Amazon Watermarking mp3's?

Yesterday some people started a buzz around some Amazon mp3's being "watermarked". Now, please, calm down: I know that talking about watermarked songs might be good to get some readers, after the discovery of iTunes watermarks on their DRM-free songs, but not everything can be considering watermarking...

Amazon sells plain and simple mp3's, directly ripped from CD's. That means that there are no watermarks in the sound, and since there's no way in the mp3 specification of watermarking a file in another way, the only information that Amazon could possibly add to the files is the ID3 info - simply editable by almost every mp3 player out there. And yes, some Amazon mp3's (surprisingly not all) have ID3 tags telling that they were purchased in Amazon, but there's no personal info there and there's really nothing wrong in those tags. To give you a comparison term, all songs bought at amiestreet.com come, in the Comments section, "This song was downloaded from AmieStreet.com". Simmilary, all songs downloaded from last.fm have in the Comments section "Free download from www.last.fm (http://www.last.fm/)".

It gives me more nerves knowing that every last.fm downloaded track comes bad tagged (every track is tagged as being the 1st of the album, even when the last.fm website knows it is not) than knowing that Amazon's mp3's come with full tags, including a comment saying the track was purchased there.

Nothing to see here, move along.

More about AllOfMP3

Keeping up with the AllOfMP3 saga...

A couple of days ago I wrote about AllOfMp3 finally shutting down, but leaving a spin-off behind. The Spin-off, Mp3Sparks, is now also shutted down, but there are still alternatives:

For those using Microsoft Windows, you can still use your AllOfMp3's accounts (and credit) to buy music on the new Russian service AllTunes. I wonder how long will it take to shut them also down. Also, take in account that you'll be able to use your balance from AllOfMP3 in this service, but not to add more money to it (and keep using it): you'll get a "Processing for this site disabled." message.

If you're looking to a an alternative simillar to AllOfMp3, I wrote about MP3 City here: a simmilar service, also legal, but in Ukraine, a country that, while working on their accession negotiations to became members of the WTO, had still no pressure from the RIAA to the WTO to that country to change their laws.

Links

So, I've been kind of busy lately, so I didn't post anything lately. To avoid having one more day without posts, here is what I have in my browser tabs:

• A reflection on Jobs' article on DRM, not my point of view but an interesting read;
• more criticism on Jobs' article;
• Recalling the math Courtney Love did some years ago;
• Microsoft bringing DRM to cellphones;
• USA more dystopian every day;
• Oracle with some funny security isues;
• How ridiculous can USA be? (in Portuguese);
• A nice blog I knew today (thanks, cha0s);
• Security in Windows Vista is a joke;
• Oni, the next mp3's I'm going to buy;
• The blog of Joanna Rutkowska, lately hacking Vista;
• Carbono Zero (in Portuguese) tells you how to compensate CO2 emissions.

Have a nice reading time.