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Apple Businesses

iCommune for iTunes Shares Over Network 46

Posted by pudge from the sweeeeet dept.
James G. Speth writes "I just released a free public beta of iCommune, a plug-in for iTunes that enables music sharing over the network. Your friends' music libraries appear in the iTunes source list. You can browse their collections, and choose to download or stream their music. It also allows you to make your own music library available to others." It's a bit buggy, but it is a beta. It shows a lot of promise. It also comes with an indexer (in Python, though I might write my own in Perl :-) so you can share MP3s to iTunes clients outside of iTunes on the server end (such as from a Linux box, in theory).
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iCommune for iTunes Shares Over Network More

iCommune for iTunes Shares Over Network

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  • Watch out for RIAA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by the Dragonweaver ( 460267 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:14AM (#5055332) Homepage
    It would be very smart to put a disclaimer with your beta saying that you do not endorse the sharing of copyrighted files without the permission of the copyright holder. It is best to be paranoid about such things because then you can distance yourself from the inevitable lawsuit.

    From my personal POV, however, this is a great thing. File-sharing has introduced me to many artists that I would otherwise never have heard of, let alone bought. Some of my favorite artists are, in fact, ones I first heard in MP3 format. If only RIAA would see what a boon such prgrams are, rather than suing the creators of such programs...

  • hmm.... (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by kanna ( 621529 )
    Smells like well-cooked Mac-Napster. The RIAA will ask to get a court permission to hack all Mac users and look for 'illegal MP3s'... especially people with 8 CDRs (8x CDRs are equivalent to 8 burners according to RIAA) in their computers. Will this be **THE** FUCK-YOU-RIAA application?

  • Didn't Stebe Demo this? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pauljlucas ( 529435 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @12:11PM (#5055840) Homepage Journal
    At the previous MacWorld (not Jan '03), I remember Steve giving a demo where one of his VPs came on stage with a PowerBook and that PowerBook's iTunes library appeared on Steve's desktop Mac. The VP closed the lid on the PowerBook and the library disappeared. All by Rendezvous. And yet I've not seen or heard anything about that feature since. The current iTunes doesn't do that.

    Anybody else remember that demo? Anybody know what happened to that feature?

    • The Rendezvous-enabled version of iTunes isn't out yet. Steve enjoys flaunting unfinished software that people drool over...like he's been doing with recently released Keynote, the presentation software he's been using at these conferences for almost a year now. I've only heard speculation as to the release of this new rendezvous enabled iTunes which people seem to think will be sometime before summer.
      • I bet this will be released with the iPod 2 which I seem to remember someone talking about here. Picture this scenario:
        • iPod with AirPort & Rendezvous
        • Mac with Airport & Rendezvous
        • iTunes on Mac with Rendezvous
        Result?

        You would be able to play your Mac-based playlists on your iPod from anywhere your Airport reached. Mix this with the TiVo announcement and change the iPod to a vPod (video-iPod) and you'll be able to watch your tv from anywhere Airport reaches on your iPod. THAT would be cool.

        • Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 )
          iPod with AirPort & Rendezvous

          Why is everyone so obsessed with adding wireless capabilities to the iPod? Not a flame, really, I'm just trying to understand, what am I missing...

          I want my MP3s on my stereo - i walk downstairs with the very small, very light iPod and plug it in. If I had a car, I'd get one of those iTrip things. Wireless just seems wasted when you can just walk anywhere with it, you know?

          Again, unless I'm missing something...?

          • Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)

            by FatRatBastard ( 7583 )
            Why is everyone so obsessed with adding wireless capabilities to the iPod? Not a flame, really, I'm just trying to understand, what am I missing...

            Why I would like this is if I had a stereo reciever that could, via bluetooth or 802.11 read my iPod. Thus, no wires I can listen to my music whereever. If I'm at the computer I can pump it through iTunes, if I'm in the living room I can pump it thru the stereo. Yes, I can do this with wires currently, but it would be nice if I could do it wirelessly. Not a must have, but I'd plunk down cash very quickly if something like this was offered.
          • I want my MP3s on my stereo - i walk downstairs with the very small, very light iPod and plug it in. If I had a car, I'd get one of those iTrip things. Wireless just seems wasted when you can just walk anywhere with it, you know? Again, unless I'm missing something...

            The iPod has a max size of 20Gb (if you get the large one). Most HDs run 40Gb+. More music for the same price.. Or, if you have an external firewire drive.. 120GB+ of mp3s. Never have to transfer music again.
      • (re: Rendezvous-enabled version of iTunes)

        yes.

        he said it would be available in "early 2003" which may mean Jan, or Q1, or before July, or before Dec or before 2004. "early" is a relative term.

        -matt
    • Steve demoed an internal Apple version of iTunes that has this built-in. However, Apple's version will not copy, it can only stream.
  • Wow. Rendezvous sounds like a really convenient way to do this sort of thing. I've recently delved into the universe of Java-Cocoa. Does anyone know if Rendezvous is conveniently available to a Java-Cocoa app?
  • Why is this project (in beta I might add) was approved to be posted on slashdot is beyond me. Sure, it's a fairly good tool for what it's worth, but essentially it's in a binary form, so no dice.

    If you look around, /. is very Open Source centric. There are billions of applications out there which rank really high in my book, but usually don't slip through the filters because of their nature. In this case - closed source.

    Imagine if every basement coder submitted their beta "vision" projects to slashdot, this would be nothing short of sourceforge without the benefit of source.

    To blockquoth the Readme in the .sit package:
    "This documentation and the software described in it are copyrighted © 2002 by The Coronado Institute, Inc. with all rights reserved worldwide. It may be freely distributed and copied as long as the resource files and documentation remain unchanged from their distributed form. You are encouraged to make copies and give them to anyone you like, again so long as they remain unchanged. Neither the package nor any of its components may be sold or bundled with any software that is sold, including shareware, without written permission."


    I don't see anything about GNU/GPL. So there you have it. But good job... I guess.
  • That description sounds strikingly similar to the way Napster used to work. hmmmm... Let's see how long Apple will last ;)

  • heh. (Score:1)

    by valmont ( 3573 )

    and this proggie is different from Gnutella ... how? heh. "Please don't steal music ... unless you do it thru iTunes".
  • Besides the fact that I followed all the instructions for iCommune and it doesn't seem to work. This product doesn't seem to be Rendezous enabled.. doesn't seem that useful. Apple will come out with something much better soon I'm sure.
    • Yeah, the Rendezvous thing Steve demoed last summer was great but unless your friends are also your roommates (or you live in a dorm with them), Rendezvous isn't going to do anything for you, it's only going to find servers on the same LAN as you. iCommune lets you access iTunes libraries anywhere on the Internet.

      I'm curious to know what protocol this plug-in is using. HTTP? AppleShare? This also makes me wonder about the security implications.

      As for the RIAA, as long as iCommune works in such a way that the people at the other end really are "friends" and not "some anonymous asshole," it can probably avoid the fate of Napster et al. It would also help its case if it dropped the download feature and only streamed. I don't think downloading and keeping copyrighted files from a friend's library is legal or ethical but streaming them would be.

  • Try Edna instead? (Score:4, Informative)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @07:42PM (#5059894)
    "Edna allows you to access your MP3 collection [sourceforge.net] from any networked computer. This software streams your MP3s via HTTP to any MP3 player that supports playing off a remote connection (e.g. Winamp, FreeAmp, Sonique, XMMS)."

    A Python stand alone that will index music files and serve up dynamic pages...keeps stats too. Very nice :)

  • now how about... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by burns210 ( 572621 )
    a plugin for quicktime? Sharing movies would be a perfect extention of this software plugin.
  • ... and I'd want, obviously, SSL encryption and some form of authentication since I don't want anyone else l33ching me. If I did, I'd just use Acquisition.

    Also, I assume it's open source? Elsewise it's useless imho..

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