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Apple Updates, Cripples iTunes
squiggleslash writes "Apple has issued an update to iTunes 4, iTunes 4.0.1. It can be downloaded via Software Update. The big change seems to be that iTunes will now only stream music to other Macs on the same subnet. This is presumably a response to people publishing public lists of shared iTunes playlists, though it does mean that anyone wanting to stream music from home to work or vice versa is SOL. Oh well." You can't share between 4.0 and 4.0.1 iTunes, so be careful in updating. AppleScript access to shared playlist tracks is fixed, though. Woop woop.
I can understand Apple's need to restrist internet streaming but there are those of us who like to stream our tunes from home to office and it seems like fair use to stream your own music to yourself no matter how far apart your computers are.
I think a more accurate assessment would be: well, we tried to let you share your stuff between work and home, but then tens of thousands of dillweeds decided to share with random strangers instead, so now we have to fuck everybody.
So, if you want to listen to music you have at home at work, why not just put the music on a CD-R and bring it in to work?
> Face it, Apple is after your dollars just like everyone else.
Erm... of course
I mean... it's a company
What did you expect?
Apple never claimed they were going to make free illegal MP3's legal, they only claimed that it was possible to integrate the internet into a solid profitable business plan, showing to the music industry that music over the net can be used for "good" as well.
Of course, if you prefer Kazaa's "we don't think we should pay for what other people put money and effort into" approach, that's fine. Getting muic for free always sounds like a good idea to the people on the receiving end. Funny how many people have a "philosophy" that they should get things for free in life. Thank god Kazaa isn't after your dollars... (oh wait, it is)
I suppose it's not much help to point out that at least the description of the update makes the crippling pretty clear. Unfortunately, this is the cost of doing business with the RIAA. Until the copyright laws change or artists can start hitting the big time without signing to one of the major labels, no amount of pressure on online music stores - whether Apple's, the upcoming Napster (tm), or anything else with major content - will change this.
Indeed. With that kind of sharing(streaming songs to strangers, multiple people at a time), Apple stood a good chance of running afowl of the DMCA, which has some slightly sharp teeth. Apple had to fix this, or risk a major legal battle with the RIAA; and if you've seen the RIAA's ideas on file sharing numbers, they'd hit Apple up for millions upon millions of dollars. I don't know about you, but I prefer Apple solvent.
I find it inane that Apple a) didn't simply say "the music execs, thinking stupidly, that this was a great way to steal music, so we downgraded, sorry". b) didn't point out to them that there are some 10 better, faster, simpler, more robust ways to steal music than iTunes 4 and Audio Hijack... ask them if they had ever heard of Gnutella, Kazza, Grokster, Limewire, yada yada yada.
this is stupid, it doesn't so anything to stop "stealing", and only hurts people who were using the functionality legitmately.
I had a bad tingling in my bones when Apple and the big 5 got together.. i hope this is where this kind of bullshit compromizing ends. What are they going to do next, shitcan iChat 2's teleconferenceing because someone can send files back and forth on it and some a-hole at Sony Music complains?
Come on, Apple - if this is what you have to do in order to sleep with the music companies, then to hell with them.
and speaking of which - where the hell are the indie artists' and their music on iTMS? Huh?
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Since when is apple in the business of law enforcement?
Since a failure to enforce copyright provisions or enabling consumers to share pirated music will cause lawsuits to rain down upon their heads a la kazaa, napster, etc, etc.
Has nothing to do with Law enforcement. Apple are (to my knowledge) still negotiating with the "Big 5" for the ability to use iTunesMusic store with Windows users. I'd lay good money it was done not to piss those guys off.
Frankly, I'm not too worried about it. I sneaker net all my crap to work via iPod anyway.
It would be naive to think that more changes like this are not coming as Mac users figure out how to do what they actually want by working around the "soft" restrictions that has been placed on the music service so far.
:-(.
Personally, I find the general acceptance of Apple's DRM system, especially here, very frightening. When you accept DRM, you accept giving up control over your own computer, and ALL power to use the data in the manner that you see fit. Then you are the subject of the DRM system, which may grant you ability to do things, when and if it feels fit. It doesn't matter if the DRM system has been your friend up until today: tomorrow you could wake up and find that due to new terms from the music industry you can no longer make any copies of the music what so ever. Or that you have to pay per play for your entire music catalogue. Or that the DRM system has been discontinued and all its your... sorry... its encrypted files are useless.
This is exactly the old frog boiling analogy. The music company services like Pressplay and co. made the DRM too annoying, so the users jumped right out. By making the DRM initially quite lenient, the Apple strategy is to get users to accept the the concept that their computers decide what they can and cannot do, because it seems the cauldron actually isn't such a bad place for a swim. Expect the limitations to get tighter and tighter as the general acceptance grows...
And I, who was so fond of my ipod
It's yet another biased, sensationalist Slashdot story. Oh, Apple stopped supporting the abuse of a feature that was never intended to be used in the way that's now being restricted! They MUST be evil (this week)! Folks, this is not the crippling of iTunes; it's a bunch of fixes (like the volume levels problem) and the end of an opportunity for people to pirate music.
I'm not a fan of the RIAA, but that doesn't make piracy of their stuff acceptable. If you don't like the terms, don't buy the music. Apple worked very hard to get the RIAA to soften up as much as it has with DRM in the iTunes Music Store. To risk it all now just to let a few geeks listen to their home music at the office would be a stupid move and it's not as if this particular feature was the only way of doing so. There is absolutely no evidence that this is the beginning of an evil trend of Apple crushing its users in DRM or anything like that!
Unfortunately, a more objective article (as in, one that doesn't shout that Apple is crippling iTunes in the headline) seems to be too much to ask of Slashdot. Sorry guys, I'm as liberal as the next guy, but that doesn't mean that large corporations are necessarily evil demons trying to take over the world. I think I'm leaving this site for good, in case anyone cares (I am registered, but figured that I am alone in being reasonable and might as well be anonymous to you all.).
This is a fair move by Apple.
It keeps the RIAA happy. (An unfortunate necessity in order to main catalogue diversity).
It still allows for a modicum of fair use.
The way I see it (and so do Apple I assume) is that when you are on the move, or away from your mac, you listen to your iPod. When you are at home / work (wherever your mac is), you can listen to whatever the hell you like, and if you like it, you can buy it and burn it.
Apple are setting the benchmark for this market now - if other companies join in and add more draconian DRM, they will fail.
I, for one, welcome our new, fruity overlords.
\\ Mitch
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
Okay, I'll bite, how about:
Since the choice for Apple is, quite obviously, either update/downgrade the misused software or get sued out of existence?-renard
They don't have iTunes for another platform yet so in order to stay completely legitimate in the eyes of the labels and public they had to do this. Once they have a Windows version there will be no reason for them to not expand that.
Until then I don't see the big deal. You can burn your downloads to a CD right? Just burn them to a CD and then rip the CD as oggs or mp3s if you really need to share.
This is all about propaganda. If Apple stays 110% on the right side of the law while still being liberal in its feature set then that's a major accomplishment. It will only further undermine the subscription models and similar schemes.
As long as you can burn to a CD and rip that CD, Apple is just doing stuff like this for show. It's so that they can more easily hit the labels right back in the face if they get taken to court for one of the typical bogus reasons.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
The license was simple, Don't Steal Music, but still some people did not manage to understand it. Streaming was nice and innocent until some really smart people started ripping the streams and do other funny things.
If you abuse it, they will shut it down - simple and easy.
In the end Apple ist just a company and has its responsibilites. You want to steal music? Fine, get Kaaza/Limewire/What ever, why abuse iTunes?
Thank you guys, just another neat feature disappears...
Weeeee
Isn't that what the restrooms are there for?
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Why, I can only:
- Burn as many CDs as I could ever want.
- Put the music on as many iPods as I could ever afford.
- Stream mp3s to any/all Macs on my LAN.
- Stream iTMS-bought ACCs to up to 3 other Macs on my LAN
- Register and unregister Macs as I see fit.
- Backup purchased ACCs to DVD or anywhere else, as I see fit.
Help. Help. I'm being oppressed.NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
OK! For performance reasons, you should not try to tunnel anything over anything. You should use direct gigabit ethernet between all points that want to communicate with each other (at least)! And you should always use UDP!
But in reality, VPNs and tunnelling VPNs over TPC/IP and tunnelling TCP over SSH works really well. And it's secure. Are you going to get top performance? Nope. Is UDP a good idea when possible? Yup (see also vtun.sf.net). Is it always possible, or (gasp) convenient? Nope.
I run NFS over VTUN over SSH. Is it fast? nope (actually, if I'm local (airport), the performance is OK). Does it work? Yup. Is it convenient? Hell, yes.
Yeah, iTunes over VPN over ssh isn't going to be a great performer, but it will work just fine. Really, tunnelling directly over ssh is probably the way to go, but if you really want performance, sync your home library with work and play locally...
Rant off: Kynde makes a good point - you can improve performance of VPNs by using UDP. But remember:
If you never even hit #2, you still have something that works.
Basically, to satisfy the labels, apple must raise the bar on piracy enough such that the average joe, say 99% and more of the users of the store, cannot easily send the music to anyone.
iTunes made it too easy for total strangers to share music so Apple had to raise the bar of entry. Setting up SSH tunnelling is way too hard for most people. Burning a CD and re-ripping is too annoying for most people, and even such a simple task is beyond the reach of many many folks.
So basically apple has to make easy sharing just slightly out of reach of most people and the tiny minority like you and me who know about SSH and such will be able to share music as usual.
This is why kazaa is attacked and usenet file trading is never attacked. It's too hard for most people to trade files over usenet. Kazaa makes it blindingly easy. Only when piracy is accessible to the average joe does the industry start to take notice.
Seriously, there are so many ways to legally share your music... heck, just setup a live365 station if you want to share your music. Why insist on doing it illegally, and ruining it for everybody?
Apple Solvent: Dissolving your freedom, one bit at a time.
Let's see if I understand this. Apple is dissolving your freedom by covering their corporate ass, particularly with regards to software they give away for free? The very same software nobody forces you to use? Yeah, Apple is sure dissolving your rights. Grow the fuck up.
It just seems that streaming isn't really the problem...you can listen to streams any number of other ways, from countless other sources. To be able to (easily & painlessly) grab anyone's public iTunes shares as usable .mp3s strikes me as far, far more offensive to those in power. In fact it flies directly in the face of allowing iTunes to stream but not really share files...
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
Quazar, I normally would agree with you but your argument completely ignores the new surge of iTunes stream downloading, which *IS* stealing. While I would love to listen to my collection from home, the benefits do not outweight the costs...Apple has to act responsibily to everyone involved. You want to rail at someone - complain to the authors of iBug, iSlurp, iTunesdl and iLeech. It *is* unethical and illegal...They took innocent narrowcasting and converted it to a means of internet song distribution, a mini-p2p with one small change: it's *without* the music owner's permission. iTunes 4 becomes Kazaa with a soundtrack. Apple stuck its neck out to bring us the iTunes store, to give us ease AND choice and finally, to make it affordable. And it had to shove this model down the throats of an industry that had done everything it could in the past 10 years to get rid of the music single. It's a real 180-degree turn for music companies, and Apple deserves to be supported in this venture - they can't afford mistakes (or iLeeches).
People always try to give me reasons why their music stealing is perfectly allright. They try to tell me it doesn't hurt anyone because the musician can make money some other way, damn RIAA, greedy labels, etc.
Well, I call bullsh*t, this feature was disabled because of all the A-holes who decided to post links to their iTunes for anyone to browse and to create Web sites dedicated to streaming music to anyone. Although I don't agree with it, this probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal, until some other A-hole started telling everyone how he has this great utility to rip those streams to mp3, which caused thousands of other A-holes to start stealing music.
Well thanks a f*ck'n lot. Because now a cool utility that let me stream my music from my machine at home to my machine at work is being taken away. (at some point I'll have to upgrade, I imagine)
This is the biggest problem with people who steal music. (and remember kids, no matter how you try to spin it - it's still just stealing). You cause the powers that be to take fair use rights away from me, and I hate you all for it.