pudge's Journal: Arrogant, Ignorant, Both ... ?

"Rendezvous music sharing...has been used by some in ways that have surprised and disappointed us," Apple said. "We designed it to allow friends and family to easily stream (not copy) their music between computers at home or in a small group setting, and it does this well. But some people are taking advantage of it to stream music over the Internet to people they do not even know."

So says Apple. I say, to anyone developing or managing this product who really is surprised by this, you lack understanding of your users and should be fired. That is a ridiculous statement to make.

Of course people are going to use it to stream to whomever. It's a no-brainer. What Apple, and any company would really cares to work in this "new age," needs to do is stop blaming the people who abuse the technology -- not that they are not deserving of blame, but it is unproductive to -- and come up with better ways to give freedom to users.

iTMS and the sharing in iTunes 4 are a good start, but if Apple thinks it is OK to take away freedoms because they may be abused, or to compromise on freedoms, they will end up regretting it. They can't solve the problem of widespread Internet sharing by taking away the ability of friends to share music. They can't solve the problem of copying by disallowing users to copy via iTunes. These things in the long run will make people use other systems that do allow more freedom.

Did it occur to you....

[sweetooth]

that maybe they removed the feature under pressure from the record companies that are, or want to, takeing part in the iTunes Music Store? While they present it as the users doing something Apple didn't intend I have a hard time believing that the developers are so stupid as to believe the sharing would not have happened exactly as it did. They have to be aware that people buying music from the iTunes Music Store are also going to burn thier protected media to cd and then reencode it into an unrestricted me

Some thoughts...

[berniecase]

I don't think people would be so pissed off if Internet iTunes sharing never existed in the first place. The demo that Apple gave at Macworld showing Rendezvous sharing gave no mention of Internet sharing. I was extremely excited for LAN sharing, then, and I still am now. The Internet sharing is cool, yes, but inconvenient for me, as my cable modem barely has enough bandwidth for my outgoing stream, let alone 4 other possible users.

Apple stood to lose a lot if they didn't do something to combat copyright infringement by just a handful of users. It only takes a few users to draw the ire of the RIAA and the labels. Apple doesn't want to lose their contracts for music on the iTMS thanks to those infringers.

There will be other services that will allow for sharing, but these services almost certainly will not have any sort of backing by the major labels, and that's what sets iTunes far apart from them.

What would you prefer that Apple do, institute broad DRM across iTunes, in the form of some encryption on the sharing streams? That's just going to be cracked sooner or later, much like Fairplay probably will be.

I realize that there's always going to be some element that refuses to pay for anything, but let's be real here - Apple didn't have any better choice.

Re:Some thoughts...

[pudge]

What would you prefer that Apple do, institute broad DRM across iTunes, in the form of some encryption on the sharing streams? That's just going to be cracked sooner or later, much like Fairplay probably will be.

I am asking for two things: innovation and honesty. I give them a B grade for innovation, leaving some room for improvement, and a C for honesty, leaving lots of room for improvement.

It is not so much that Apple is crippling iTunes in several ways, it is that Apple is being dishonest (arrogant)

Re: Friends and Family not so user friendly

[MyGirlFriendsBroken]

I'm not so sure of the full details, no one I know owns a Mac so I can't test but... Will the sharing of music work over VPN, and if so this still allows people to share their music amougst a select group, thouse you trust on to your network, like friends and family. Of course I understand that there is a big issue arround the user friendlyness of this set up which to a lot of people here wouldn'y have a problem with but in a round about way it allows Appl to enable the tech to still be used as inteded.

On a side note I am one of thouse people who is set against the priating of copyrighted works and is annoyed (not just a little) who do and have thus fored industries to protect their works very hard. If people were honest about these things (dream on), then I could access and full MP3 of any song I wanted to see if I wanted to buy it and there would also be a purchase avenue for each song if I just wanted one song from an album.

Too concude I am glag Apple [apple.com] have done this and am tring to force good spirited use amoungst users, but, I agree with pudge, why was this a suprise

Re: Friends and Family not so user friendly

[pudge]

On a side note I am one of thouse people who is set against the priating of copyrighted works and is annoyed (not just a little) who do and have thus fored industries to protect their works very hard.

This is a part of the arrogance that vexes me (I am talking about the companies, not you :-). They think that it is the responsibility of people to be good, and they should not have to come up with schemes that both protect their property and grant wide freedom to legitimate users. But that assumes somethin