Dr. Dobb's | DRM Becomes Steganography

DRM Becomes Steganography

Around five years ago I started a long running argument with my friend Paul Clark about the future of DRM in online music. I was pretty much convinced that the music labels were never going to let their content be distributed in plain MP3 format, but Paul insisted it was just a matter of time. And indeed this turned out to be true - due to the massive power of the iTunes Music Store. Once ITMS became the number one retailer of music, Apple had to the power to make this call, and did so.

The Move to Steganography

When Apple trumpeted the appearance of DRM-free downloads, they didn't mention a dirty little secret: your music files are now tagged with your name and some sort of cookie which can be used to identify you as the owner of a specific track. As long as nobody knows about this, it can be considered steganography, but now that the secret is out, it's more like DRM-lite. When I first read about this in TechCrunch, I couldn't really get a handle on whether people were going to be upset about it. On the one hand, nobody likes being secretly tracked, but on the other hand, the file is truly free for you to copy and do with as you please. I guess in the short run I have to say that it would not bother me much at all if everyone was a bit more up front about it. Being secretly tagged doesn't feel quite right, but I can't quite put my finger on exactly what's wrong. But is this better than DRM-shackled files that can only be played on approved devices? No question, that is the difference between night and day.

April 10, 2010
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/drm-becomes-steganography/228701889