Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.

On My Blog Menu:

InstaPundit
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Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
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Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue

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12/31/2001 -   1/6/2002
12/24/2001 - 12/30/2001
12/17/2001 - 12/23/2001

Tuesday, May 27, 2003
16:29 - Pre-emptive Feature Strike	(top)
It seems that Apple has released iTunes 4.0.1, a point release whose primary enhancement is that it removes support for sharing music across routed networks. No more "Connect to Shared Music" menu option. Rendezvous-based music sharing still works, but any existing shared-music libraries are grayed-out until their owners upgrade to 4.0.1. This is exactly what a lot of people were hoping Apple wouldn't do: they responded to the sudden attention paid to the Music Sharing feature by leech-software writers by yanking the feature. It was cool while it lasted, but apparently either a) Apple hadn't thought it would be a problem, b) Apple didn't expect anyone to crack it open this fast, c) Apple simply didn't think of the ramifications, d) Apple caved to sudden frantic phone calls from the labels when they read the headlines on the Mac rumor sites, or e) even without pressure from the labels coming to bear as yet, Apple decided that just as discretion was the better part of valor, cowardice was the better part of discretion, and valiantly pulled the feature. My wet-finger-in-the-wind leans toward e) as the answer. But of course this raises obvious questions, like... will there now be a massive illicit trade in copies of iTunes 4.0.0? Now that the genie's out of the bottle, will mostly-automated Software Update runs be sufficient to stuff it back in? Even if there's such illicit trade in the open-sharing version of the software, will it be any good if most of the world is using 4.0.1 or later? Den Beste is fond of pointing out the value of network effect; if the majority of Mac users aren't running the open version, will the fact that there's only a small minority who are running that version render iTunes-based music-sharing just that much more inconvenient? Pirates would already have to re-capture M4P files into MP3, publish their IP addresses, and let their uplinks get swamped; how many more of these stumbling blocks must remain before they just go back to using KaZaA? Kris thinks this debacle is the result of Apple just not being prepared for the malice of the Geek Street, where access constraints are made to be circumvented and geese are made to be cut open for their golden eggs. Like Manw�, who comprehended no evil because there was no evil in him, and was thus unprepared for the treachery of Melkor. That may be; but there's hope in that Apple didn't actually take out the feature entirely: Music Sharing is still enabled for Rendezvous networks, maintaining the "household" unit of computing that Apple's been concentrating on lately. I have to imagine this will all be forgotten in a month's time. But I don't imagine we'll see cross-network Music Sharing put back into iTunes anytime soon, or indeed ever. Pity.