I was thinking the same thing, what happens when you scan pirated music? There are basically two options, 1) it accepts it and gives you a high quality iTu

I was thinking the same thing, what happens when you scan pirated music? There are basically two options, 1) it accepts it and gives you a high quality iTunes AAC copy that you can move to the various computers and devices you own and probably has your name and particulars branded in to it. Or 2) they can attempt to detect that it's pirated and block it somehow and I'm guessing that you get a fairly shitty user experience when that happens. I'm also going to go ahead and guess that many of the MP3s you've ripped over the last decade may also "fail" the test and be thought of as pirated. On the other side, what's it harm? You're providing the media, they are just saving you the steps of uploading it. Now where you'd game the system is if you had like 16kbit versions of some tracks and they upgrade them for you. If that works then there is kind of a new avenue in piracy they may be opening up, you download small lo-fi versions quickly and then iTunes could fix them up for you... They aren't giving you ownership of anything, they're just helping you get the media where you want it, within some parameters. I wonder if the labels get access to the usage patterns and records, effectively this is Neilsen type information, only way better. Who "owns" which tracks (that alone combined with iTunes buying patterns and some listening patterns potentialy gives you a huge clue in to who are the pirates) who plays what, when, where? Seems like some really really killer social apps could be built ontop of this as well as some incredible marketing information, someone somehwere is going to release a fully remastered, deluxe, Elvis everything box set and ideally (for them) they'd do it at a time when there was an uptick in Elvis listening. You also can measure various popularity trends, see how they move, maximize promotional dollars.