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iTunes Sharing at Colleges

Hey guys,

As the programmer of MyTunes, I thought I'd throw in a word here.

Firstly, I'd like to thank everyone for the kind words.

trebblekicked
> well, we have our d*ckhead

crees!
> BTW, I hope this kid gets the s**t smacked out of him by Apple and the RIAA.

I only wish you the best. Really. Well, I honestly wouldn't mind if you tripped when climbing off your high horse, but I'm not going to resort to personal attacks.

Secondly, let me restate that I do not condone any illegal action used with my software, let alone copyright infringement (not 'stealing', as it's been inappropriately called).

Am I at fault? I've broken no laws, I've committed no crime. If you want to copy books and sell them, is Xerox at fault? If you bash someone over the head with a Powerbook, is Apple responsible?

Blame the criminal, not the guy who writes free software.

This was edited beacuse it contained the url of the site containing MyTunes. If you're looking for MyTunes, do a google search.
 
Who gives a sh*t

Dude... who cares?

In college everyone is already sharing music by blasting it in the quad, blasting it in the dorms, leaving CDs in the living room for roommates to play, etc etc.

People will share music in college. With or without MP3s or iTunes.

Shess. Would the RIAA fell better if I charged my friends 99$-per-song to listen to my CDs in my car or my dorm room?
 
Do you know what you have done?

I love itunes, the sharing we have now violates no copyright infringements but the monster you have created. . .it gives people an illegal hand at work in it. This could lead to an unindorsement of the RIAA and give them a reason to shut down our college sharing. All you did was give them an excuse. If you leave your program available, iTunes will loose its music sharing capablities so hacks like you could not alter them. I will ask you kindly and with much enthusiasm, please, destroy your program for the good of us all. Please be happy with what you have.

Consider this for a while, do you want to lose what you have now?
 
Originally posted by billzeller


Am I at fault? I've broken no laws, I've committed no crime. If you want to copy books and sell them, is Xerox at fault? If you bash someone over the head with a Powerbook, is Apple responsible?

Blame the criminal, not the guy who writes free software.


Click to expand...


First off, welcome to the forum. Second off, yer analogies are a flawed.

Thirdly, there is no use for your hack other than to circumvent<sp?> part of the copy protections built into iTunes which could be seen as a violation of one of the provisions of the wildly popular DMCA. Also, Apple has come down on people who have hacked apps in a way that goes against Apples business/marketing plans. Such as, the iDVD 2 hack that allowed iDVD to see FW burners, and the FCP 3 hack, aka the dane hack, that allowed users to trick FCP into unlocking more RT effects. Would you mind posting back when Apple Legal contacts you? I'm curious to see how long it will take. Anyone wanna start a pool? 😉


Lethal
 
It has nothing to do with censorship

Originally posted by billzeller
It's sad when, as a result of fear, censorship is advocated.
Click to expand...
By you doing this program have undermine the whole "legal" sharing thing it's too bad that the win community are not as honest as the mac community... there are some "bad apples" out there but overall we are more honest that the win people...
 
Originally posted by billzeller
Secondly, let me restate that I do not condone any illegal action used with my software, let alone copyright infringement (not 'stealing', as it's been inappropriately called).
Click to expand...

You wrote a program with the sole and ONLY purpose of performing an illegal action. Those who write viruses for free are considered criminals. The only outcomes of this action are negative.
 
Has anybody started recording lectures with their iPods then sharing them across the campus networks? That'd be cool... 🙂
 
I bet it gets squashed.

I love iTunes Music Sharing. We have a small dorm, only about 250 students, but we get 30 shares on most of the time.

It's super good for Apple, because it gave them almost instantaneous adoption by a lot of people. Of course, some kids are like "Oh, I PAID for MusicMatch, so I don't want to switch." And a few technophobic girls said something like "I don't like listening to music on my computer, I like to blast my stereo through your wall while you're sleeping". But by and large, it's made a lot of PC users Quicktime and iTunes enabled. And iPods are ultra popular.

Still, I can see this being outside of the intended use of the sharing software, and you just know the RIAA is going to make a big fuss, especially if the word gets out to the main media about how much Dorm sharing is going on.

Still you'd think they could live with students doing this for the only 2-4 years that they're able to.
 
Originally posted by billzeller
Hey guys,

As the programmer of MyTunes, I thought I'd throw in a word here.

*SNIP*

Blame the criminal, not the guy who writes free software.
Click to expand...

1st: sorry i called you a d***head. didn't mean it as a personal attack. more like a rhetorical pattern.

2nd: what exactly was your inspiration for this program? what did you intend to use it for?

FWIW: i am in general disharmony with the RIAA. i hate the way they treat their listeners, i hate they way they exploit their talent, ii hate their recent crackdown methods. however, i think iTMS is a step in the right direction for both industry and consumer, and a program like yours (or the mac based DL'ing app/hacks) just makes the RIAA a crankier baby to pacify.
 
I think Apple and the RIAA would be stupid to disable this feature. Even sharing across the internet was stupid to disable because it's a great way to advertise music. All they need to do is include some kind on on-the-fly encryption to keep other programs from intercepting the stream (as an intercepted stream would be useless).

I can't even count the number of people here at my school who have gotten songs off of iTMS that they have heard over iTunes streams. The fact that *normal* users can NOT use iTunes to pirate music, and they cannot listen to the streams when:

(a)the network is down (happens often on college networks)
(b)they go home
(c)they are using iPods

This alone is enough to get people to click "Buy Song" on a whim 🙂
 
Originally posted by trebblekicked

That said, i agree with you. There is nothing wrong with this feature. It's a great way to discover new music, and it doesn't violate copyright laws any more than radio does.
Click to expand...

Don't radio stations pay royalties?
 
re: Censorship and Piracy Tools.

Hey all,

Sorry about the MyTunes edit.... .

In general, discussion of tools are ok. Kazaa, Gnutella, mlMac, MyTunes etc... can all be discussed on this forum in general terms.

Discussion of specific illegal activities, however, is prohibited. example: "how do I pirate Photoshop?"

On the same note, in this thread, for the purpose of copying files off of other people's iTunes shares... falls in a more grey area... but prob best we not discuss specifics... but feel free to discuss the implications etc...

It's pretty common sense people.

arn
 
technical question

If I've enabled "look for shared music" in my iTunes preferences tabs, will it then automatically show any shared music folders in the source pane? There's no extra steps I'm missing? The reason I ask is that I see no shared music at all. I've enabled mine, but I can't see anyone else. Is SMU really such a sad campus? 🙁
 
Re: technical question

Originally posted by Thanatoast
If I've enabled "look for shared music" in my iTunes preferences tabs, will it then automatically show any shared music folders in the source pane? There's no extra steps I'm missing? The reason I ask is that I see no shared music at all. I've enabled mine, but I can't see anyone else. Is SMU really such a sad campus? 🙁
Click to expand...

Yes.

WSU was too, and to an extent still is.
 
Re: It has nothing to do with censorship

Originally posted by Wash!!
By you doing this program have undermine the whole "legal" sharing thing it's too bad that the win community are not as honest as the mac community... there are some "bad apples" out there but overall we are more honest that the win people...
Click to expand...

I don't think that this is fair statement.

We (Mac users) occupy roughly 3% of the pc market. There are less of us therefore there will be less a feeling of "bad apples" within Mac user communites because there are fewer of us to misbehave.

More pc's=more people to write hacks and viruses for them.
 
Just as a note, MyTunes is not a hack, nor is it a virus. No iTunes code is modified and no iTunes code was observed, disassembled or reverse-engineered in any way.
 
Originally posted by trebblekicked
sorry. i'll clarify🙂

from an aging business model's perspective, this feature canibalizes sales. Why would a Yale student buy a song for ¢99 when it's almost always available for free over the subnet? Additionally, college students and high school students have more "disposable" income than some other demographics, and it just may be that the RIAA was looking for a way to get this group to spend more money on music, not just stop downloading from Kaaza. I wasn't thinking that the RIAA would sue apple or itunes users; more like they'd request/demand removal of the shared libraries feature in 4.2.

That said, i agree with you. There is nothing wrong with this feature. It's a great way to discover new music, and it doesn't violate copyright laws any more than radio does.

In the digital market, the consumer truly runs the show. you need to make concessions to the consumer if you want their buck. the sharing feature seems to me to be a reasonable concession.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, you're assuming that the hypothetical college student in question actually bought music pre-iTunes. I'd venture to guess they were d/l'ing it from Kazaa or other P2P networks. If you look at it this way, Apple and the record industries have nothing to lose and everything to gain, especially when the student grows up and/or the RIAA starts really nailing people.

On your last point. while it may be a concession on the part of the Record labels, it is surely not on the part of Apple. As has been stated already, they're in this to sell iPods.
 
Originally posted by Cless
Here at JMU things are subnetted, so not everyone is on the same one, but there's enough, and there's been an explosion of playlists available in iTunes.

And yes, if the RIAA thinks they can completely stop digital theft of music, they're fooling themselves. It's always going to exist, and acting as the Music Gestapo isn't going to win them any friends. Keep enough features in place to keep the honest honest, try to stop the theives, but don't break your backs. The majority of users aren't smart enough to "hack" iTunes, and those that are will. That doesn't mean good features should be taken away.

But, of course, when has "fairness to the consumer" ever been part of the RIAA's mantra?

--Cless
Click to expand...

Herein lies the answer to this problem in my opinion. The only way to curb stealing is to offer easy to use alternatives like the iTMS. Combine that with stronger prosecution of offenders and the RIAA should find a balance. Bear in mind that I'm not in favor of this prosecution but I really don't see any alternative for them. I always contend they could lower prices but that's never going to happen.
 
Re: It's still legal

Originally posted by ITR 81
Any streaming media is legal because it's just like someone broadcasting over your radio. Now if you record a broadcast song it's not same quality as say on the CD. This is the same with streaming audio. Yes, I can record it but the sound is downgraded from the compression...and if you want to make it into a MP3 or ACC file then it gets compressed again. Each time the file gets compressed it loses audio quality. The RIAA knew iTunes did this since 4 so if they wanted to say something they would said it a long time ago.

Now RIAA and Apple can go after the 3rd parties but I doubt it since the sound quality is just simiply not there.
Click to expand...

You're streaming the AAC/MP3 file. It's a digital file comprised of a bunch of 1's and 0's. There is no quality degradation. While the original compression from AIFF caused sound degradation, streaming does *nothing* to reduce sound quality. You're wrong here.
 
Originally posted by billzeller
Just as a note, MyTunes is not a hack, nor is it a virus. No iTunes code is modified and no iTunes code was observed, disassembled or reverse-engineered in any way.
Click to expand...

While it may not be classical defined as a hack, I see any program specifically designed to circumvent the original design of a program to violate copyright law pretty close to my personal definition. Call it whatever you want but your program is rife with bad intentions.

You've also failed to answer numerous questions about the original intent of your program. I find it ironic you describe folks on this forum as riding on their high horse when you are so quick to squirm out of answering the simplest of questions about your product.
 
Re: Re: It's still legal

Originally posted by greenstork
You're streaming the AAC/MP3 file. It's a digital file comprised of a bunch of 1's and 0's. There is no quality degradation. While the original compression from AIFF caused sound degradation, streaming does *nothing* to reduce sound quality. You're wrong here.
Click to expand...

However, recording it with a program like Audio Hijack and recompressing it does cause a degradation in sound quality. IMO the ultimate solution for everybody involved is for Apple to implement stream encryption in iTunes.
 
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