Apparently someone just realized that the non-DRM laden iTunes Plus tracks from the iTunes Music Store contain personally identifiable information. The original article doesn’t really editorialize the fact, it’s more of a “let’s be careful out there” warning. I’m interested to see how this gets spun – will the main stream media pick it up at all, and will the geek media and general geek populace shrug and move on or declare that this is somehow evil on Apple’s part?

Personally I could care less. If it was a chip on the table that Apple laid down to be able to sell DRM-free tracks, good for them. I’ve been so itchy lately about the DRM nightmare stories of losing content when providers turn their servers off that I’ve been seriously considering burning and ripping my ~500 Protected AAC tracks so I could sleep better at night. I’ve pretty much stopped buying from iTMS because there are other vendors selling unladen tracks (eMusic and Amazon MP3 store being my current main choices), only buying from iTMS when I can’t find it anywhere else (including physical media) for a comparable price.

At the end of the day, you shouldn’t allow your music to end up on a share somewhere. I’m perfectly content to have Apple embed my email address in the tracks that I bought if they don’t have the ability to prevent me from listening to that music in the future. Seems like a fair trade to me.

As an aside, I wonder if converting the track to MP3 (which I’ve been considering doing with all my non-protected AAC files to further ensure longevity and maximum portability of my music) would include the PII in the MP3 file or strip it?