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News site Ars Technica was among the first to discover that downloaded tracks free of Fairplay have embedded within them the full name and account information, including e-mail address, of who bought them.

RealNetworks spokesman Matt Graves said he hadn't yet seen the letter, but it appeared to be a ploy by a "desperate company" to get its product licensed. "That's a rather novel approach to business development," he said in an e-mail interview Friday. Representatives from Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and MRT did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

DMCA refers to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a controversial 1998 law that generally makes it illegal to circumvent technological protection measures that control access to copyrighted works.