By Karsten Lemm
So here’s Apple on Tuesday announcing that pretty soon all music sold on iTunes will be DRM-free, meaning it can be copied without technical hurdles — and promptly we see headlines like this one in the New York Times: “Want to Copy iTunes Music? Go Ahead, Apple Says.” Sounds as if you could finally share your music library with your 10,000 best friends on Facebook, MySpace and the rest of the world, doesn’t it?
Well, not so fast: The problem is that even DRM-free “iTunes Plus” files contain the buyer’s name. In other words, if you download Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” because you were so smitten by his Macworld performance, your name is embedded in the AAC music file that the Apple Store sends to your iTunes library. To see for yourself, simply open an iTunes Plus song, i.e. the AAC file you find in the iTunes library folder of your hard drive, in a text editor or word processor.
You are very likely to see your name at the top of the file (and if you don’t, just do a search). That’s no problem, of course, unless you give the file to somebody else, who gives it to somebody else, who uploads it to BitTorrent – and pretty soon, if you do this one time too many, you might end up in the cross hairs of the music industry as a “pirate.”
How come? Well, the lack of copy protection doesn’t mean you’re allowed to freely give your songs to others, and take what they give you. The iTunes Store terms and conditions clearly state that everything you buy is for personal use only, and Amazon – which has been selling DRM-free digital music for quite a while – restricts your purchases in the same way. Which isn’t surprising, actually, considering that the music labels are obviously interested in continuing to sell songs, rather than legalize the fact that their wares are bouncing around file sharing networks.
How vigorously will the music industry pursue people who don’t realize that DRM-free doesn’t mean you’re given the license to copy at will? That’s a different question, of course. Just know that if you send your digital music purchases out into the world, your name is out there, too.
Note: This entry is adapted from my blog at the newsmagazine Stern, where you can read more about this topic in German.
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