iTunes Plus tracks contain user info

People that were hoping to be able to freely trade iTunes' new DRM-free tracks from EMI will be in for a surprise – the tracks are embedded with your iTunes user name. TUAW has posted a grep command that allows you to view the user name tag via terminal. Wired's Epicenter blog claims that you can see it by selecting "Get Info" on a track (although this doesn't work for me).

Some people posting in the comments of various social news sites are in a rub over Apple's inclusion of their iTunes user name in the tracks but I don't understand why. Apple said that the tracks were "DRM-free" not "personal identifier free." The tracks are no longer restricted, you can play them on as many computers as you want and any music player you want, so I don't understand the complaints. Why would anyone care about their user name being embedded in a music track unless they were going to illegally share it over P2P?

Those scofflaws wishing to strip the personal identifiers have plenty of options including converting the track to MP3 or Apple lossless, but then again, there is always the analog hole with DRM-protected tracks anyway. So why all the complaints? It just goes to show you that you just can't please some people. The next thing people will ask for is completely free music. Oh wait, they already have that.

Apple's push for DRM-free music and their iTunes Plus initiative deserves a lot of kudos and we should support it by buying EMI's DRM-free tracks and pushing the other labels to follow suit.