just like your credit card or ID
I agree in most of the cases people who do the right thing don't have to worry, but this attempt is just silly and can be very useful for script kiddies to give serious trouble to people they don't like
So, you don't get the drm crippled, but you've got your information on that file, wasn't better the olden days when you could just download the mp3 with no personal info for free? Wasn't THIS what they should avoid you from?
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Andreas said 4:04PM on 5-30-2007
You know, this reminds me when in my small dorm I had all my music on my file server. I kept it accessible from everywhere within the dorm so that everyone of my dorm mates could play (not copy) my music and maybe get to know some new and interesting music, who knows. One day the whole network was sluggish and I caught this jerk (probably a guest of one of my dorm mates) who was copying all my music onto his laptop computer. Bloody thief. I told him to erase everything from his drive but he probably didn't.
I had my name in all the MP3 comment fields.
Trusting people can get you in jail.
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Millions Livio said 4:37PM on 5-30-2007
I find it interesting how people get frantic over simple things just as this. Personally, I don't use iTunes so this is not an issue for me. However converting them to an .mp3 and the like should in essence get rid of this. Even so, for all of you freaking out thinking Apple is tracking you, get over it. They simply put this in for when they need it, mainly for the real problems. If you give it to one or a few of your friends, I doubt anything will happen. The issue with this is the people that are doing the most sharing are very wise to the game and would have noticed this; the people that are wise to the game don't use iTunes.
http://TheBluePanda.com
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Thumprchgo said 4:47PM on 5-30-2007
It is not out of the ordinary for a retailer to know exactly what you bought and when, and then supply that information to others. What is extra ordinary is Apple's decision to embed my personal information (email address is iTunes ID) in the non-DRM file, thereby putting the emphasis not on "stealers" of music, but of "loaners" of music.
It puts the responsibility on those who are responsible. Whether I agree with the capitalist pigs as to how much they (or their owned-ass performers) should make from tune sales is different than whether I have permission to take someone else's art and distribute it. Not re-purpose it, or satirize it, or re-invent it. Just to re-distribute it. That's what's wrong.
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Gregg said 4:48PM on 5-30-2007
FYI: Apple has been embedding your username into your DRM'ed .m4p files since iTunes' inception. You just didn't know it before, because those .m4p files were encrypted/protected. IF, however, you had the opportunity to somehow remove that encryption/protection, you would have realized this a long time ago.
This is not a bad thing, it doesn't make Apple evil, and it does not "ruin" the non-DRM'ed files.
Use the music that you buy on iTunes for yourself, don't post it on the Internet or BitTorrent, and you won't have any problems.
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