The RealOne player from real.com is like that too, I believe. Talks to the mothership whenever you view an A/V stream. The EULA mentions it when you install it. Similarly iTunes on a Mac can retrieve track information for CDs you off the internet. Perhaps using CDDB? CDDB has a privacy policy saying they won't reveal individual details. It sounds like there's some sort of registration there, but I don't recall explicitly registering with them when I started using iTunes. These days, especially with always on network connections, it is hard to know what piece of software you have on your computer is going to talk behind your back with some unknown entity on the net.