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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 ...
So we can spread it around, like DeCSS.
I may be missing the point, but what is it about iCommune that was so different from sharing the files over a network via network protocols, anyway?
Since iTunes is a proprietary work, I'm not too upset by this - luckily, all iCommune needs to do to counter this is to produce an MP3 player better than iTunes, open source it, and they can very well do what they please. Just because iTunes is a proprietary MP3 player doesn't mean that it's the only possible one that'll work on the MacOSX platform.
This is more molehill than mountain.
Considering that according to last July's MWNY keynote, the next version of iTunes will be coming soon with this exact same feature, I'm surprised Apple didn't just wait until they ship iTunes 4 or whatever and just kill off iCommune the same way they killed WindowShade (incorporated into System 7), Watson (incorporated into OS X 10.2), etc.
Unless there's some reason they think we would prefer iCommune to their Rendezvous iTunes...?
Seems to me that the RIAA is starting to sue the hell out of anyone doing anything special with music or media in general.
It's good business sense for Apple to cover their asses by squashing something they fear might get the RIAA crawling up their innards.
And with earnings in the red, Apple is sure to be sensitive to the desires of shareholders, who might not be savvy enough to understand that a 3rd party tool should really not be of Apple's concern.
So, Apple decided not to take on the considerable risk of being seen to sponsor music piracy.
Sounds reasonable.
Now, this is a more interesting question: why do some people believe that Apple had a responsibility to risk it's neck so you can download tunez more easily? Why do some people believe that just because Apple sold a certain product, they must have a responsibility to provide other things, such as use of their software for music distribution, too?
I'm not sure about the answer... I expect it's something depressing.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Yeah, youre right. Heaven forbid they take away our right to do something illegal.
What if this network has DRM? Or forces you to prove you own the CD? Or reads your mind to see if you own it? Or whatever the hell else Apple comes up with?
And what if it is a target for RIAA? Once the software its out, its out. Corporations know this as well as we do. They'll ship it, go to bat with RIAA (Lose), but the p2p plugin will already be out and floating on every newsgroup across the globe. So great, Apple stops shipping it (and presumably keeps competition down like it did here), the plugin is still out, and its still that single, united network, the one that would be so nice.
I'm sure redhat desktops are important to you, but get your head out of your ass, stop being a typical troll, and think a few steps ahead.
Only public SDK is the visual-plugin. The device plug SDK is by request. So only those who have it can answer that question.
The solution of course is to rewrite it using visual API and leaching the audio. As the Visual SDK has no restrictions mentioned about hardware.
Sure..
And Rendezvous will succeed where Napster failed. They'll be immune from lawsuits when they launch their own commercial take on P2P. Because Mac users are above the law.
The only way Rendezvous will work will be via DRM technology. And Apple will make sure it's the only game in town, as they do with most everything else about their platform.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The problem isn't the APSL, it's the iTunes SDK license that developers have to agree to. That license keeps developers from making software plug-ins (except for visualizers).
In cases like this, just don't agree to the API license. There are tools for digging into Cocoa apps and figuring out the class interfaces. I've already dug into iCal and iChat -- they don't have APIs, but there is some interesting stuff in there. (If I'd been looking, I might have seen some of the unnanouced iLife hooks talked about at Macworld!)
That said, I don't think iTunes is Cocoa. It used to be Soundjam, right? So it's probably Carbon and the obj-c digging tools won't help much. Not sure the best way to figure out Carbon APIs. In the old days, we'd use MacNosy to "decompile" the code. Not sure what the Carbon equivalent would be.
All things being equal, I'd rather you guys just post the darn submission *as is* and refrain from commenting on it from the privileged position of the editorial soapbox (on the front page for absolutely everyone to read) and instead just post in the story like all of us poor sods. Especially since there's no way to moderate frontpage articles. But that horse has been beaten enough times already.
If you want to bitch and whine, at least do it when I do something actually *wrong*. It's not that hard to find such cases.
It wasn't a comment on you specifically (and I apologize if I came across that way) but on the practice itself. FWIW, I think Michael and Hemos are far worse at that sort of thing than you or Taco. Again, FWIW.
Apple simply and obviously DOES NOT WANT to have something the RIAA/MPAA/et.al. can piss on. It's being carefull. I say GREAT for Apple. I also think the project is great, but Apple is simpley covering it's tracks for the suit it will surely have one day by the RIAA/MPAA etc.
"Look, Ms. Rosen (you stupid c*nt) we DID try to stop all the file-sharing derivitaive works out there! We were aggressive in stoping piracy. Our iTunes v4 and iPod 80gig w/Rendezvous & Bluetooth STREAM files, they do not allow DOWNLOADING."
It could easily be tunnelled over TCP/IP.
No. Rendezvous works at a lower layer, so you couldn't tunnel it at the TCP layer. You'd have to find a way to tunnel it at the MAC layer, using L2TP or some such.
Rendezvous works by sending UDP packets to 224.0.0.251 with a TTL of 255. No router ever made, configured for tunnelling or otherwise, will pass those packets, and even it did through misconfiguration or some such the TTL would be decremented, so the clients on the destination segment would simply ignore them.
I write in my journal
is that Apple doesn't have a monopoly to leverage if they wanted to. If M$ didn't have the market share they do, none of what they do would be illegal. I'm not saying Apple is a bunch of greedy assholes - but I am saying that there's no way to tell that they're not just as bad.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I am kind of disappointed that Apple is bullying developers who promote their hardware and software for free. But I am not sure why you need plugin SDK for this project. iTunes writes its libraries and playlists as XML files. I wrote a tiny shell script to copy files in the playlist to my MP3 player, which acts as a USB hard drive. Why not just write a small web server that reads those XML files and lets others browse the files and listen to your playlists as streams?
Also, MacOSX has Samba and NFS in addition to Apple's own file sharing. On a local network, everyone can just export their MP3 collections and then just point MP3 players to the parent directory under which other collections are mounted. Should be even more transparent than the plugin.
The FSF has been fighting from a moral stance on copyright since its inception. They have been a bastion of good since people started accepting those morals as good morals.
It has been the fashion now for twenty or more years never to refer to anyone as purely good or evil. Our culture has prevailed upon us to believe that all (or at least most) morality is relative to the culture it is a part of. In the past two years US culture has been moving away from being non-judgemental. Many sets of conflicting moral values are coming into conflict, and the morals of the FSF are only one of those. Contrast the arguments over property rights, freedom of expression, and freedom to share with the much more violent conflicts over family planning, abortion, and globalization.
So you see, I agree with you in a sense. There certainly isn't one global set of morals that we can all agree with. On the other hand I think the moral relativism mindset is doomed for the near future -- eventually you'll have to decide what you believe in or people will label you as a bullshit hypocrite, not as one who is tolerant.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
Yeah, the reason people give for staying with Microsoft is training. "I don't want to learn another way of doing this, if I already know this way of doing it."
You can clone the interface, but if you make one thing different, the person is going to throw a shit-fit... "It doesn't work the way MS works, I want MS back!"
We had that problem when we migrated everything to StarOffice. It was taken care of by the IT department doing two things:
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.