I've commented before on the issue of "personal" information in songs purchased from iTunes Plus. Certainly, one might not want some of the information to get around, in particular sensitive information like passwords, and even more particularly if that information isn't encrypted.

At first, I was tempted to say (actually, I did say) that one only need worry about the information if one was posting songs to the Internet. My conclusion was based in part on the idea that one has all sorts of information on one's computer, and songs purchased from iTunes would probably be the least of one's worries if a computer is stolen or lost.

However, I then realized the quite obvious and more important point: the songs are also kept on iPods, which 1) don't offer any way to encrypt information, unlike a PC, and 2) are far more often lost and stolen. Also, one doesn't really expect personal information to be stored there, and might avoid doing so on purpose (for example, by not using an iPod's PIM functions).

And so, I can see that some people might have a legitimate concern over this issue, and Apple should certainly provide more information on what they're storing in songs purchased from iTunes Plus. From the linked story above, this is also apparently the case for all songs purchased from iTunes.

Update: I also don't find the argument in this story to be compelling. One problem with unencrypted information on an iPod, even if just a name and email address, is that it's not very useful as an anti-piracy measure. If one's iPod were stolen, and all of the songs contained on it were made available via P2P sharing, how could the purchaser prove that he wasn't the one who uploaded them? Or, conversely, how could Apple prove that he was? In short, the information should be encrypted, and only Apple should have the key.