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Mac P2P Music Sharing with iTunes is Online
kraksmoka writes "Spymac.com has already found a way to take the new features of iTunes 4 to new heights. Today they opened up a new section on their site entitled Spymac Music, which is a database of shared iTunes libraries. Anyone who wants can submit their music library to be shared. Currently it sports a search engine capable of searching title, album and artist. " I wonder how long this will last.
This blows my mind. Surely it was intended for people to submit their own personally composed music library.
we all know about the lawsuits slapped on the college kids concerning LAN search engines. at first i figured the RIAA will surely sue Apple. Now i'm not so sure. Anyone familiar with the size of Apple's legal department?
... This is simpely an extension of what was provided by apple : You can have ANYONE with iTunes 4 stream your music over if you wish to, they only made an online DB with it... Guess it's time I finally afforded a mac...
In Canada, we don't fancy things like socks
It's not sharing, it's streaming from what I understand. I'm wondering if people who have it active will have to pay royalities to artists since it might be considered "broadcasting".
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Let's give record companies reason not to go with Apple-style DRM and come running into the arms of Microsoft-style DRM.
I hope Apple patches this hole quick before the kiddies ruin it for music-loving adults. You know, I kinda like being able to burn a protected song to a CD whenever and however many times I want as well as uploading it to my iPod.
...The server just says, "Hey, this guy posted his music library index online - take a look. By the way, his IP address is X.Y.Z", When I tried to test it out, his address was not responding. No different than Google if you ask me. But the users might start getting sued.
There were already some posts about this here a few days back.
:)
I did try some other sites listed in those posts and I have to say that this is balancing on the dangerous zone. I could see the RIAA going after this specifically for that fact that there is little difference (if any), as far as they're concerned, with users 'broadcasting' stuff via iTunes vs. any other streamer.
I will not be suprised to see a few things happen:
1. all these public iTunes sharing sites will be shut down (or at least the biggest ones) via RIAA court orders
2. most of these public iTunes sites will simply turn off due to bandwidth limitations
3. Apple with either disable this feature in an update or publicly state that it is not meant for public sharing. Or some statement to that affect
That said, coupled with Rendezvous on a local lan, this is a pretty kick ass feature.
something else along these lines came out a few days ago
www.shareitunes.com
My guess: 10 minutes from the start of the slashdotting :)
This is not P2P file sharing, it's not piracy, and it has already been discussed to death in the media over the past 2 weeks.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
1. This is bad karma. I would share my iTunes music with my immediate circle of friends; this is just like them coming over to my place to listen to a new album. Posting my iTunes Library URL to something like Spymac Music is like leaving my CD collection outside my house, with a sign that says "Copy Me".
2. It probably won't work well anyway. Most cable and even some DSL links have upload speed caps of 20 to 30 kpbs. Even an MP3 encoded at 128 kbps will have trouble getting through that pipe quickly enough.
In short, I hope this Spymac Music "service" dies a quick death. Some may point out that not everybody will have copyrighted music in their iTunes Library, to which I would reply "Yeah. Some. Like 0.01% of the population."
In closing... maybe Spymac itself will die a quick death. Most Mac users recognize that it's rumor predictions are consistently way off base, the content is juvenile, and overall, it is just plain bad.
I hate Grammar Nazi's
Actually I believe the correct legal term is "copyright infringement". The use of the word "theft" is just propaganda from the record companies to make it sound more evil. There is no way that file sharing could be legally classed as "theft" under current law (in the UK, and presumably in the US as well) as it does not involve depriving anybody of material possessions.
Apple had a hard time convincing the music companies to support iTunes in the first place. People doing things like this might cause the music companies to withdraw support from iTunes. Just when something was finally starting to go right with download music, some knothead wants to srcrew it up for everybody.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Whether you think it's wrong or not, at least call it "music theft" which is what it is. If you're so convinced it's right then there's no need to sweep it under the rug as "sharing", "freedom", "fair use" or anything like that.
What word or words would you use to describe the act of obtaining a book from the library?
How about obtaining a CD or movie from the library (many libraries have extensive collections of CDs and movies, as well as books)? Does the fact that this revised situation involves music change your definition?
Now, how does leaving out the "library" part of the above picture, change the situation? Does sharing something become "theft" because individuals do it directly, rather than through a public-ish organization?
Although I partially agree with you, that people should call a spade a spade, not all music "sharing" counts as a euphemism for "stealing". As a better word, considering how most people I know use downloaded music, you might want to consider the phrase "free advertising".
And if "advertising" bothers you as yet another euphemism for "piracy", perhaps you can explain to me how Clearchannel differs from your typical pickpocket-on-the-street.
Repeat after me:
You can't copy this files. It's streaming. It's not sharing in the sense of sharing files, it's sharing in the sense of sharing music that can be listened to only while the person sharing is online.
You can NOT copy the files.
Got it? You're not sharing files, you're sharing a playlist of streamable music, that's it. Person turns off sharing or goes offline, you can't play them. You can't copy them to your local disk. You just can't.
You can NOT copy the files.
So please do a little research before you jump all over this as music piracy. It's not a bug, it's a feature that Apple has proudly advertised.
Yes Slashdot is pro-P2P. But this is not "music theft". itunes 4 is only capable of streaming, you can only
this is no more music theft than you and a bunch of friends listening to one of your CD's
It said "windows 98 or better" so I installed Linux
Remember, the files are streamed and not copied to the client. There is no way within iTunes to copy music from a shared library to your own machine.
./'ers not think that Apple would have thoroughly investigated this before allowing sharing over the wider internet? "I know, lets negotiate with Universal, BMG, RIAA et al and then when we've got everything sorted, we'll really piss them off with a sharing feature!"
:-)
iTunes Music Sharing is limited to five concurrent clients, whether using Rendezvous or IP. I believe that this means it is exempt from the RIAA webcasting restrictions.
Tools such as Audio Hijack will allow you to record the audio stream to an AIFF in real time, but this isn't Apple's problem. Audio Hijack has many other legitimate uses.
Do
Think before posting
That service gives up all those's peoples public ip addresses. Wonder how many of them know that.
This is great, I find an artist on a buddy's shared playlist, but I flip over to the iTunes Store, and that artist isn't in their selection. Foiled! Guess I'll have to fire up Kazaa.
I think this streaming thing is pretty good for music proliferation, but it would help if Herr Jobs would kick up the Store's encoding crew a notch or two. Many of the artists I'm interested in aren't there, but the feedback function gets used frequently.
Also note that it has been said the streaming feature has a maximum of 5 connections. I don't think this was an overlooked loophole in the DRM plan.
as long as the iTunes share is not passworded
... didnt do their home work
... ive done this from canada to the uk ... it defo works!
then yes you can dl the mp3's directly from iTunes
its basic but works ok and creates fully tagged mp3s
queue up files
google for "itunesdl" or "itdlgui"
anyone who thinks that you cant ALREADY do this with iTunes
for testing purposes only
[wink][tongue]
do acts of random kindness and senseless beauty
I read the license and did some research. I am not a lawyer.
However, it appears that the library sharing feature is legal. And there is precedent -- Microsoft's ThreeDegrees has a similar feature.
iTunes streaming does not appear to fall under the "webcasting" laws/tariffs as the potential audience is limited, it is not live, and the client has the full ability to browse the contents of the server.
So to summarize: nothing illegal, no hole to patch, no piracy, nothing to see here. Apple knows what they are doing.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Large-Scale Music Sharing With iTunes 4
Quick summary:
Sharing with friends/family (for personal use) is cool
Sharing with total strangers isn't legal and violates the iTunes license
Yes, streaming != downloading, but your rights to stream have some limits.
Spymac Music and others sites will be shut down by Apple and/or the RIAA
Sharing music with friends is cool -- let's not ruin a good thing, people!
- Reminder: Sharing music is for personal use only
I don't know the legal definition of "personal use" but in these terms I would consider it to be about limiting streaming in much the same way you would limit distribution of your purchased CD collection.I really like this feature and I thank Apple for treating its customers like grown-ups. I'd hate for abuse to force them into dropping it.
Contrary to what the headline says this is NOT P2P, it's basically a client-server connection via iTunes-- so how the hell ELSE do you expect people to connect to a server if they don't have the IP or domain name, brainiac? This service is basically a message board for people to say, "Hey, check out my music library, it's at [address]."
You're also forgetting that these are all Macs running OS X we're talking about-- this is not the 'major security hole found every week' Windows crowd putting their boxes on a "Soon to be 0wn3d" list.
~Philly
The files are streamed as standard mp3 files, over http. Because of this, you can capture them, just as you can capture a "mp3 radio" station.
Using ngrep (which compiles cleanly on OSX), you can watch the network traffic.
File order (ie, the XXX.mp3) appears to be keyed on Date-Added. If you add the Date added field to itunes, and then stream the files, you can see they continue almost sequencially.
The ID of the music is continuing (XXX.mp3) is continuing, nearly sequencially.
One thing to note is that in some cases, this order might be screwed up slightly. This is because if a song is deleted from the user's libraby, it appears to keep it's number reserved.
The other thing that can screw the order up is songs that were batch-imported in the same minute. It seems that iTunes only tracks down to the minute, so the order within that minute is arbitrary, as far as I can tell.
If, after determining the URL via ngrep, and taking the IP, you retrieve it using curl (or wget), you add it to iTunes, it retains the id3 information.
ie- wget "http://192.168.1.102:3689/databases/35/items/311
It would be an interesting test to see if iTunes is adding information to the file before streaming it. (for identification, as Pudge suggested)
This would be possible by doing a binary diff on the two files. I don't have two macs with iTunes 4 installed (yet!, but I intend to install iTunes on the others soon), so I can't test this theory. Any volunteers?
(Side note- It would be trivial to write a perl script that parsed the ngrep output, and fed it into wget automatically, to download any songs you double-click.
[similiar to http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/ ]
You wouldn't even need to listen to the entire song. Just start it playing, and iTunes will finish for you. I won't post mine, for reasons below.)
Side note redux-
Apple may have inadvertantly created a file-sharing utility rivaling Napster/Kazaa. This creates an interesting legal issue. This creates an interesting legal issue. Keep in mind that a student was recently sued for creating a software device that searched Network shares for mp3 files.
Given the RIAA's stance towards piracy, and that they want to work with apple, I suspect they would sue whomever wrote the 4 line perl script, rather than Apple. They are also likely to ask "index" sites like spymac to shut down, and send a cease-and-desist, or a lawsuit..
I sure hope this Anonymous Coward thing works. I don't want to be sued today. I've done enough other questionable things.
-Crutz
Which is also a free download for Mac OS (but also for Linux AND Windows) and with which you can stream MP3s (or video). The new iTunes 4 isn't any different, in that it is up to the user to use the technology as they will. I mean if I buy a Real streaming server or set up whatever MS offers and then streamed a bunch of questionabale content it isn't either of those companies that would be targeted by the RIAA laywers. Apple has just made the entry barrier to streaming much lower, but the basic thing here isn't new. This will be neat to watch play out.
Like with that Canadian site that was streaming US television shows as a rebroadcast a while back -- nobody considered suing the people that they got their software from.
I read this article
MacNet article
And they mention that AAC is crap quality compared to Mp3, and that others have said the same. Any slashdot comments on this? Certainly no point in paying $.99 for crap. The entire article is good.
-- taking over the world, we are.
Get the sharing url for a song using ctrl-click. Type "curl url > my_faviorite.mp3" at the command line. Voila, you have the file.
. persistentid:0xd63645b768148d91'&playlist-spec='dm ap.persistentid:0xaa10915c0a85380b'&song-spec='dma p.persistentid:0x3e1050bf41fb7c8e'
Great, except the "Get Sharing URL" feature is not available for remote music libraries your machine is connected to. And when a sharing URL looks like this:
daap://[computername]/resolve?database-spec='dmap
I doubt you're gonna be doing any educated guessing as to what the exact URL is for the song you want.
~Philly
1) The files aren't copied, they are streamed.
2)It isn't covered under the internet broadcasting laws as each iTunes client can not send to more than 5 clients at a time.
Unlike Shoutcast, the user looks through your library and streams any song he wishes. In Shoutcast, the DJ decides what everyone listens to, kind of like a radio station one connects to. With this setup, the user is not restricted to the DJ's preference at the time.
iTunes is well aware of Shoutcast and even has a built-in Radio section that organizes Shoutcast stations.
Is the Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP) documented anywhere? It would be nice to see an RFC on this. The port number it uses is registered with the IANA and the protocol appears to be mostly identical to HTTP. I'd like to see 3rd-party clients and servers that are compatible with iTunes...
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
This is not illegal for Apple to provide or for users to take advantage of. It is illegal to use a third party app to record the streamed music. That is not Apple's problem. Most people will find this a hassle to do. It would be easier and probably faster to log onto Kazaa and download your stuff. Apple isn't required to provide a solution that completely elimnates all forms of illegal music trading. They are just required to make sure that what they do provide is legal.
:)
.mac ID, but if they added in the ability to purchase the music that you are streaming, I bet the RIAA would go along with it. It would just be another way to make sampling and purchasing music convenient.
Given the rather limited restrictions even placed on purchased music (the ability to burn the songs and then rip them as unprotected) means that Apple's agreement with the RIAA was simply to provide a SIMPLE legal ALTERNATIVE to the P2P networks that would encourage people to purchase music rather than obtain it illegally. The initial success of the service shows that most people will use such an alternative if it is SIMPLE and PAINLESS. A lot of people used the P2P networks because they were more convenient than going to a record store. I now find the iTMS more convenient than the P2P networks and I don't have to infringe on copyrights. That's the deal Apple made with the record companies (I don't realy know what the deal was, but that's how it seems given the limited restrictions in the service). They convinced the RIAA that people don't really want to do something illegal, they just want to do something convenient. It's just that before, the convenient thing to do was illegal.
Back to the streaming. It's a pain for MOST AVERAGE people to record a stream. The kiddies will do it no matter what, but the rest of us will listen to a friends tunes and then buy it for ourselves because it is MORE CONVENIENT and good karma.
Here's the best idea of all. Apple should add a 'buy song' button next to the songs that you are streaming from your friend (or complete strangers). If the song was originally purchased from the iTMS, it could have an identifier in it, so that it can be matched back to the Music Store and you could then purchase the song for yourself directly. You listen to your friends music, hear a song you like, and presto you can purchase it for yourself and have it in your collection and take it with you on your iPod or burn it to CD easily. This would require Apple/RIAA lifting the current restriction on streaming purchased music to only macs with your
kman
Where did you get this information from, I just tried it on my machine, and any url with the port 3689 just comes up blank. Files dont get downloaded, nothing happens. Maybe you should verify things before posting.
Read the license. That is not what it says.
It says Remote access of copyrighted music is only provided for personal use or as otherwise legally permitted use only or when otherwise permitted by the law.