Universal DRM-Free Songs To Be Watermarked

We posted on Friday that Universal Music had plans to release DRM-free tracks, which would include a massive portion of their catalogue. I guess this should come as no surprise, but Wired Blogs has brought it to our attention that these songs will be watermarked, embedded with your user information. While this means virtually nothing for legal users, it does mean that those who purchase music to spread on P2P networks could be caught quite easily.

These watermarks are apparently inaudible, and shouldn’t interfere with playback on any devices, so they shouldn’t cause problems if people buy the MP3s purely for their own use. But if they share them online (or if, say, someone else copies the files from the buyer’s computer and shares it from elsewhere, or installs file sharing software on their computer without their knowledge) the watermark could be used to identify the person who originally purchased the file — but only if the identifier number is unique to a specific purchase.

Source: Wired Blogs