On Thu, 29 May 2003, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:
[DRM, Utility vs. Infocontrol]
Apple is clamping down on piracy by imposing restrictions on the way that music downloaded from its iTunes service can be shared.
Guilty of provoking discord with intent to incite reading.
But clever iTunes users found a way to extend this local sharing across the internet using Apple's own Rendezvous software.
/* NB. - netmask is not a limit. Perhaps this will be a marketing angle later */
"Some people are taking advantage of it to stream music over the internet to people they do not even know," it added. "This was never the intent."
"Now that it has taken off, we need to make RIAA happy."
One angry user wrote on Slashdot: "The digital lifestyle is all about the fluidity of bits, the fact that all computers on the internet are, in some sense, in the same place, no matter where they're physically located."
People on Slashdot say just about everything.
Others were less outraged and said that, even with the change, the iTunes service imposed far fewer conditions on its users than many other online music services.
If you bought a 'product' from a closed system and didn't take self help measures, why are you surprised when that closed system changes? Really, there's no story here. -- Jamie Lawrence jal@jal.org "I'm sure being rich sucks. Everything else does." -Cameron Ashby