Yes:

Quote:
Universal Music Group will include watermarks that can be used to track the potential spread of its new digital rights management-free songs on file-sharing networks, Wired.com reported. The label last week announced a trial whereby it will sell songs free of DRM from a number of retailers. It's still unclear whether the watermark will be unique to each individual purchase, meaning that Universal would know if a particular consumer's purchased track was uploaded to a file-sharing network.

Update: Wired.com reported on Aug. 15 that the DRM-free Universal downloads will not in fact carry watermarks that can uniquely identify individual consumers. Rather, they could potentially be used to generally track when songs are uploaded to file-sharing networks.

I cannot find it in me to oppose watermarking, other than potentially lowering the quality of the file. Personally, I'd never purchase music for download when I don't get physical media and the data is already lossily compressed when it costs basically the same amount as getting the actual CD, so it doesn't really make that much difference to me anyway. If tracks were $0.25 or less, maybe, but it's still about four times too pricy for me right now.

Wal-Mart still only sells the censored versions of albums anyway.


Edited by wfaulk (21/08/2007 22:28)
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Bitt Faulk