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Thursday, June 7, 2007 12:00 AM

The problems with iTunes Plus

Apple offers higher-quality, DRM-free music. What's the catch?

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  • Thursday, June 7, 2007 09:12 AM

    It's not watmarking

    "...but any track you purchase in the new format is instantly watermarked with your username and e-mail address."

    Your name and account information is not "watermarked." An audio watermark is a specific technology that inserts hopefully inaudible data directly into audio bitstream for recovery by that specific watermark detector. Real audio watermarks are designed to survive various audio conversions and processing that may later be done to the file.

    What Apple is doing is not watermarking; they are simply embedding account information into the header of the file as metadata tags, which by the way, they have always done for purchased tracks. It wasn't a problem for years, so why is it a problem now?

    I would suggest that if you are going to report and comment on technology, you might want to actually learn about the various relevant technologies first instead of echoing what you hear on other website that may or may not know what they are talking about. After all, we come to Salon for original analysis, not to hear a game of telephone.

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