Hi Scott,
I should probably look this up to be sure, but I believe that when you
purchase a song, album, or video through iTunes your AppleID gets
added to the header (or, strictly speaking, "the container") for the
movie or music. This is read when the tracks are added to your iTunes
library. If you do a Get Info (Command-I) for these items, you'll see
that the Summary page says something like "Kind: Protected MPEG-4
video file" or Kind: Protected AAC audio file" and then there is
information like "Purchased By: <you>", "Account Name: <your
AppleID>", and FairPlay Version and Purchase Date. The DRM-free files
will say "Kind: Purchased AAC audio file" and will show the higher
bit rate (256 kbps instead of 128), and will not have the FairPlay
Version, but will still have information on who purchased the file and
when. So even though these files don't have DRM, if you were to post
the files on the internet for general distribution, every copied file
would contain your name and AppleID and be traceable back to you.
You can authorize the tracks/movies to play on up to 5 different
computer iTunes installations. The "Store" menu on the iTunes menu
bar lets you authorize or de-authorize any given computer. In
addition, in case you're not able to de-authorize a machine (e.g.,
because of a hard drive failure), you can also re-set your
authorizations once you hit your 5 machine limit with a "De-authorize
all". However, you can only do this once a year.
For more details, see the following support documents:
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/authorization/
(Authorization FAQ)
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1420
(About iTunes Store authorization and deauthorization)
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2204
(iTunes Store: About Apple ID and Password)
HTH
Cheers,
Esther
On Dec 10, 2008, at 5:59 PM, Scott Rutkowski wrote:
Hi again all mac listers.
Can anyone explain to us once a song or album has been purchased
through itunes, i'm curious to know does the song get encoded once
it has been purchased so it then can add your authorization for the
song to play on your mac?
If not, are the songs possibly already encoded and somehow the store
adds your authorization to the music once purchased?
Just wondered how it worked.
Thanks all.
