This article is just in time. I have been wondering in idle moments, "DRM-free... I wonder if that includes watermarks."

And along comes this article. Well worth reading in full. I quote:

If a user were to purchase a "DRM-free" file on iTunes and simply post it to a file-sharing site, then it would be easy to see where the file came from and therefore who the culprit is. Yet the presence of the user ID as header metadata in cleartext means that it's easy to remove with simple tools, or by burning the track to CD and re-ripping it to the user's computer. A better solution -- for both piracy and privacy -- would have been to embed the user's identity as a watermark in the audio itself.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 10:23 PM | DRM & Watermarks, etc.

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