Record Company Required Metadata

DoofyDoofy
edited October 2010 in General
What about this little nugget, from Amazon? Record Company Required Metadata
Embedded in the metadata of each purchased MP3 from this record company are a random number Amazon assigns to your order, the Amazon store name, the purchase date and time, codes that identify the album and song (the UPC and ISRC), Amazon's digital signature, and an identifier that can be used to determine whether the audio has been modified. In addition, Amazon inserts the first part of the email address associated with your Amazon.com account, so that you know these files are unique to you.

This was mentioned in an Amazon review of the new Elton John/Leon Russell album. The record company in question is Mercury...which I believe is one of the UMG labels coming soon to eMu.

Comments

  • BigD-BluezBigD-Bluez
    Creepy, and a little too Orwellian for my humble tastes. Stuff like this is why I still pay for most things in cash, but with digital downloads I'm trapped in their corporate crosshairs.
  • DoofyDoofy
    edited October 2010
    How “Dirty” MP3 Files Are A Back Door Into Cloud DRM

    That would 'splain it. This suggests that those CDs BigD is buying might not be allowed to play from the "cloud."

    The above article goes on to say that retailers had been resisting such watermarking. However:
    What retailers won’t say publicly is that the major record labels are requiring this behavior as a precondition to sell their music.
    ...Presumably including eMusic, after the switch and possibly even now.
  • elwoodiciouselwoodicious
    It's all about FArtS. Fuck these people 1000 times to Tuesday.
  • KatrinaKatrina
    Great link! I only buy bottled water if there's no drinking fountain around, by the way...

    I knew Apple was putting stuff in my files for a long time. It's right there on the summary page for purchased tracks.
    Now, I've seen the Amazon song ID thing in the comments field. Is that the watermark?

    Can't I just edit them out with something like MP3 Tag? (Well not the Apple freebie of the week tracks, mp3 Tag doesn't work on AAC files)
  • DoofyDoofy
    edited October 2010
    Katrina, I don't think this refers to the Amazon song ID...See all the other info that they say is "embedded." Including part of your e-mail address, for God's sake.

    I don't (think I) have any of these "dirty" tracks, so I don't know if they look any different than other tracks. Was hoping one of the tech brains around here would have insight into that.

    Nor do I know how one would go about editing the "metadata" to remove the identifying info. I think the idea of this is that if you shared the track, they'd be able to trace it back to you. But also, if you altered this info, it one day might not play in the cloud, or "digital locker," or whatever other technical innovation is coming up that I don't really want or need. It could be just like the bad old days when buymusic.com used to phone home for every track before determining whether you had the right to play it on your computer!

    I'm going to ask eMu whether they are going to be inserting this info, and to suggest that if so they need to provide a warning, like Amazon is doing.

    That Elton/Leon album is $5 at 7digital, btw. I'm curious to hear it.
  • thomnottomthomnottom
    edited October 2010
    I've known about this watermarking, but as recently as this past spring Amazon was still on the list of companies that didn't do it. 7digital supposedly doesn't, either.

    I'll just add that this is why I will stay away from "The Cloud".
  • BigD-BluezBigD-Bluez
    edited October 2010
    Wasn't there some some 50's horror movie about a giant alien eye monster that lived in a cloud on top of a mountain?
    Edit - It was called The Crawling Eye (1958).
  • thomnottomthomnottom
    I believe that was the first movie on MST3K.
  • KatrinaKatrina
    Yeah, I was thinking that screenshot from the article looked like it wasn't just in normal ID3 tag...

    It's been a while since I had to look at hex files, but if they can put it in, it can be taken out.
    Taking it out without ruining it, is the big puzzle.

    Off to waste many minutes reading up on this......
  • choiceweb0pen0choiceweb0pen0
    Interesting Cracked article, though it's odd that they writer assumes readers know what FArtS stand for (beyond the better known bodily function definition). Anyone have a good definition for it?
  • elwoodiciouselwoodicious
    FArtS == Forced Artificial Scarcity
  • jonahpwlljonahpwll
    The most recent OJC's released on Amazon have the metadata warning on the download screen. Two of those OJCs are on emu now. I don't know what this means or if it even affects me.
  • DoofyDoofy
    It means the DLs could be traced back to you if you shared them. As a practical matter, the real risk of trouble is probably if you used them to seed a torrent or P2P share.

    I'm sure lots of the newer stuff on eMu has metadata. If it does on AMZ, it probably does on eMu.
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