I realized that the $25 per year was a form of piracy amnesty the moment I heard about it. The way I see it, people pay $25 per year to get an all-you-can-eat m

I realized that the $25 per year was a form of piracy amnesty the moment I heard about it. The way I see it, people pay $25 per year to get an all-you-can-eat music service, since they can always legitimize content they keep on downloading from illegitimate sources. My question, however, is whether it is even necessary to download any illegitimate content. Nobody needs to upload any music to any servers (iTunes Match claims not to), all they need to do is to trick iTunes to make it look like "Song X.mp3" is actually on their hard-drive. In order to do that all people need to find out is what data iTunes sends to mothership about a particular song. A similar feat was achieved by Dropship.