DRM-free Itunes files have your number

Itunes Plus, as Apple calls it, doesn't have digital restrictions management (DRM) features, and Itunes addicts boast that Apple even lets you remove copy protection from tracks you'd already downloaded for 50 cents per tune.

That sounds good, right? Well, there's more to it than that. Itunes Plus files have the email address that you registered with the Itunes Store hidden in every file. You can find it with a basic text editor, like Windows Notepad or anything similar.

The untrusting might be apprehensive that marking Itunes files with the downloaders' email addresses might be used to facilitate tracking you down should you share any of those tunes with a few thousand of your closest friends.

Jobs' mob might not be into that, but there's another mob of thugs in suits who work for the Big Music MAFIAA that most certainly might, and indeed, can almost be counted on to try it.

We think it'll be merely a matter of hours now before someone figures out how to remove or obfuscate those email fingerprints and adjust any related internal file size and hash fields to produce Itunes Plus files that are really free, man. µ

CNET