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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.'"
... I started to feel like the good old days of the internet.
Remember when the internet was full of freedom?
Nah. Either Apple will bitch to the campuses and tell them to stop allowing the application or Apple will code something in to stop the third party client from working with their software.
Why do people have to come up with so uncreative names? Apple has the nTunes thing going, take a couple of minutes and make up your own naming scheme.
Since Rendevous requires the machines to be on the same network, this sounds like it is just beating around the regular local network file sharing. I wouldn't think there would be too many legal issues involved here unless someone magically manages to get this working over the internet.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Wow. Talk about demonising the wrong entity here. The DMCA isn't Apple's fault. Apple just did what they had to in order to keep the labels from shutting down the iTMS entirely. If you hate the DMCA, say so, but don't blame Apple for it. Apple != Congress.
This article has pretty much convinced me that the folks running p2pnet are only concerned about piracy -- as in committing it -- rather than having an intelligent discussion about the real issues here.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Umm, would it not be abusing monopoly power?
ato
The court ruling was not a blanket protection for anyone writing P2P software. The court ruled that in the case of the P2P clients they were shown, significant legitimate use prevented the creators from being held liable for copyright infringement. Read the fucking ruling before you make comments on it PLEASE.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
But this whole I-want-Apple-to-do-it-my-way thing is really confusing to me.
You can cry if you want to share or download your tunes in a different way. You can complain about the evil DRM software Apple uses in its proprietary format. You can moan about lack of options and the iTMS/iPod lock-down.
I just don't understand why everyone clicks the "Yes" on the user agreement. If you want it to work a different way, don't support it.
Seems like all these 'benevolent' iTMS hacks, reverse engineers and DRM stripping apps are getting held up in some sort of martyr-like light.
Aren't these things a violation of the agreement they made when they decided to use the software and download songs?
??
Yes, even if they did say this (which I cannot find a reference to) it's more like someone complaining to the police that a thief stole their dope sack.
Afterall the RIAA is nothing more than a mafia-like music control group. They use their money and muscle to get what they want. They buy out government officials and bully around whoever they want.
These are criminals extorting the artists and pushing the common people around for meddling in their business affairs.
Ask the RIAA. They are the ones that want to keep people from sharing the music. Apple is currently being permitted to sell the RIAA's music as long as they make it hard (if not impossible) to easily share the music.
This makes it easy to share the music and the RIAA isn't going to get their mafia-like 90%. When the mafia doesn't get their money what do they do?
The burn it down.
This goes to show that the more you try to chase freedom away with a bunch of stupid intellectual property laws, the more it comes back galloping. You just can't beat freedom.
The internet is the last frontier of freedom. It is the lastest kink in the armor of a sick system that wants to take away your remaining liberties one by one. Don't let them take the internet away away from you. It is a global system and they can't control it with local laws. Do your file sharing stuff in a different country if you have to. Download it all and copy it all!
The recent court decision protecting Grokster from liability for its users doesn't protect all P2P systems. Grokster is protected because it doesn't maintain a central list of available resources (including copyright violations), and it doesn't lock out specific users, so it can't actually enforce restrictions on copyright. That's up to the users themselves. It's like the phone company, which isn't liable for callers threatening people with assault, blackmail, or engaging in conspiracy, or even copyright violation.
The decision backed decentralized P2P, power to the people, as a legitimate forum, even when illegitimate communication uses it. Now that people make broad, selfserving interpretations of that decision public, to protect their illegitimate systems, we'll see another lawsuit and decision showing that centralized systems like Napster are not protected. We can flirt with disaster by abusing the grey area, producing an overly broad decision the next time in a court not quite so committed to justice as in the Grokster decision.
--
make install -not war
Songs that are legally purchased with iTMS and shared using Rendezvous (iTunes or other) wouldn't be able to be played by other people unless they were authorized.
Nobody has cracked the encryption to date. They have found ways to unencapsulate the file from being encrypted but unless your machine is authorized for the songs they are worthless. Copy the songs till your heart is content, you can't use the files. I believe this model will still enable iTunes sharing to continue the way it is.
I am actually very upset that the original way iTunes shared music was changed. You used to be able to give your friends your IP address and they could connect to your iTunes music (by default out of the box).. but then a TON of sites went up where you could register your IP address of your iTunes library and it would pull down your list of songs and have it searchable to use much like Napster. This obviously lasted long enough till the next incremental iTunes release came out and "fixed it" so sharing worked only on the local network.
Then iTunes comes out, providing EXACTLY that. But were the complainers happy? Nope, instead they stab Apple in the back and devise ways to get Apple's product without paying for it.
Way to show your appreciation folks!! Is it really any wonder why the likes of the RIAA wants to hunt you down??
Apps like this aren't motivated by free speech, this is all about free beer. I just wish some of you would be honest about that.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
This is modded as insightful? You're kidding, right?
It isn't "sharing". It's called "stealing".
Parent poster: The RIAA doesn't own the music. They don't collect 90% of the fees. In fact, they don't collect any fees. ASCAP/SESAC/BMI do. But that's for public performances.
I've been thinking a lot about what a song is worth, and the only conclusion I can come to is ... nothing.
Before the birth of the recording industry, what did it cost to listen to a song? Nothing. It may cost something to go to an event, a concert or opera, but to hear a song being sung cost nothing. The singer sang, you listened, and it cost you nothing.
So the recording technology shows up, and the recording industry is built up. The recording industry exists solely for the purpose of transporting the song from the studio to my speakers. So all the trucks and equipment and so on incur costs, and that's what I pay for. But not for the songs themselves.
What's a metallica song worth? Nothing, I've already heard them all. Going to a Metallica concert might be worth 50 bucks. Maybe buying the bobblehead dolls and Metallica Pop Tarts is worth a few bucks. I can see a 5" plasic disc in a case with liner notes and photos having value. The music recorded on that disc, however does not.
To download off the internet, it's reasonable to expect to be compensated for bandwidth. But I can't see the songs themselves having any intrinsic value. A Van Gogh painting has value because there's only one of them. A photograph of one has nothing. Similarly, watching the artist perform has some value, but a snapshot of their performance (a song recording) doesn't.
I must be missing something, but I can't think of what. Music is worth nothing. Artists don't profit from "music", they profit from performances and mercahndizing. The only ones who profit selling "music" are middlemen and distributors who are increasingly irrelevant. Therefore, the service they provide may or may not have value, but the "music" itself does not.
A friend I chat with online is in a band, and they've been moderately successful, and opened for some fairly big artists and are completing their first album. He'll DCC the songs to anyone who'll listen to them. Why would he do this? Because they themselves have no value.
If you say that music has value, it makes no sense. Because according to the industry, all music has the same value. A song according to Apple is worth 99 cents. But music is subjective. I wouldnt pay 5 cents for a band I don't like, I might even pay more for one that I do - heck, I already have by spending 20 bucks for a disc with 10 songs on it.
Music is a personal expression, just like a thought or opinion. Thoughts have no monetary value.
Music has no monetary value, and just look at all the handwaving and idiocy that's occuring because of societies need to attach a price tag to everything.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Aren't these things a violation of the agreement they made when they decided to use the software and download songs?
Where are you going to get music? You can buy the CDs, you can download them from a Windows-based service, or you can download them with iTunes. That is, in reality, you don't have the kind of choice of contracts that you might get in a free market.
So, why are people rebelling and breaking their agreements? Because they feel that those agreements have been forced upon them and therefore feel they are not ethically bound by them (even if there is a small legal risk in doing so).
Not really. I happen to be one of those people that gets a paycheck before the artist (I do studio and live work - but for small local artists and at reasonable prices). There's so much great music that never gets heard because of distribution problems. Where is the open source micropayment system? Where's the plugins to media players that would help people find new music?
They may or may not exist, but they don't get front page attention on Slashdot. Instead we get something that if it catches on will be used to spread the latest UshLudicKast5 song across campuses, along with a whole bunch of people patting themselves on the back for their "freedom," which largely consists of taking away other people's freedom.
The artists I work with have the right to put whatever conditions they want on their music, or to sell that right to some corporation. Freedom is choosing whether or not to agree to those conditions, not disagreeing with them and taking anyway.
But oh look, I've already been labeled as a troll.
I read your sig. Hans deserved everything he got, you didn't (and the moderation on the two comments reflects that, by the way), but obviously it's fixed now.
The DMCA can go to hell.
Until it does, however, I'm not going to blame any companies for the actions they take under the fucked-up "law" known as the DMCA. ANY companies. Not Apple, not M$, not Real, not anybody. They're working within the constraints of a severely broken system. Apple broke out the DMCA on the PlayFair folks because 1) PlayFair was illegal under the DMCA and 2) if no action was taken, the RIAA member labels with tracks on the iTMS would have pulled out because iTMS tracks would, at that point, have been no different from un-DRMed MP3s.
DRM is an unfortunate fact of life for online music distribution until someone can get an alternative accepted by the major labels. I don't like it, you may not like it, but it's a fact of life. If anyone is going to sell music legally on-line other than their own work, it's going to have to have DRM. If that DRM gets broken, it's curtains for the online music store.
It doesn't matter if someone writes an open source program or a closed source program that violates the DMCA -- if they violate the DMCA, they put themselves at risk for getting their distribution shut down, at least until we can fix that abominable piece of legislation. And I don't see how anyone could have thought that PlayFair would NOT violate the DMCA. It complies with the Fair Use provisions of copyright law, but unfortunately, the DMCA supercedes that.
I hate the DMCA.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
One of the tennets of freedom is the right for people to be able to decide how what they create should be used. Linus used that right to place Linux under the GPL, Theo uses that freedom to choose the BSD license. Just because you disagree with the license offered with a product does not give you the "freedom" to ignore the license and take the product anyway, nor is the fact that it's impossible to stop file-sharing make it "right." SCO obviously disagrees with the GPL, but how many people here support their claim that they have the "right" to Linux?
If you don't like the terms (be it CD, DRMed file, carved stone tablet), fine, don't buy it. I guarantee that if you choose to look around, there's talented musicians who aren't associated with any major music lable who would love you to listen to their recordings. Musicians' freedom includes choosing what terms they want to distribute their creations under, or selling that right to someone else. If you want to fight the system, respect them and seek out the alternatives, don't gloat about the gigabytes of commercial stuff that the latest product lets you aquire.
Not in Canada, it's not. Up here we call it 'Fair Use'.
Besides, no matter how you slice it, you can't really call it theft or stealing. The best you can get is (as pointed out by another respondant) copywrite infringement, which isn't nearly as catchy or loaded a phrase.
The question people should be asking is "when a business model breaks, do you blame your customers, or your business strategy?"
The question people should be asking is "when a business model breaks, do you blame your customers, or your business strategy?"
It isn't the customers that "broke" the business model. It's the people who are "stealing".
It doesn't matter whether the legal term is "stealing" or copyright infringement. It's still using something that doesn't belong to you in an illegal manner.
I give up on this path...it is apparent I'm dealing with a bunch of techie thiefs.
When the music was released, it was on CD's that you had to PAY for. Just because you are getting it from another person who is breaking the law does not mean its ok for you. Every time I build a windows PC for a friend, I make them buy a licence of xp. I have a corp license here for my work. I have a MSDN licence as well. I could use those. But you know what, that is stealing. I am depriving a company of money they should get for my use of their product. I dont care if its music, a car, a dildo. The fact is, If it is good enough to use, then its good enough to pay for. If that person wasn't illegally sharing the song, you would be forced to buy the CD to listen to that music. If it costs too much money as you say, they why dont you go without any music? I dont like the cost of milk at target, so I shop at meijer. I dont like the way walmart drives down the wages of people in my city, so I dont shop there. I dont agree with RIAA tactics, so I buy indie labels. This is the same as throwing a brick though a persons window because you dont like the same kind of car he drives. The fact is, if you had not downloaded that song for free, the only way for you to listen to it would be to buy it. Thus you are loosing them money. And saying you are sampling the song to see if it is worth it doesn't fly either. You can listen to the radio. You can even listen to samples of the songs on Itunes for FREE. The fact is that a buisness is making the music. They are paying for the artists to live to make the music. They also want money for their product. Music is no different then a car or milk. If you want their product, then pay for it. If you dont want it, dont use it.
Explain to me how coming down on PlayFair is misuse of a bad law. Putting Skylarov in jail and telling SourceForge to pull PlayFair or get sued are two completely different things.
/. UID posting GNAA comments more than once? They get banned to all hell too...but there are a lot more of them than there are of Hans, obviously. And if you can post again, the problem is fixed. It won't necessarily never happen again, but you can post now...)
The position I see you taking here is that any use whatsoever of a "bad" law is immoral, and I'm not sure how the heck that's defensible. But I'd love to hear it, if that's indeed what you're saying.
(Side note: do you ever see the same
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
In iTunes, you can change the default location that iTunes stores your music library. Set it to be ~/Sites/mymusic/ (or whatever you want to call it) as your music library folder in iTunes. Make sure iTunes preferences is set to copy new mp3s into your library. Then, turn on music streaming in iTunes. Finally, turn on Apache (one click in the sharing preferences.)
There you go. iTunes automatically copies and organizes new music on your machine into your Sites folder to make what basically amounts to a web site available to others on your network. People on your network can stream your music if they want via iTunes, and if they like it, they fire up their browser, go to your machine (http://1.2.3.4, by default it shows you the available folders as links) and dig down to find their download.
Easy. Why install software to do this kind of thing when the tool are already sitting there waiting to be used?
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
It doesn't matter whether the legal term is "stealing" or copyright infringement.
Don't be ridiculous, that is almost the only thing that does matter.
Stealing violates criminal law. Copyright infringement violates civil law. There's a world of difference between the two.
Thanks for the baseless accusation - real classy.
The difference between 'stealing' or 'theft' and 'copywrite infringement' is only about the same as the difference between 'manslaughter' and 'murder.' You tell me which you would rather be accused of, all things being equal.
Oh, and for the record, at no point did I advocate stealing anything. I don't need to use peer to peer networks in order to care about these things. When you start throwing around loaded terms like 'theft' and 'stealing' for actions that clearly are not that, you do not help your position as one opposed to file sharing. Perhaps a better approach would be to share your views on why copywrite infringement is not a Good Thing, and how it negatively impacts the owners of the copywrites. At least THAT would be a somewhat productive discussion.
Please tell me how ANY business model can compete with FREE distribution.
...
Oxygen bars, bottled water, tanning salons, parking stations...
Quality, convenience, features, gimmicks,
I was actually arguing almost this exact same thing just last night, although I phrased it in a slightly different way. What I came down to is, essentially, art, as well as science, are inherantly not-for-profit ventures, in a model like that of "fine art" (painting, sculpture, etc). To attach a commodity-like value and artificial scarcity to a reproduction of any sort of information is just unnatural; it is effectively the PEOPLE who create that information that you should be paying for, as they are their time and effort is ultimate cost of creating it. (Materials cost, etc, aside).
That thought got me going a bit. Fine artists do art for the love of it, and just try to make a living from what they do. (Though of course, nobody would mind somehow getting rich off it either). Likewise, good scientists simply love science, and usually have to beg for funding to support their habit... er, research. People make intellectual pursuits because they want to: the only reason money becomes involved is because those people need it to live while they chase their intellectual dreams.
Cleaning toilets is something nobody wants to do, so they demand recompense for it. Same with hauling your garbage, flipping burgers, and any number of other thankless, boring jobs out there that will eventually be done by robots. Even things much more high-level like farming or business management - you can't exactly say "nobody wants to be a farmer" or "nobody wants to be a manager", but given the option of working a job like that or of being able to go on permanant paid vacation, most people would take the vacation.
Art and science, on the other hand, are different things. If we had robots and miracle replicators that took care of all our material needs, and nobody needed to work, money was obsolete and everybody was on permanant vacation, people would STILL do art and STILL do science strictly out of the love of what they do. These are not things that need monetary incentive to be done, because even if people did not need money, they would still be done anyway.
Thus I believe that in an ideal society, information would be left as it naturally tends to be - free, both as in speech and as in beer - and there would be a separate, strictly economic method of supporting artists just enough to allow people the leeway from paying work that they need to pursue the arts and sciences.
Information released into the public (you may still keep secrets of course) should not be constrained in any way. I don't think many people here will argue about that in principle; that information, as they say, "wants to be free". Rather, people will argue that that information has value and thus it's creators deserve compensation; or more specifically, that without economic support in their endevors no one will be able to pursue such intellectual things.
That I agree with, but I don't think the answer is in forcing artificial scarcity on information and making it behave like a physical product. Instead, to reap what in such an open system would be all of society's benefits, all of society should fund the initial endevors. Further profit could be made by GOOD artists and GOOD scientists from donations by people who appreciate their work, what you might call "honestly overpriced" reproductions (basically a cheap free gift with your donation), and commissions by wealthy benefactors who want an original piece (or original research) to their liking - just like in the fine arts. But people need the leeway to take a stab at it to begin with, and for that you need some sort of financial safety net.
Yes, I am essentially talking about some sort of government welfare (more commonly known to the intellectual crowd as "grants") to support the promotion of arts and sciences. Not a lot, mind you - nobody should be able to say "Hey, I could make a killing on free govt being an artist!" But it should be just enough to live a frugal life off of, or enough that you can take some time off your day job to pursue an interest in the arts and s
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."