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Music Media Businesses Java Programming Apple

Crossplatform iTunes Sharing and Trading 338

Posted by michael from the brought-to-you-in-spite-of-apple dept.
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.'"
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Crossplatform iTunes Sharing and Trading More

Crossplatform iTunes Sharing and Trading

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  • Captin, she cant take much more of this (Score:4, Funny)

    by slashnutt ( 807047 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @01:57PM (#10026064) Journal
    developers of p2p file sharing software cannot be held liable for any copyright infringement

    The dam is just about to break.

  • For a second... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by maxchaote ( 796339 )
    ... I started to feel like the good old days of the internet.

    Remember when the internet was full of freedom?

    • Re:For a second... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:09PM (#10026209)
      "Remember when the internet was full of freedom?"

      No. But I remember when the Internet wasn't full of people who thought they where entitled to the works of others without compensation or permission. When you could release a program as shareware and actualy have people register rather then crack it.

      • " When you could release a program as shareware and actualy have people register rather then crack it."

        when was that?

      • Re:For a second... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:26PM (#10026401) Homepage Journal
        When you could release a program as shareware and actualy have people register rather then crack it.

        Pfff! As if that ever existed! I remember friends swapping floppies of registered shareware back before PCs even had modems! Of course, I was pretty naive. I would ask, "Isn't that wrong?" and get the response, "It's no biggie, we're just sharing with friends!"

        With that firmly ingrained in our heads, this proved even back then that any business model that involved easily reproduced goods should be careful to take their reproduction into account. i.e. Make it easier for people to pay for stuff than steal it, and try to target markets that actually have money to spend!

        The RIAA failed when they tried to stop MP3s instead of being the originators of an online MP3 service. Now iTunes is saving their butts by picking up the remaining pieces of what would have been complete destruction for the music industry.

        • Re:For a second... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by djlurch ( 781932 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:39PM (#10026547)
          RIAA failed when they tried to stop MP3s instead of being the originators of an online MP3 service

          #1) The RIAA is an enforcement agency. That is what they do. They do not distibute works.

          #2) Please tell me how ANY business model can compete with FREE distribution.
          • #1) The RIAA is an enforcement agency. That is what they do. They do not distibute works.

            Fine. The music industry as a whole. I referred to the RIAA because they supposedly represent the recording industry. (Thus "Recording Industry Association of America") ;-)

            #2) Please tell me how ANY business model can compete with FREE distribution.

            Simple. Make it easier to buy than to steal. Remember how hard it was to get MP3s before Napster came along? That would have been a perfect opportunity for an iTu

          • Re:For a second... (Score:4, Informative)

            by BasilBrush ( 643681 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:52PM (#10026724)
            #2 that's easy. You provide convenience, and you provide legality. P2P file sharing is a mess. Maybe you'll get what you want, maybe you won't. Maybe it'll take a couple of minutes, maybe you won't have it in a couple of days. Maybe the track you end up with won't be what you though it was from the title. Maybe the ID3 information is a mess. Maybe you only get a partial album, with different tracks at different bit-rates.

            Convenience and legality. That's why many people do actually use iTunes Music Store. People who consider their time is worth something. People who value a consistent and legally bought item above an inconsistent and stolen item.

          • Competing with free... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by argent ( 18001 ) <(peter) (at) (slashdot.2006.taronga.com)> on Friday August 20, 2004 @05:10PM (#10028164) Homepage Journal
            Please tell me how ANY business model can compete with FREE distribution.

            Oxygen bars, bottled water, tanning salons, parking stations...

            Quality, convenience, features, gimmicks, ...

          • Re:For a second... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by carrier lost ( 222597 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @05:21PM (#10028273) Homepage

            #2) Please tell me how ANY business model can compete with FREE distribution.

            In the US, drinkable water is essentially free for the taking.

            In the US, bottled water is a billion-dollar industry

            MjM

        • Why is "music" and "industry" even in the same phrase? I want to pay an artist for music, not a company.

          • Re:For a second... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by weorthe ( 666189 )
            Fine, send me a plane ticket and a few hundred bucks. What? You'd rather have a preview of what I sound like? Well I'll need a recording studio and a distribution channel. You'd rather just send me 99 cents online? How do I know you'll be willing to pay me directly when you won't even buy a CD?

            Ripping off artists directly instead of indirectly ain't any fairer.
      • Though i remember a time when it didnt matter what people did and others werent so damned nosy and getting into other peoples business..

        Its not anyones business what i share or who i share it with... As long as I'm not depriving anyone of income.. ( and if neither of us were going to purchase, then no income was deprived )

        That may not be valid 'legally', but i really dont care. I will do as i feel. I'm only guided by the first 10 amendments, and the constitution proper.

        • Re:For a second... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by aborchers ( 471342 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:46PM (#10026644) Homepage Journal
          I'm only guided by the first 10 amendments, and the constitution proper.


          Um. Would that be the same Constitution that authorizes the congress and the states to enact laws?

          Wrapping yourself in the Bill of Rights may look clever to your libertine friends, but it's a piss-poor and disingenuous way to rationalize your unauthorized use of other people's work.

          If you have to pick a document to bolster your self-centered worldview, may I suggest something by LaVey or Crowley?

          • I only honor the base documents, not any extensions..

            And i dont need to 'rationalize' anything. I do what i wish as long as it doesnt hurt anyone else. That is where my line is, its pretty simple and concrete.

            Or to use your suggestion 'do what one will shall be the extent of the law' ( or something like that )...

        • ---
          Its not anyones business what i share or who i share it with... As long as I'm not depriving anyone of income.. ( and if neither of us were going to purchase, then no income was deprived )
          ---
          This is such a fallacious argument it's not even funny. Shall we try it with other things?

          No one lost income when I took that rental car for a joyride because I wasn't planning on renting it anyway.

          No income was lost when I sat in the bookstore for five hours reading a really good novel off their shelf and then put
      • You obviously knew a different internet from the one I knew.

        Shareware was one of those things that silly kids with DOS machines on BBSs did. Real S/W developers dropped their contributions in comp.sources free for anyone in the world to download and use.

        • Re:For a second... (Score:3, Informative)

          by DLWormwood ( 154934 )
          Shareware was one of those things that silly kids with DOS machines on BBSs did.

          And you obviously knew yet another Internet.

          Shareware's been demonized on the Wintel platform, and Open Source dominated the Unix space. But the Mac platform actually was able to maintain a healthy and viable shareware market until the rise of OS X. While companies like Ambrosia Software and Freeverse are still around, it just hasn't been the same since the politics of the other two major platforms started to overshadow th

  • DMCA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sploo22 ( 748838 ) <dwahler.gmail@com> on Friday August 20, 2004 @01:58PM (#10026077)
    In light of the recent court decision, will Apple still be able to use the DMCA to bully Sourceforge into taking down the software?

    • Re:DMCA (Score:3, Interesting)

      by the pickle ( 261584 )
      Well, the grounds for taking down PlayFair was that it removed the encryption.

      AFAICT, ourTunes doesn't circumvent any copy-protection mechanisms, so as long as it isn't decrypting the DRMed AAC files and allowing people to play them who haven't actually purchased that music, it should be OK, especially in light of this recent court decision.

      p
      • AFAIK, the stream is encrypted and intended to be accessed through the iTunes client which prevents copying, so if this client is decrypting the stream in order to allow copying, that would break the DMCA. I think that would be why the author(s) are remaining anonymous.

    • Re:DMCA (Score:5, Informative)

      by turnstyle ( 588788 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:04PM (#10026150) Homepage
      "In light of the recent court decision, will Apple still be able to use the DMCA to bully Sourceforge into taking down the software?"

      The two issues are unrelated. If Apple is asking Sourceforge to take down software that circumvents access control, that's a DMCA thing.

      This ruling, on the other hand, says that P2P vendors cannot be generally held accountable for how some (most) may use their software. This ruling does not permit circumvention of access control, as added by DMCA

      • Hmm, never mind. I guess I was thinking of the provision for ISPs and hosting providers, but that wouldn't apply anyway.

  • Make it ugly (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20, 2004 @01:58PM (#10026080)
    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/20/174 8226&tid=141&tid=108&tid=3&tid=218 [slashdot.org]
    • If you guys really don't want the ugliness, head over to here. [squarefree.com] Then take the zap button, and drag it to your bookmarks. Clicking it when on an it.slashdot page will make it 100% more readable.

      Also check out Jesse's other bookmarklets [squarefree.com] if you like that one. Or try this page [squarefree.com] if you're into that sort of thing.

      Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated in any way with the aforementioned sites. I'm just a huge fan.

  • To be gramatically consistent... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Aerion ( 705544 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @01:58PM (#10026082)
    Shouldn't that be "weTunes" in order to use the pronoun in the subjective case?

  • Quote from the RIAA (Score:4, Funny)

    by Phoenix-IT ( 801337 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:00PM (#10026106)
    "It saddens us to see that yet more tools of a burglar are allowed to be released to the public. Thieves in the night will now have more tools to steal the food from artists' tables." - RIAA

    • Re:Quote from the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:07PM (#10026179)
      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.
    • You left the rest of their thoughts:

      "It saddens us to see that yet more tools of a burglar are allowed to be released to the public. Thieves in the night will now have more tools to steal the food from artists' tables. ..taking our jobs. " - RIAA

    • I think that was a typo. Here's what they really meant to say:

      ``It saddens us to see that yet more tools of a burglar are allowed to be released to the public. Thieves in the night will now have more tools to steal our food from artists' tables.'' - RIAA

  • There are at least 5 of these. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MisterP ( 156738 ) * on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:01PM (#10026126)
    There seems to be a handful of java DAAP clients that all look the same:

    One2ohmygod: http://one2ohmygod.sourceforge.net/
    jtunes4: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jtunes4/
    AppleRec ords: http://www.cdavies.org/applerecords.html
    and yet another called "Get It Together"
    http://www.deleet.de/projekte/daap/

    They all look the same but have varying degrees of functionality.

    • Re:There are at least 5 of these. (Score:5, Informative)

      by sweeze ( 530463 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:12PM (#10026240)
      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.
    • ourTunes is applerecords+. Applerecords was one2 + 4.5 auth. Our code is applerecords+searching+downloading.

      --dabe

  • Name won't last... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nordicfrost ( 118437 ) * on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:02PM (#10026131)
    The name is lawyerfood, and rightfully so. Xtunes felt the wrath of Apple lawyers and had to rename to Sumi (get it? incidentally, the story behind the Sosumi sound in Mac OS, also had the same meaning).

    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.

    • When my father had to create a holding company for legal liablity purposes, he wanted to name it Sosumi and Sashimi Holdings.

      Needless to say, the lawyer was less than amused. Instead, he named it after the family dog.

    • Re:Name won't last... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dekeji ( 784080 )
      Why do people have to come up with so uncreative names?

      Because those names properly confer the meaning that (1) it is related to iTunes, but (2) it is different from iTunes. And that's exactly why Apple doesn't like it: they don't like the competition, and they are going to try to kill it any way they can, even if that means asserting trademark rights they don't actually have.

      The name is lawyerfood, and rightfully so. Xtunes felt the wrath of Apple lawyers

      Neither "xtunes" nor "ourTunes" are confusabl

  • Not a huge stretch (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ViolentGreen ( 704134 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:02PM (#10026133)
    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.

  • FAQ -- P2P (Score:5, Funny)

    by no soup for you ( 607826 ) <jesse,wolgamott&gmail,com> on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:03PM (#10026148) Homepage
    2) Is this a Peer to Peer (P2P) program? Aren't those things created by Satan to steal Christmas from Baby Jesus?

    That's hilarious. Although I'm opposed to all Satan programs that take away our Christmas, I might learn to like this one.

  • Holy Crap, What a Biased Story! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:06PM (#10026164) Homepage
    P2PNet's story contains the following quote:

    In the meanwhile, even bad news is good news for Apple.

    Yesterday it announced it's recalling close to 30,000 very dodgy batteries - an internal short can cause the cells to overheat "posing a fire hazard to consumers". It says "no injuries have been reported".

    Any other manufacturer would have been hung, drawn and quartered and shock-horror headlines would have been everywhere.

    But it's Apple. So that's OK.


    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

    • Re:Holy Crap, What a Biased Story! (Score:5, Informative)

      by andreMA ( 643885 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:20PM (#10026334)
      Wow. Talk about demonising the wrong entity here.
      Yeah, especially since the battery manufacturer - the South Korean LG Chem - was the one that had a bad manufacturing run and is apparently accepting liability for it by footing the bill for the recall...
    • Talk about demonising the wrong entity here. The DMCA isn't Apple's fault.
      If I didn't think it would get me banned from Slashdot for several days (see sig), I might point out how hypocritical this is, if this were any other company using the DMCA to threaten Open Source developers and inhibit interoperability, most of the Slashdot crowd would be burning their effigy by now.
      • 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
    • No, they probably just dislike Apple. Whatever.

  • And someone didn't read the court ruling. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jamonterrell ( 517500 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:06PM (#10026170)
    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'm all for free music and everything... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RaisinBread ( 315323 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:06PM (#10026171) Homepage
    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?

    ??
    • No, because stamping the word "Yes" on a button does not turn it into an agreement, legal or otherwise.
    • I'm not a lawyer. I can't make heads or tails out of the legal mumbojumbo in a click through agreement. They don't have a support line where I can get a line by line explanation, and I can't afford to hire a lawyer to explain them to me for each piece of software I use. I consider it a forced signature and invalid. Can we really convict someone who signed a contract when they lacked the mental abilities the comprehend the entire agreement they signed ?

    • no free market (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dekeji ( 784080 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:52PM (#10026721)
      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).

      • Re:no free market (Score:3, Insightful)

        by diamondsw ( 685967 )
        Could someone explain what's wrong with buying CD's? After all, if you hate the evil music cartels, then you don't want to deal with the artists who signed with them and support them.

        Right?

  • Cluebats, ready (Score:4, Informative)

    by hummassa ( 157160 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:07PM (#10026191) Homepage Journal
    From the ourTunes home page ( ourtunes.sf.net: )

    1) What is ourTunes?
    ourTunes is the continuation of several open source projects designed to allow you to browse and download from other people's iTunes Music Shares?

    2) Is this a Peer to Peer (P2P) program? Aren't those things created by Satan to steal Christmas from Baby Jesus?
    It's not "really" a peer-to-peer program, because it doesn't allow you the opportunity to share any files or music.

    3) Why am I not seeing any hosts? Is the whole internet dead?
    There probably aren't any people on your network sharing iTunes music. ourTunes only allows you to view connections within your networks "subnet" (often the building you are currently in, maybe a little bit more). If you are running ourTunes from home, I'm sorry to say but you'll probably be pretty disappointed. It's really only a viable program where there are lots of people living on a fast network with good taste in music (*cough* college campus *cough*).

    It allows you to share with other people on the same network! OMG. nothing to see here.

    Come on, please don't moderate me to oblivion.

  • pretty neat (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MyDixieWrecked ( 548719 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:14PM (#10026271) Homepage Journal
    I live in an apartment with 6 other people (hooray for huge manhattan apartments!). 3 of them use iTunes and one has a HUGE collection of music. He's got close to 80GB total, and about 14000 songs in his itunes library alone. I have a feeling this will be faster than connecting through samba to his machine and copying... plus, I can browse easier...

    I just tried out the program at work, here and transfered some songs from our PC music server. works nice. Although, it doesn't resolve a local iTunes server properly. Oh well, it's not like you wanna download from yourself, per se....

  • This is news? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kabrakan ( 13409 )
    Isn't this just a slow version of iTunes pre-version 4.5 with MyTunes? I haven't downloaded it but i've been using myTunes to download music off of my school network for months. Its an amazing source of files(depending what network youre on).

  • Uhhh.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BenjiPenguin ( 767955 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:19PM (#10026321)
    I don't see a problem with ourTunes... I mean, iTunes itself allows sharing within the local area network, ourTunes does the same thing, it doesn't extend beyond the current capabilities of iTunes (except it's actually more multiplatform).. So what's wrong with it? It looks to me as though it's just a way to let everyone utilize those features of iTunes, not just Mac/Winduz people.. Soooo.. Anyone that'd sue them over that is pretty messed up... Or maybe I just need to research this more... But I don't see anything wrong..

    • Re:Uhhh.... (Score:2, Informative)

      by slash-tard ( 689130 )
      ourTunes allows you to download the files to your local computer.

      iTunes allows sharing no downloading.

      You use ourTunes to connect to someones shared iTunes collection and copy the music you want to your local machine.

  • Hey Apple! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@yahoo.cLIONom minus cat> on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:19PM (#10026322) Journal
    Why can't I add shared music from another instance of iTunes to a playlist on my local iTunes?

    I have my music on an old G3 in the basement, and want to play it over the network from my powerbook.

    As it stands, I can listen to what ever I click on, or in the default order - but no custom playlist or random order.

    Again, DRM and 'copy-protection' annoys the casual user, without providing any return.

  • Download free music without getting in trouble (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MichaelCrawford ( 610140 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:20PM (#10026331) Homepage Journal
    Note that the court in the Grokster vs. RIAA only found that publishers of P2P software did not infringe copyright. Sharing or downloading music without the permission of the copyright holder is still copyright infringement, for which the RIAA can still sue you.

    But there's a way you can enjoy free music downloads without getting into trouble. Listen to the legal music that many unsigned and independent artists provide as a way to promote themselves. Find out how in my article:

    If you downloaded such music instead of infringing copyright on the p2p networks, we'd make short work of the RIAA. You'd start listening to bands that aren't signed with RIAA labels, and the RIAA would have no cause to complain because no one's copyright is being infringed. The RIAA labels would wither away because no one is buying their music anymore, and a lot of deserving artists would get the exposure they deserve.

    Here's a page that I found out about just a couple days ago and haven't added to the article yet. etree offers a page of Bit Torrent Downloads [etree.org], all of them TradeFriendly [etree.org].

    If you feel as I do that more people need to read my article, you can help by linking to it from your own website, your web log, or from message boards. Be sure to email the link to all your friends who use P2P!

    • If people here actually practiced what they preach, the RIAA would already be dead and buried. Instead, they choose to continue to download music by RIAA-signed musicians, and essentially make the RIAA's case against P2P for them.

      I wish people would support independent musiscans. But it's not about the music or musicians to these people, nor is it about 'freedom' or whatever other tripe they use to justify downloading/distributing music they have no rights over. It's always been about getting what they

  • well almost. (Score:5, Informative)

    by DM9290 ( 797337 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:20PM (#10026333) Journal
    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.

  • some P2P sharing is OK (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:20PM (#10026337) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • anonymous hackers? what about.... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://sourceforge.net/users/whizziwig/

    lead developer.

  • For the dunces like myself out there (Score:3, Informative)

    by thephotoman ( 791574 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:25PM (#10026396) Journal
    To run on Linux:
    $ java -jar (name of .jar archive)
    Of course, if you don't want to run in the terminal, you can create a launcher that does just that from the menu.

  • No big deal to me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ryanw ( 131814 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:30PM (#10026452)
    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.
  • You can't use it to browse internet shares, i.e. you can only use it on an internal network with existing iTunes shares. Good for college campus, but not much else. It will be useless for the vast majority of people.

  • Music has absolutely no value (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:46PM (#10026634) Journal
    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.

  • Limewire's DAAP implementation is actually working - you can share your downloaded files with other
    people's iTunes on the local network.

    I couldn't get ourTunes to even try and open the multicast socket, lets hope they get their act together sooner.

  • Freedom and Rights (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jschottm ( 317343 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @03:06PM (#10026883)
    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.

  • Why do we need software for this? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by inkswamp ( 233692 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @04:26PM (#10027754)
    Here's a way to do this without installing any software. True, it may not be as easy to use, but it works.

    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?

  • How I would like to pay for music... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by IBitOBear ( 410965 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @07:21PM (#10029188) Homepage Journal
    eh.. how about "not in some way that presumes I am a crook."

    This would also be my perferred way to pay for games.

    Quite frankly, I am *pretty* sure that I, or my roommate, have paid for every game I have played that wasn't free.

    Can I make the same assertion about music? Only kind of. Back in the day I did some napsterizing, but all of that was experimental. That is, I never napsterized anything that I wanted to "own" but I did do a lot of pick a song, check out the playlist of the user that had that song, download things that looked interesting. Can't say that I listened to much, if any of that more than once.

    My roomate is into audio production and I am into writing. We naturally have these conversations about theme and content. So somewhere I think I *still* have nine versions of "little bunny foo foo." They are all *quite* terrible.

    In its heyday Napster was very much the Star Trek experience of "computer, find me citations on (x)" querying, even if it was just music.

    And honestly, I don't know that I have scrubbed out every reference to every song that was so fetched. I also think that several other people had access to the one computer as it was a house resource for brief period of extremity.

    I say all this because if there had been a way to take the song tracks that I had already fetched and use them as a key to a payment system. I'd have done that on several occasions.

    The way iTunes etc work, you pay your money and then you take your chance.

    Given god like powers, or the money and title to make things different I'd do the following.

    1) offer a large catalog of music (in fact every title I could, no exceptions) for free download at "good quality" (at least 128bit mp3, possibly more).

    2) provide an app with a big drag-and-drop target (etc)(sort of a Big Red Button). When you take the free title and apply it to the app, it sends of a dime or two to The People Who Deserve Money(tm).

    2a) the app would then let that computer download "really high bitrate" versions of that same song. Yes, it is only the one computer that is so authorized, and no, the good copies are not DRMed to be frozen to that box or anything like that. I wouldn't even bother to brand the high bitrate songs as comming from that computer.

    2b) even the high-bitrate titles from 2a could be dropped onto the Big Red Button (on a different computer) to send money to those who deserve to be paid.

    2c) using the Big Red Button will also get you money off credits for songs containing that version of that title on full CD purchases from the attached online store.

    3) provide the old napster structure of search and share, and wire it up to automatically carry the free-quality songs freely.

    4) treat the persions who pay for the very-high quality tracks not to spread them around, as the "good quality" tracks are available to everyone.

    5) generally treat the customers as nominally honest and dignified humans.

    5a) the very-high quality tracks are suitable for burning of CDs and the people are encouraged not to share these, and the napster-like applicaiton would be "resistent" to sharing these version, but they are not blocked from doing so by DRM or "playlist burn counts" etc.

    So the p2p system removes my cost to distribute. The people who are "Causal Copiers" will be given all the music they want (a-la radio) and those who want more are going to get more by paying money. Marketing is automatic and quite rich, the whole "persons who have this song also have these" is implicit. Money is to be made at the low and high end. The "illicit feeling" is removed from the transaction. And most importantly, you know exactly what you are getting with every purchase, so quality must be good and there will be no "the rest of the album sucked" or "this wasn't what I thought it was" problems because there is no risk to the purchaser.

    It could be done cheaply and it would work.

    (Consider... Napster is the only reason that I ever bought Green Day... 8-)

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