The MP3 files form Rhapsody are DRM free. That means you can play them on any device, but are they "fingerprinted"? I mean if I download an album, and then someone else downloads the same album, are the files identical? or they put some fingerprint on the files, and later on if they find them on some file sharing network, they come and get you?

Just a hypothetical question, I am not sharing files, but I am afraid that someone might copy my MP3 files at some point and then I might be in trouble.

Apparently Rhapsody is getting killed right now as all the frat-boys download their nickelback and system of a down albums they all just purchased. I got a 403 error status: exceeding download limit! It's this s#!t that will make me never actually purchase anything from services other than itunes unless I get a coupon or gift card.

~A

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The MP3 files form Rhapsody are DRM free. That means you can play them on any device, but are they "fingerprinted"? I mean if I download an album, and then someone else downloads the same album, are the files identical? or they put some fingerprint on the files, and later on if they find them on some file sharing network, they come and get you?

Just a hypothetical question, I am not sharing files, but I am afraid that someone might copy my MP3 files at some point and then I might be in trouble.

Yes. But I'm not sure how sophisticated it is. In iTunes if you look at "Info" for the song file you'll see a bunch of meta-data in one of the info fields. It looked like it included download source, account number and date/time.

Now I suppose you could delete that from each file. Not sure if it is stored somewhere else, too.

Judging from REAL's previous behaviors (recall several years ago when their players used to phone home user info), I'd bet on the fingerprinting.

The MP3s I just bought have the following text in the comment section: "Store Name: Rhapsody MP3 Downloads, Purchase transaction ID: aa.xxxxxxxx, Purchase Date: 2008-07-02 19:32:14.0 and the purchase transactionID is the same one in my billing history.