Slashdot Mirror
Apple Smacks Down iCommune
flipsidejones writes "Looks like Apple has killed iCommune. iCommune, as mentioned previously, allows users to share music libraries across a network from within iTunes. It seems the license for the iTunes plugin API does not allow for software-based plugins (only hardware: MP3 players, etc). Apple issued a 'Notice of Breach and Termination of License' to iCommune, who have since pulled the download. Something tells me that they won't be putting it back up anytime soon. Every time I forget about Mac OS X being proprietary, Apple does something to remind me." Well, in fairness, this could happen even if Mac OS X itself weren't proprietary, as iTunes still could be. For that matter, iCommune still is, too. Hm, none of that makes me feel any better ...
I'd like to see this type of editorial byline in the next Borg article, please.
I'm constantly amazed at how Apple is really not considered evil because they happen to sell an OS based on Unix. Duh. They're a company that sells stuff and makes money just like any other.
Sounds like they're putting the kibosh on this project because they plan to do something like this in the near future. They may even have plans to make this a paid upgrade to the free iTunes download. Who knows?
I actually thought they'd go after iCommune for trademark dilution...
Completely irrelevant - this is to do with the terms the iCommute guys agreed to when they used the iTunes SDK.
You may not like the APSL for political reasons, but it's got nothing to do with this.
Wouldn't one of the reasons that iCommune got pulled is because Apple is probably building in Rendezvous support for iTunes into iTunes 4? They don't want to be beaten to the punch, and a third party offering "Rendezvous-like" functionality goes against Apple's plan.
The next release of iTunes is slated to include P2P technology over Rendezvous(sp).
As much as I hate to see projects killed, in this case, its not necessarily a Bad Thing(tm). In windows-land, I've got a plethora of networks to hound for one file, depending on who has it. With my mac, I'll only have one, and if the file is out there, it's on that network.
Like I said killed OSS projects are bad, mmmkay? But, a single, united, SUPPORTED p2p network is (maybe) worth it.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
That would be nicer if you get actually get to Kazaa networks with a Mac. **grumble** At least give us the code, so we can make it ourselves. The Neo app works, but it's only one way + requires basically wardailing for hosts. I mean, I get that maybe FastTrack doesn't want to put the resources into supporting the Mac, but at least give us the opportunity to do it ourselves by opening the code. Kindof ironic, really--you would think that a someone in the biz of "free sharing" would make their code as open as possible.
--
$tar -xvf
It's a shame apple is actually restricting uses of their software like this. Isn't one of the best signs of good-designed software when people do things with it that you never imagined?
To be fair, I don't think the poster was saying anything about prices, but rather the ability to extend the funcionality of a product.
sic transit gloria mundi
Hey, it's the apple iTunes API license, not the apple public source license. Let's see, agree to one license to start developing a plugin for a proprietary App. Then, violate that license. Get caught... Oh yeah, don't forget to complain about an entirely different license just because it furthers your own philosophy... Complete disregard for facts...
...ranting about how evil Apple is because they make proprietary software and how this is inherently casts them as The Man who is trying to crush our every freedom...consider that back in October they were herealded as pretty much the only company standing up for our rights. (I can't seem to raise the page but here is the Google cache.)
It occurs to me that Apple may have less-than-evil reasons for terminating the contract, not the least of which is to retain their credibility by not becoming associated with some half-assed Napster clone.
Or, they could just be evil. I guess.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
You can buy a cassette
Now, if you make a copy of a CD and put it on another CD, can you LEGALLY give it to your friend?
Now if you make a copy of that CD and put it on your computer and make it available to other people, can you LEGALLY give it to them? No.
There's the line
Note that iCommune essentially used no code; it was just somethin which generated a few lines of apache config which would make the Music directory shared:
/Foo/Music
...
.pls file. I.e. the type you normally click on.
_ rendezvous/
Alias
Al.ow from all
Along with a small perl/python script which took your playlist and turned it into a
That is all. Any one who can handle vi can do it manually.
However, combine this with Eric his mod_rendevous and then it gets interesting... http://homepage.mac.com/macdomeeu/dev/current/mod
As that will dynamically announce your web server to the local network.
In Safari; just go to bookmarks, rendezvous - and here we go. Sharing as it should be.
Dw.
Watson wasn't killed off. It is still out there and being updated on a regular basis. I much prefer it to Sherlock. Watson has more features and launches faster in my experience. It would have been great if they incorporated it into 10.2 but they didn't. For once, Apple was following the lead of shareware developers, just not doing it as well.
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who
To be fair, I don't think the poster was saying anything about prices, but rather the ability to extend the funcionality of a product.
Not your product, dude. Apple didn't create iTunes so people could illegally (right or wrong, it is definitely still illegal) exchange music files. And because Apple created it, they have the right to tell you not to do that with it. If you don't like it-- and obviously some people don't-- then you should write your own MP3 library manager.
It bothers me that people-- not you, but others-- actually use the word "free" in this context. Are you free to do whatever you want with other people's stuff? Um... no. That's the beginning and the end of the discussion, guys.
I write in my journal
This is not about P2P. iCommune sucks as a way to share music illegally, because you have to stream it, you can't copy it. Sure, that doesn't make it legal, but it makes it stupid as a means to "steal" music from a friend. The only way to copy an MP3 is outside of iTunes, using some external web client, as iCommune just shares via Apache. And if you are going to do that, you don't even need iCommune, you can just tell Apache to share your MP3 directory!
iCommune does not serve MP3s, Apache does. iCommune does not copy MP3s, only an external web client could. This isn't about stopping P2P. It is about Apple using its license to prevent someone from doing something they don't like, probably because, as only a few people mentioned, Apple is going to enable Rendezvous sharing in iTunes (in theory, someday).
Uh, it's not about Mac OS X being proprietary. It's not about the DMCA. It's not about the RIAA. It's not about Big Corporations squashing innovation. It's about the iCommune folks agreeing to a license when they used the API, and violating the terms of that license, and Apple revoking it. Apple is fully within their rights to do this, and I have no sympathy for iCommune at all. They agreed to the license, and they broke the rules. That's just too damn bad.
And it's not like Apple used the DMCA or something to do this. ALl they did was send a letter saying "Hey, you agreed to this license, and now you violated it. Please stop."
Come on people, it's a LICENSE. Just because you don't like the terms of it doesn't mean it's not real. You know that if someone violated the terms of the GPL and got in trouble for it, we'd all be celebrating. When you support the enforcement of one LICENSE and cry foul when another is enforced, you lose a lot of credibility.
Now, if the license was ambiguous, and what icommune did wasn't specifically prohibited, and then Apple tried to claim it was, then I'd be upset. But this is open and shut.
Frankly, I'm getting a little upset about seeing all these stories on /. designed to trick you into thinking someone is stomping on your rights. Like the one about the student who STOLE documents from a law firm. And this one about a LICENSE VIOLATION. What's next? "Man Arrested for Possession of Linux: Police arrest man for breaking into BestBuy and stealing copies of RedHat Linux"
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Please give insight on how Apple steals from the open source community. If I recall correctly:
--They gave their changes to GCC back to the community
--They gave us Rendevous
--They are giving their changes to KHTML back to the KDE community
--They gave us Darwin to play with
--And quite possibly many many more that I don't know.
I'm feeding the troll, yes i know. But it's got to stop. Moderators, mod him down.
"Full sources for linux currently runs to about 200kB compressed" --Linus Torvalds 31-Jan-1992
Like I said killed OSS projects are bad, mmmkay? But, a single, united, SUPPORTED p2p network is (maybe) worth it.
You have just expressed a wry gladness that the project was killed, so that your convinience may be better served by having to look in only one place to find a file you are looking for, and with the next breath essentially said "I feel your pain" when you've made it rather clear you do not.
Not only that, but your grand One P2P to Rule Them All and Bind Them will be a propriatary, commercial venture, subject to all the long term instability that implies, such as cut budgests, etc.), inaccessibility (no guarantee it will be compatible with anyone else, limiting your trading to just other mac players, a very small percentage of online file sharers), licensing restrictions (which may or may not be draconian, but either way, where's your choice gone?), possible monitoring capabilities (it is one network, after all, with likely only one approved client), and (seemingly remote at this time, but that will change on a dime if political or economic pressures come to bear) possibly DRM technology built in.
Not to mention it will be a single point of failure. One good lawsuit from the media cartels, a single injunction, and you are out of business with no alternatives to turn to, and your own vendor prohibiting anyone else from offering you one.
Welcome to the world of proprietary software. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Apple is a much nicer Master than Microsoft, and both their equipment and software are superior in every way, but they remain a master, and you a serf subject to their corporate whims. Furthermore, as occasional actions like this have demonstrated time and time again historically, there is absolutely no guarantee that Apple will remain the kinder Master in the future. At some point, these sorts of restrictions make it clear even to the most subserviant that no amount of convinience is worth this kind of tradeoff, and that freedom actually is something worth a modicum of effort to achieve, maintain, and insure.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I'm constantly amazed at how Apple is really not considered evil because they happen to sell an OS based on Unix. Duh. They're a company that sells stuff and makes money just like any other. ...
...
/.ers would like to think. Within each organization there are lots of different factions.
e rnment/take-your-pick dogma. Following the popular anti-whatever rhetoric gets you karma or a nice troll. I can say that because when I was first introduced to the concepts of free software and open source, I swallowed the whole philosphy. Reading slashdot and other open source forums have allowed me to look in the mirror enough to realize how stupid it can sometimes sound.
So they're evil because they're a company that sells stuff?
<rant>
Exactly. You know I'm really getting tired of slashdot articles _and_ comments which suggest that such and such a company or organization is evil or good. Whether it's Apple or Microsoft or even the RIAA, things are not as black and white as most
Since when did the FSF become the bastion of all that is good and pure? Since when did making money become a crime? I don't think I want to label any company as purely good or evil, and particularly not any action so general as making money! Too many of us here are simply zealots, blindly spewing doctrine based on some twisted free-software/open-source/unix-rules/fsck-the-gov
Don't get me wrong, I love open source. I agree with many of these principles. Heck, I contribute to couple projects and release open source code myself! But I hope I'm pragmatic enough not to simply buy the standard dogma that makes comments like "M$ sucks" or "making money is evil" rated "Insightful". Okay, <rant> off.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Some examples to show that Apple isn't "stealing from the OSS community . . ."
- Darwin
- OpenDarwin.org - "OpenDarwin.org, jointly founded in April 2002 by Internet Software Consortium, Inc. (ISC) and Apple, is an attempt to take cooperative Darwin development to the next level. Membership in the OpenDarwin project and access to its works are open to everyone. The project is also fully independent, with control over its own web site, project news, bug tracking information and CVS repository, as well as any other services that the community owners may wish to provide. Neither Apple nor ISC take any responsibility for, or exercise any editorial control over, the OpenDarwin project."
- Rendezvous - see also http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/02/08/29/2310214.
s html?tid=107
Apple's tactics regarding 3rd party developers, its choice of licences, etc. are open to debate. However, I don't think it's correct to say that all Apple is doing is "stealing". And besides, Open Source software is meant to be copied, looked at, modified, redistributed. (I'll save the discussion about "if you want people to abide by GNU, you have to be willing to abide by other licences" for someone else). Apple is doing just this, and as far as I can tell creating good products. If you don't like them, or their busincess practices, or their licences, cool, get something else. Vive la difference, non?I have a real problem with license agreements that come with software.
Then don't use software that comes with license agreements. Seems like a simple solution to me.
The same goes for hardware.
Then, once again, don't use hardware that comes with license agreements.
Of course, if you want to get your hands on good software, or good hardware, then I suppose you're going to have to accept the terms under which the vendors want to sell it. They created it, after all, so they get to decide how, or even if, they want to distribute it.
I write in my journal
Not quite. Certainly, MS licenses are restrictive. Licenses in general are. If they weren't restrictive, there'd be no need for them. Are MS licenses too restrictive? Probably. Does this mean they can be violated? No. If there was an article about Corporation X, which made 500 copies of a Windows 2000 CD, and installed it on all of their computers, and got busted by the BSA or MSFT, I'd be on the side of MS, as much as I'd hate it. Apple licenses do tend to be less restrictive than MS licenses, especially the APSL, which, by nature, is less restrictive.
As for the Xbox mod chip stuff, that's totally different. There was no license involved. That was the DMCA (unless I'm mistaken). That's a whole different issue. If Apple had tried to use the DMCA against iCommune, you're damn right I'd be upset, because the DMCA has no place here. But they didn't. You're comparing Apples and Oranges. (no pun intended)
(Don't bother linking to the articles in which Apple has used the DMCA against people. I don't care. I'm only pointing out they didn't use the DMCA in THIS CASE.)
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Now, I have very little love for the **AA, and I think that the stranglehold over the music industry that they have is wrong, as is their notion of "media consumers" as helpless fetuses plugged into the (ir) matrix, as is their desire to infringe upon our fair use rights, etc... I also believe that the music industry should try and find a way to make file trading / downloading legal and reasonably priced (I really got what I feel is good value for my money from emusic).
However, while stealing^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h swapping songs may be seen as some sort of protest against their injustices, it is still stealing. So if some entity is in some way facilitating stealing, they have every right to shut it down. "Proprietary" seems to have little to do with it. I think the notion of "free" software is hurt tremendously if it tries to align itself with stealing. There are so many other positive virtues about free software that pitting it as a "robin hood" for people that really only care about getting free music does it a disservice.
I just get so tired of this viewpoint; it saddens me to think that all people really care about is free beer, not free speech. I certainly appreciate all of the great software I have been able to receive at no cost (although I contribute here and there both in $$$ and bug reports when I can), but the notion of being part of a community is much more valuable to me. That is why I don't want this community to become, or at least to be seen as, a bunch of whining freeloaders.
For the love of $DEITY, loose != not win!!!!!
You appear to be under the misapprehension that news cannot contain commentary. Benjamin Franklin, essentially the father of journalism in America, regularly injected commentary into news stories in his Pennsylvania Gazette. As long as it is clear that it is commentary, it's perfectly reasonable; that news cannot contain commentary is a thoroughly modern perspective. There is a place for both objective news as well as news with commentary. Slashdot has always been, largely, a place for the latter.
Since when is a network interface not a hardware device?
Before everyone gets into a huff about this, you have to realize that Apple had to do this to survive. What iCommune did was basically create a iTunes-based Napster. Since RIAA has been suing every version of p2p they can track down, Apple stood to get involved in a huge lawsuit as well as being forced to change the way iTunes (and probably the iPod) works.
Basic survival intincts. Blame RIAA, not Apple.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
No, but it comes bundled for 'free' with every Mac. I think most of us would agree that Mozilla is a better browser than IE, it has tabs, popup blocking, it's more secure, it's more standards compliant, it can look boring if you want but it can also look cool and so on. The latest builds are even comparable to IE6 in speed. Internet Explorer itself has hardly moved on in the last few years, Gates has his eye on other balls.
Nonetheless, it's practically impossible to convince a lot of people to use it. Mozillas market share remains at rock bottom. I've tried to convince friends to try it and they point blank refuse, "IE is fine for me, why would I need Mozilla?".
And you know what? I think they might be onto something. Trying to convince somebody to change their web browser, or media player, or zip extractor is like trying to convince people to buy a different brand of oil for their car.
I mean, to most people, things like that are part of the furniture, it works, they don't think about it. The effort required to try something else, when what you have works, is simply too great. We can't be discerning buyers in everything we do (part of the reason classical economics fails) and so the idea that somehow a company could displace iTunes by making a better media player is probably wrong.
The only way that'd be possible is if it was SO much better than iTunes, and iTunes was SO bad that people were willing to find out about the competition and download them and try them out etc, ie not going to happen anytime soon.
So really this company is sort of screwed. I don't agree with the "well it was in the plugin license agreement so they are the criminals here" line either - arbitrary restrictions on plugin APIs that serve seemingly no purpose just reeks of control freakery and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if that was a planned feature for iTunes.
Using license agreements to arbitrarily restrict competition like this is a classic Microsoft tactic, it's sad to see Apple do the same, but not entirely surprising.
If you want "nice", use open source. While companies have profit motives that get in the way of quality and features, the interests of most open source developers are aligned with those of users because they are users.
...the next version of iTunes will be coming soon with this exact same feature...
No. The next version of iTunes will let you stream music over Rendezvous. not pirate music over Rendezvous. There's a difference.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Everytime I see a story like that, I imagine what it would be like if Apple was in the monopoly position that MS currently has. I really hate what MS is doing these days, but I think Apple would do 10 time worse it it was powerful enough.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Hey, Whamb can share songs using Rendezvous and they've not been brought down by Apple yet ;)
My thought was: can you imagine if MS was as agressive as Apple with "defending its IP". Legal or not, Apple keeps threatening/suing everyone around, be it about iTunes, Aqua theme, transparent cases, look&feel, ...
If they were as powerful as MS is, I just can't imagine what hell we'd be in...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
The problem in this case, is that the rules are not the same for Microsoft, because of their unique market position (a monopoly on desktop OSes).
Had Apple held such a monopoly, many of its practices would cause just as much, if not more, of an uporar as the ones MS got in trouble for. Think about it: they bundle all sorts of software "as part of the OS", and they have repeatedly cracked down hard on clone and part makers trying to enter their niche market.
So, I say the actions of MS and Apple are pretty much the same. Only in the case of MS, these actions get defined as illegal, while for Apple they are merely low, dirty and unethical. But don't you think that sort of hair splitting should be left up to the lawyers?
Ñ'
I'm sorry, but I don't see how creating an object gives you a natural right to dictate what can be done with said object.
Blah blah, philosophy, blah blah. It's really very simple, dude. If you say to me, "I want a copy of your whozit," and I say to you, "Okay, but I'll only give you one if you pay me ten shekels and promise never, ever to use it on a Tuesday," and then you say "Okay" and you give me the ten shekels and make the promise, you're obligated. You've entered into a contract. And if you then decide to be a jerk and break the terms of the contract-- using the whozit on a Tuesday, like I asked you not to-- then I have every right to do whatever stuff we agreed I could do when we made the original contract. Including, but not limited to, retracting your permission to use the whozit.
This is true because you agreed to it. It's not necessary to fall back on talk of "natural rights" and "fascism." It's a simple deal, no more complex than the deals that people have been making between each other since the dawn of civilization.
What I want to know is this: what makes you think you have the right to bust a deal?
I write in my journal
Lots companies make mp3 players. Some don't make them work with Macs. They say "that too much work."
Apple say "Here, we wrote most of the code already. We share it with you, to make your mp3 player work with our cool mp3 program." This code called an API. Apple put it on website.
Coder goes to Apple web site. Sees the code. Downloads it. Get message which says bunch of stuff, including "We are only sharing this code to make mp3 players work with Mac. Not for other stuff. You agree to only use it only to make mp3 player work with mac?" Coder clicks agree. Coder uses code to make program that is not to make mp3 player work with mac. Apple says "Hey, that not to make mp3 player work with Mac. Stop it. Keep promise you made when you got our code."
Remember that Apple (like most tech companies) often times has to balance the needs of their users against other concerns coming at them from other sectors. Other World Computing was recently asked by Apple to cease distribution of a piece of software that allowed third party DVD burners to operate with iMovie. Everyone cried fowl and accused Apple of behaving like Microsoft, until it was later revealed (by MacCentral, I believe) that Apple would have been liable for enormous fees for potential use of licensed MPEG technology for the use of iMovie with third party hardware (not sure how, but that was the claim.) In that case, Apple had to protect itself from uses that may have cost them dearly. Who knows if such circumstances exist here. I think Apple has done enough to show that they want to empower their users in ways that other companies have long since given up on (compare and contrast to Sony and Microsoft for starters.)
So cut them a break and let's not all trample each other in the mad rush to scream Big Brother at them. Sometimes big companies have agreements and connections that force them into this kind of behavior from time to time.
I don't like seeing it happen either, but there is no cause for calling them "evil" like I've seen here. That's overreaction and says more about the person saying it than it says about Apple.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
If you don't buy the quality argument, then you must never have owned a Mac. Go to the nearest Apple store and take a look at one. Get one of the employees to open it up, take a look at the insides. Feel it, examine the way it's put together. No flimsy plastic parts. Macs are made of magnesium, polycarbonate, titanium, or aircraft-grade aluminium. They're well-designed, well-built machines.
Feel a Mac's keyboard. Again, no cheap plastic parts. They're built to last. Take a look at an Apple-branded monitor. There is no brighter, sharper, more color-accurate LCD anywhere. Hell, even the mouse is an amazing work of engineering.
Here's just one example. Let me tell you how my Power Mac G4 is hooked up. The mouse is plugged into the keyboard (USB). The keyboard is plugged into the monitor (also USB). The monitor is plugged into the computer (ADC). The computer is plugged into the wall (power). That's it. There are no more cables. The monitor draws power from the computer over the ADC cable, so there's no need for a separate power plug. ADC also carries USB, so there's no need to run a long USB cable down to the floor for the keyboard and/or mouse. And both the monitor and the keyboard have two USB ports on them each, so when the need arises I can plug my digital camera or whatever directly into my keyboard, no muss or fuss.
This is some extremely well-thought-out stuff.
Then there's the thing about the OS, and how the Cocoa API's are the most powerful and yet easy-to-use API's for any operating system anywhere. But that's a whole other discussion entirely.
People who think Macs are really no different from PC's have never looked very closely at them.
I write in my journal
This is off the main page, and it's unlikely anyone will read this, but . . .
It's really been bothering me that this was modded as flamebait. That wasn't my intention, at all. I have an iBook, and I'm an Apple fan. I wasn't trying to troll, or cause any flamewars.
It just bugs me when I'm misunderstood, and I wanted to set the record straight.