Apple Updates, Cripples iTunes

A user 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.

New bug fix, more restrictive?

[Quasar1999]

Is it just me, or do companies seem to do this too often... Oh, here's a new version that fixes the bugs that you've complained about, but we snuck in a few restrictions too... (think MS and XP SP1...)

fair use?

[esome]

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.

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[mosch]

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, what ever happened to CD-Rs?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:And so it begins

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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)

It could have been worse

[trippy]

We could have seen the end of the feature completely. Now i can still go to a friends with my laptop and listen to his music. If streaming your music to your work is that big of a deal, there are other programs to do so that will grant you more control over it.

Re:Had to happen...

[SmoothriderSean]

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.

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[rsmith-mac]

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.

100 better ways to steal music

[gsfprez]

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?

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[ender81b]

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.

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[usr122122121]

Since when is apple in the business of law enforcement?

They aren't, but they also don't want to carry the responsibility of having created a method by which to violate laws...

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[FatRatBastard]

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.

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[direktor]

Since Napster went down and companies have to assess their culpability in copyright protection issues. Letting people steal music via software they produce leaves them wide open for lawsuits from the RIAA.

Expect more of this.

[Hobbex]

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 :-(.

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[account_deleted]

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Here We Go Again

[Anonymous Coward]

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.).

Fine.

[bobm17ch]

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. :)

Re:Downgrade Gnomes

[renard]

Step 1: Update software with silly restrictions.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!

Okay, I'll bite, how about:

Step 2: Keep multimillion-song digital catalog of downloadable, copyrighted music online for millions of Mac and, real-soon-now, Windows users to access at their convenience, and take a percentage of every purchase.

Since the choice for Apple is, quite obviously, either update/downgrade the misused software or get sued out of existence?

-renard

Nope, this update makes sense

[ShatteredDream]

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.

too stupid for

[mholt108]

This is fine. People just seem to be too stupid to be trusted with any real discressionary rope. So it is hardwired. Pitty cause it was a good feature.

Don?t Steal Music.

[weeeeed]

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 [macupdate.com] the streams [macupdate.com] 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

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[Planesdragon]

Seeing as how the law that the DMCA enacted is part of Title 17 USC, and copyright infringement is a part of Title 17, that sort of makes sense.

But it's also kind of like equating stealing someone's mail with sending pipe bombs. Sure, both are mail fraud, but...

This is why I didn't buy any iTunes music.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, this is exactly the problem with DRM. First, a product comes out. Then, you work out how to use it to do something you'd obviously like to do. Last, company takes that ability away from you.

Don't you see?

You don't really own this music. You're under their permission to do *anything* with it. If Apple decides burning the music to CD is a bad idea, what can you really do about it?

Re:Expect more of this.

[pudge]

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.

I think many people are "accepting" of it because they don't have to deal with it. I don't want DRM on my music, so I will not buy much from iTMS (also, I want higher quality music, and MP3s). And if I don't want the playlist sharing, I can use one of the many alternatives (including the daap client/server clones that are being worked on).

It is OK because we are not forced into it.

Re:Expect more of this.

[bnenning]

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

First, iTunes streaming and limitations thereof have nothing to do with DRM. Second, while Apple could impose more restrictions on future music purchases, they can't retroactively add restrictions to music you've already bought. iTunes doesn't phone home when you play music, so you'll always be able to burn CDs or transcode to uncrippled formats to permanently eliminate the DRM. Unlike some of the subscription services, Apple does not have the capability to hold your files hostage. (And if a future "upgrade" does give them that capability, they won't see any more of my money.)

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Expect more of this.

[Knightmare]

People are getting a bit friendly with the DRM term. This is not DRM, this would be like calling apache not serving .htaccess files by default to the world DRM. It's not keeping you from moving the file around, burning it, modifying it, playing it into a recorder, etc... It's keeping you from turning the legitimate service of iTunes into yet another way to steal music.

It's not managing your rights... nowhere in fair use does it say, you the user are allowed to setup anonymous file shares and spread the joy that is your licensed copy to all those who wish to connect. If anything Apple has implemented a CYA (cover your ass) system to keep their music library, remember, you can't piss off the keepers of the cheese too much. Or they will stop serving allowing you to serve it up.

And I can damn near bet that 90% of the people bitching have restrictions in their home internet connectivity agreements that would prevent such use of their connection. Not to mention what your boss would think if you went to bitch to him that damnit, my 128k stream from the house doesn't work anymore. It will be about that time that he tells you never to do it again as you are using up a 1/12th of the bandwidth they have for non business purposes(basing that on companies having a T1 or lower.)

CD-R is cheaper

[yerricde]

Yes, but that requires that you have two copies of your music (which could be several gigs worth). That's a hassle that was otherwise avoided.

Avoid? Bull. CD-R is much cheaper than streaming the data repeatedly through a network connection, especially because entry-level residential high-speed Internet access 1. isn't affordable everywhere and 2. is most often limited to 112 kbps upstream after TCP/IP overhead is subtracted. A hundred dollars worth of iTunes recordings encoded as 128 kbps AAC will fit on a single 50 cent CD-R disc; how much does it cost to upgrade to second-tier residential broadband?

Re:And so it begins

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead, blame the victim...

They made cool software and TRIED not to make it too restrictive, TRIED to give us the ability to listen to our music anywhere... and then a bunch of LOUDMOUTHED morons ruined it for everybody. They DARED Apple to do this, and Apple had no choice... Do you seriously think if it wasn't for Cletus, Zeke, Jim-Bob, et-al, VERY-PUBLICLY announcing how they were going to share copy-righted materials that this would have happened?

The people who publicized all the public shares and websites for itunes music are to blame. quit pointing fingers anywhere else. And if they say they didn't know this would happen, they are liars.

We all KNEW this feature could be abused, but most of us didn't abuse it because we like the feature and hoped to keep using it AS IT WAS INTENDED... (or to discretely share with friends :-) But thanks to the idiots they have drawn more attention to how immature and untrustworthy many folk are and it will probably only get worse, cuz they will keep trying. And make life less fun for everyone.

They are just as bad as spammers -- Open relays _should_ be OK and _should_ be available for people to use. But because of all the idiots in the world the technology gets harder and more restrictive to use instead of easier and more open.

Focus the blame for things at the right target, in this case the show-boaters who blew it for us all!!!

Re:Here We Go Again

[bnenning]

Dude, the mp3-streaming thing was just about the only thing that separated Apple's DRM from the DRM schemes on previous pay-for-online-music services

Huh? Streaming is orthoganal to DRM. You can't stream protected files without authorizing the client machine, so it was never useful as a means of getting around the DRM.

Re:Fine.

[antirename]

If moducum means minumum. The RIAA, of course, would prefer that you have NO fair use, so this is better than nothing. I don't download music, by the way... I like to keep my bandwidth free for other things, and I haven't heard much RIAA-sponsered music that I like lately. No, they piss me off because they want to use purchased congresscritters and corporations to turn back the clock. Fuck them. That's fair, considering that they want to take away my computers to use as I see fit when I'm not costing them anything. Stupid, greedy, fucking luddite organisations should roll over and die already.

Re:Fun while it lasted

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved reading the responses to this story. It doesn't get any more apologetic than this. Yet if this was Microsoft strong arming someone - or even the mere impression of them doing so - this would have been plastered all over the front page (instead of conveniently hiding in this section), and would have thousands of "insightful" posts explaining -yet again- why "M$" sucks and why Bill Gates is the Great Satan.

We'd get the usual treatises on monopoly law, quotes by open source developers who've had to resort to eating garbage to survive due to Microsoft's unfair business practices, "All Hail Linux" posts, etc, etc, and ad nauseam.

This Slashdot double standard towards Apple is just mind boggling.

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[Dolly_Llama]

the guy that defecated in restaurant restrooms

Isn't that what the restrooms are there for?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Oh, please.

[Millennium]

This is another one of Apple's weak attempts at controlling piracy by making the methods nonobvious. Given the Unixy nature of OSX, it's almost trivial to set up a tunnel in order to get streaming from home to work. In fact, I would bet that within 24 hours someone will be offering a free utility geared to exactly this kind of usage.

I suppose this is as good as it gets, as far as DRM is concerned. Circumventable when necessary, but just inconvenient enough that Joe 31337 won't bother trying anything funny.

Re:SSH Tunnelling iTunes works just fine

[Mononoke]

This Apple thing is a great concept, lets charge people a buck a song and then restrict how they use it. This should make them loads of cash since they have a lock on the market

Oh, I feel so restricted.

Why, I can only:

1. Burn as many CDs as I could ever want.
2. Put the music on as many iPods as I could ever afford.
3. Stream mp3s to any/all Macs on my LAN.
4. Stream iTMS-bought ACCs to up to 3 other Macs on my LAN
5. Register and unregister Macs as I see fit.
6. Backup purchased ACCs to DVD or anywhere else, as I see fit.

Help. Help. I'm being oppressed.

Re:VPNs

[kwerle]

For an application yes, but for vpn no (or atleast it's not a good idea). [blah blah blah overhead, blah blah blah performance, blah blah blah bad]

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:

1. Make it work.
   
2. Make it work well.
   
3. Make it work fast.
   

If you never even hit #2, you still have something that works.

Re:apple in the business of law enforcement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since 1998 when Bill Clinton signed the DMCA into law and made everyone in America into a criminal for wanting to do with their own music as they wished.

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[Jucius Maximus]

I'd guess that apple is doing this not out of love for the big 5 record labels, but to keep their contracts intact that allow them to distribute tunes through the iTunes music store.

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.

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[mosch]

the guy who figures it out over iTunes 4.0.1 is going to be pretty popular.

I disagree wholeheartedly. If somebody fucks up my rendezvous sharing, I'll punch him in the nose.

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?

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[FunnyBunny]

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.

Response to iLeech?

[tfoss]

I wonder if this a response to iLeech [sourceforge.net], iTunesDL [macupdate.com], and the like. These let you connect to iTunes as if streaming and save the files as .mp3s ripe to insert into your own collection.

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

Does this mean...

[ArcCoyote]

All IP-tunneling applications, and the users thereof, violate the DMCA because they could be used as tools that defeat Apple's copy-protection measures?

Re:So, what ever happened to CD-Rs?

[Graymalkin]

Did you miss something really big? There was no term of use change. The documentation for iTunes has always stated that streaming outside of one's subnet was not possible, it isn't until now that this has been implemented. When I frist read about people being able to connect to iTunes outside of the system's subnet I thought it was total BS because it was contrary to the documentation.

Had a bunch of cheapskates not written any utilities to rip streams to MP3 files this would have likely never been an issue for Apple to fix. Unfortunately people turned a cool iTunes feature into a P2P stealing application. The only thing you CAN share via iTunes is music and unless you've got a large collection of music you've made all that music is copyrighted by somebody that isn't you.

The sharing crap has nothing to do with Apple's Music Service, you can burn all of those to CD your heart desires. You don't need an iPod to transport your iTMS music to work and back but it is a cool toy to own. You can use a CD-R, DVD-R, Zip, iDisk, e-mail, Freenet, or any other transport medium to move all that music as long as you authorize the target computer to play the files. De-authorize it when you quit, get fired, or switch workstations.

Re:fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you, but until Apple figures out a way to do this that will satisfy the record labels, better to turn the feature off.

ifconfig

[compudroid]

ifconfig interface netmask 0xffffffff

Damn I just put the whole internet in my subnet... what a shame!

Re:fair use?

[dr.badass]

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.

The trouble is that you're in a very small minority. Consider that not everyone uses a computer at work, or is in a position to listen to music. Even those that stream at home are a fraction of the total of iTunes users.

I have a strong suspicion that more people were using the feature for piracy than legit.

Re:fair use?

[yerricde]

Most of it are MP3s that I ripped from my CDs.

"My CDs" as in "I am in a band" or "my CDs" as in "phonorecords that I own of sound recordings that an RIAA member owns"? If it's copyrighted, then any reproduction and subsequent distribution[1] needs to be authorized.

[1] Section 106 prohibits reproduction or distribution, but 107 (fair use) and 117 (software backup) authorize most reproduction without distribution, and 109 (first sale) authorizes distribution without reproduction except for rental of some works.

Re:New bug fix, more restrictive?

[jtrascap]

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).

Re:VPNs

[Kynde]

However, that problem is just as relevant when tunneling a single port over ssh as it is when you vpn your whole connection.

No it's not. in simple port forwarding only the data is tunneled via encrypted tcp as opposed to vanilla tcp, but if you run ppp on top of that then the vpn ip packets travel in the ppp data and thus on tcp.

It is deffinitely not the same and there's nothing wrong with simple ssh port forwarding as long as you don't mix IP encapsulation there with slip or ppp.

Who cares...

[heXXXen]

I thought it was a lame feature anyway.

It has its purposes, but one of them certainly wasn't listening to some random guy's massive collection of Bright Eyes on his ISDN connection, not my idea of fun, no sir.

Re:Expect more of this.

[IamTheRealMike]

First, iTunes streaming and limitations thereof have nothing to do with DRM.

Hmm? The music is digital, normally you would be able to send it anywhere you liked, as many times as you liked. Clearly iTMS stops you doing that, so it's DRM.

Second, while Apple could impose more restrictions on future music purchases, they can't retroactively add restrictions to music you've already bought.

Ah, I think they can. Sure, they might have to upgrade iTunes in order to do it, but if the next version of MacOS X comes out with the upgraded version bundled, that won't let you run the old version, or they alter iTMS to provide songs only in the new format, the majority of people will upgrade. Maybe you'd cease to become an Apple customer, sure, but then as "timestamp DRM" has only been talked about rather than rolled out, this is the same as with Microsofts Windows Media DRM (just disconnect it from the network if you worry about it phoning home).

you'll always be able to burn CDs or transcode to uncrippled formats to permanently eliminate the DRM

Well that's like saying "You can always play your WMA files to MiniDisc, all you need is a minijack-to-minijack cable". Pretty much any DRM can be defeated at some point, slighting raising or lowering that point doesn't make it not DRM.

Unlike some of the subscription services, Apple does not have the capability to hold your files hostage.

It's inherantly unstable. Only Apple give you the ability to play the encrypted files. That gives them a lot of power.

Re:Expect more of this.

[Funksaw]

I doubt they would mess with the "You own your songs" model which makes iTMS a success and stuff like Pressplay a failure.

The way I view .m4p's protection is this: This isn't going to stop the hardcore pirates. Nothing's going to stop the hardcore pirates. It's easy to circumvent, obviously. We're not dealing with the hardcore pirates - they can circumvent anything. If anything, they could always put up a microphone and tape deck to the speaker.

So let's not deal with them. Instead, let's deal with Joe User. We'll give him a file format that lets him do everything he did with MP3s, including burning them to CDs, but we'll make it inconvienent to share the files, to appease our business partners. Everything that's covered under Fair Use, let's let him do. Is he giving up control? Well, perhaps - the DRM, however, is very weak, and is basically there to keep honest people honest.

I can burn m4p to CD, and reimport to mp3 or m4a, and have, when I was using an MP3 CD player. That's fair use, I own the file. If I *didn't* own the file, or if I couldn't use it for fair use purchases, I wouldn't have bought it.

The reason why this DRM is accepted is because this DRM is reasonable, unlike most DRM on the market. Much of DRM infringes on fair-use, this one doesn't. It's not that we're against DRM, it's that we're pro-Fair Use.

-- Funky.

Damn people.

[alernon]

(sorry for the cross post at MaSlash, but I wanted both audiences to see this)

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.

MODS! What the fuck?

[thatguywhoiam]

Apple is like getting fucked up the ass by your cell mate.

Well, that's just really bloody Insightful. Kudos all around.

You're point - which I can only guess at - is, Apple stuff is great, it costs money, you don't like that, and somehow you feel sodomized by that.

Words escape me.

Re:Tunneling iTunes is a solution to a problem cre

[Peer]

Any DRM is always about restricting rights. Most often these restrictions also restrict fair use.
You don't seem to understand this kind of DRM is bad, even when it's covered with nice Apple PR, and announced by Steve Jobs.

Music purchased from the Apple Music Store can:
- be played on up to 3 Macs
- be burned on CD (10 times (-playlist thingy-))
- be played on any number of iPods.

It can however not:
- be played on windows(TM) / linux(TM)
- be played on any other portable MP3 player
- be used in all applications on the Mac

Even the US copyright laws consider streaming MY music from MY home to MY office to be legal.
So this really restricts my fair use rights, doesn't it?

(Yes, I know the solution is not to purchase music from the AMS.)

Re:wow, apple could rake it in!

[pressman]

Well, they are making a port of iTunes for Windows and are planning on opening up the music store to the rest of the world.

This was definitely not something they slapped together. They know the market for this is really on the Windows side and are taking appropriate steps.