From: "Glenn Meadows" 

Probably a re-introduction/use of the original watermarking technology,
similar to what's used in digital photography, embedded watermarks on
pictures.

--

Glenn M.
"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in
message news:466087ff$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> Apple knows were your music goes?
>
> http://www.macrumors.com/
>
> Following the discovery that Apple was embedding iTunes account
> information in iTunes Plus songs, Erica Sadun at O'Reilly speculates that
> Apple may be using Steganography within the AAC portion of iTunes Plus
> tracks.
>
> The conclusion came after purchasing the same iTunes Plus song from the
> iTunes Store using two accounts. After having stripped the files of their
> meta data (where iTunes would store account information, and any
> extraneous information), she compared the files and found 774 bytes (out
> of 6.7 MB) were different in the AAC data itself. Her conclusion: "Clearly
> some sort of fingerprinting/steganography is going on in the data itself."
>
> The EFF has apparently also begun investigating the issue, although they
> do not indicate how far they will pursue the issue.
>
> Most forum users appear to not be dissuaded by the revelations, and appear
> to accepting the move as a compromise allowing music companies to have
> some recourse against those who illegally share music, but opening the DRM
> restrictions for legitimate users.
>
> Of note, Apple does not indicate that it uses such technology in its
> iTunes Terms of Service.
>
> Steganography (from Wikipedia): "the art and science of writing hidden
> messages in such a way that no one apart from the intended recipient knows
> of the existence of the message." Different from cryptography in that the
> existence of the message itself is not disguised, but the content is
> obscured.

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