iTunes Plus Using Stegano-what?

Those of you who thought Apple would sell straight AAC files without any form of personalization may have to think again. Erica Sadun at O’Reilly is suggests that the DRM-free AAC files Apple is selling through iTunes Plus may use a form of steganography.

No, that’s not a dinosaur (don’t worry, I thought so too). Steganography is apparently the art of sneakily sending data such that only the recipient knows that the data even exists (more at Wikipedia). Apple is, in effect, watermarking each AAC file individually.

One can only presume that the information being embedded into the AAC file (not the file headers, but the actual data itself) consists of personal account information. While I’m sure this represents some sort of compromise between Apple and EMI, it’s not mentioned in any of Apple’s iTunes Plus documentation or licence agreements.

Very sneaky Apple — you should at least tell us that these files are personalized.

Interestingly, reports are flying from all over the internet about iTunes Plus speed woes. I certainly noticed that my iTP purchase took longer than my regular DRM’ed ones. Perhaps it’s the personalized encoding that is leading to some delayed responsiveness?

Regardless, you may want to think twice before you start throwing your recently downloaded DRM-free files all over the interweb (not that any of our readers would ever do that).

(P.S. — Yes, after a long hiatus, I am finally back to TAB. It’s good to be back.)

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post