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.
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 5)
ThunkDifferent.com said 1:51PM on 5-30-2007
Great addition, now there are new editions such as Paul McCartney, and classics like New Edition... thanks Apple iTunes!
http://ThunkDifferent.com
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jh said 1:54PM on 5-30-2007
This is not like wire tapping at all.
If Apple downloads a torrent and finds your name on it, then you deserve what you get. It's no different than if you stole a credit card and someone at a store caught you using it. What you do in public is public record.
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Matt said 1:54PM on 5-30-2007
I know that with the DRM crap I was able to burn my music I downloaded to a CD, rip to ogg, convert to mp3, and then back to ogg and I could not find anything with DRM etc. but it was quite a process. Might work now, but I'm not sure.
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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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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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BobH said 12:26PM on 5-31-2007
What a bunch of hypocrites. The argument against DRM was always, "I should be able to use a song I bought on any devices I own -- computer, MP3 player, iPod, etc." This lets you do that, yet people are still talking about ways to get around it so they can share it, post it online, Torrent it, whatever.
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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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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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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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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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jh said 5:14PM on 5-30-2007
Jeremy, read the Apple EULA. Users ARE told that it's there.
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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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