Our own Erica was one of the first to
discover that personal information is encoded in DRM-free iTunes Plus files. If you want to remove that "watermarking,"
Playlist Magazine has a solution: TUAW favorite audio editor
Fission ($32) from Rogue Amoeba "c
an strip out the identifying information in an iTunes Plus track without changing the file's audio." Basically, you just open the file then resave it as AAC (Original Format, Lossless) and the non-original format identifying information is not saved. Unfortunately, you have to do this for each file individually, but if you don't want your name and Apple ID in the file, this looks like it'll work (though I haven't tried it myself).
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
cmore said 3:00PM on 6-20-2007
That personal information is not a watermark. It is not new to iTunes plus (every purchased iTunes song has it). The personal information is metadata stored in atoms in the music file (not mixed in or overlayed with the sound data at all). It's not used for verification or authentication. The actual sound information is the same for every purchaser of an iTunes plus file.
Please don't call it watermarking or blow it into some kind of conspiracy. For an explanation of what watermarking is, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking
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! said 3:10PM on 6-20-2007
Uh, yeah, Erica "discovered" the "watermarking" "encoded" in DRM-free files, if you mean she was the first to shriek OMG CONSPIRACY!! in shrill tones, and one of the last to back down--in a tiny-type amendment to her original article--when the rest of the internet revealed her mistake: http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2007/06/is_that_steganography_more_adv.html
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Jason Martin said 3:19PM on 6-20-2007
This is stupid. As others have mentioned, this is NOT WATERMARKING! Also, it is not unique to iTunes Plus. All iTunes downloads contain this information. I believe other digital music sites do similar things. It's no big deal, and I am completely surprised by the uproar. Why haven't people come to decry this identifying information before iTunes Plus was unveiled? It's not like Apple intentionally put this into iTunes Plus as a countermeasure to removing DRM. It's part of the DRMed files too, so WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?!?
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Michael said 3:31PM on 6-20-2007
*Sigh*
It's not watermarking. It's just metadata in MP4 atoms. And if the current tools for parsing those parsed slightly more accurately, as they probably will in time, it would be a routine matter to clear the atoms in question with them.
The metadata isn't there for any nefarious purpose. And, despite people's lurid imaginations, it's certainly not there to track files should they be released on the web. If that had been a worry for EMI, they wouldn't also be allowing other companies to offer the same music in MP3 format, since the metadata for MP3 files is not extendable in the same way, would they? And why would they agree to distribution in MP4 format either, anyway, since MP4 atoms as we've already seen can, at least in principle and depending on the efficiency of the tool, be easily stripped?
It's NOT watermarking. Even the EFF has admitted as much--though, being the EFF, they have offered no apologies for their earlier hysterical reaction and false insinuations.
See Daring Fireball, 18 June:
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2007/june#mon-18-eff_innards
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Mat Lu said 3:33PM on 6-20-2007
Playlist called it "watermarking" so that's what I called it (hence the scare quotes). And metadata is part of the file, thus it is, in a sense, "encoded."
I agree it's not digital watermarking, strictly speaking.
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drew said 3:38PM on 6-20-2007
I see no reason to take the time to remove this information from your purchased songs.
The only reason I can think of to remove this information would be if you were planning on pirating the music. If this is the case, I would imagine that most music pirates would prefer to obtain the music illegally anyways, thus making this completely useless.
Just my 2¢
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Ricosuave said 3:39PM on 6-20-2007
will this program rip cds? If not can some one recommend a good program to rip cds at the highest quality into iTunes. I have used iTunes for that but it does not show the VBR in my library after i chose that option in the settings.
Any input would be appreciated...
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frou said 4:06PM on 6-20-2007
wow, look at the comments on erica's blog. it would seem that no matter what she blogs about, her quality and ethics are questioned.
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! said 5:04PM on 6-20-2007
How is this worthy of a post, even on TUAW? Is it really news that an audio editor is capable of editing MPEG-4 tags? Chrissake, so is QuickTime Player. So are a hundred free command-line tools.
If I didn't know any better, I'd say this is TUAW milking the "Apple is spying on us!" sensationalism. Either that or a certain someone's getting a kickback for mentioning a certain $30+ audio editor.
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GadgetGav said 5:21PM on 6-20-2007
Woo hoo for Erica...
Maybe instead of fretting about "watermarks" she should spend time looking up the difference between privacy and anonymity.
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Mars said 1:59AM on 6-21-2007
A very cool shell program called AtomicParsely will allow you to easily do the file manipulations for free and as a batch.
"AtomicParsley is a lightweight command line program
for reading, parsing and setting metadata into MPEG-4 files."
http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net
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