Crossplatform iTunes Sharing and Trading

An anonymous reader writes "As reported on Cnet and others, an open source java iTunes client named ourTunes has been released under the GPL by a group of anonymous hackers. Unlike the Apple iTunes for Windows and Mac, ourTunes allows a user to queue up and save to disk the music shared by other users. Recent court rulings have held that developers of p2p file sharing software cannot be held liable for 'for any copyright infringement committed by people using their products.'"

Comments

Re:There are at least 5 of these.

[sweeze]

They don't just all look the same, all of the new DAAP clients written in java that I know of (except for iLeech) are just forks of the original One2OhMyGod. I don't have time to work on One2OhMyGod anymore, so I'm fine with the forks, but I think maybe the 4+ groups of people might be better off communicating a bit more. The Get It Together interface looks really nice. The other ones i've looked at have added incremental changes to my original (really crappy) UI. They should use the wiki http://www.deleet.de/projekte/daap/ (or some other forum) to bounce ideas off each other and really get a nice UI going.

well almost.

[DM9290]

The 9th Circuit court ruling is that software developers *can* be held liable,

a) if their software did not have significant non-infringing uses, OR,
b) if the software developers are in a position of power or control over the specific infringing activity and have a right and ability to stop the infringing activity AND had knowledge of the specific infringing activity OR
c) the software developers provide material aid (such as providing computer servers) in commiting the software infringement and had knowledge of the specific infringing activity.

The 9th Circuit did not want to expand copyright law to include parties which merely produced technology with significant non-infringing uses, who had no way of preventing the piracy that did take place, and did not provide any material aid to any piracy once the piracy become known to them.

The decision (as a few others pointed out) did not give blanket immunity.