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Apple Businesses

Mac P2P Music Sharing with iTunes is Online 261

kraksmoka writes "Spymac.com has already found a way to take the new features of iTunes 4 to new heights. Today they opened up a new section on their site entitled Spymac Music, which is a database of shared iTunes libraries. Anyone who wants can submit their music library to be shared. Currently it sports a search engine capable of searching title, album and artist. " I wonder how long this will last.
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Mac P2P Music Sharing with iTunes is Online

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  • by Freston Youseff ( 628628 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:13AM (#5930391) Homepage Journal
    This blows my mind. Surely it was intended for people to submit their own personally composed music library.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Textbook Error ( 590676 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:38AM (#5930485)
        The shared file feature only works for INTRANET LAN's using Rendezvous.

        Not quite - the discovery of servers on the local net is done with Rendezvous, but you can "share" (i.e., stream) music between any two IP addresses (if you're behind a firewall, you need to open port 3689 [macwrite.com]).
        • Every time I click a daap:// link it goes to iTunes and says "Connecting to shared music library" but then it disappears. I opened port 3689 but iTunes still won't connect to any of the servers. Am I doing something wrong or are they all offline?
      • The shared file feature only works for INTRANET LAN's using Rendezvous.

        Rendezvous is only for discovery - it essentially tells everyone on the local network "there's a service X running on this machine" (in this case DAAP). That doesn't stop others connecting, they just don't get the convienient discovery.
      • well, you can load the other music directory to your ipod, then use a program like Podworks [scifihifi.com] to put the music back into your private itunes library- a function that you cannot do with the stock ipod and itunes. This makes it very easy to steal music, still not one step, but it's not bad either!

        and the software is only $8
    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @09:01AM (#5930548)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • What's being made use of here is a streaming technology built into iTunes. That means that when you "share" your playlist in this way, the receiver can only listen to the music you provide, while you're online. This isn't about grabbing an MP3, saving it on your hard disk, and then redistributing it even further.

        So the feature is still limited, and while I'm not going to guarantee the record labels will demand a stop be put to it - they've done some bloody stupid things in the past - I suspect it'll end up
      • by Anonymous Coward
        Very few of the people on SpyMac's list are going to be able to stream more than one or two MP3s/AACs at a time - most of these people have DSL or cable modems.

        None of them are going to be able to serve more than five streams at one time. iTunes will only accept five connections at once.

        So this is actually a very small-scale thing, not "mass-redistribution of music to anonymous strangers" at all.
      • http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/

        Great app for recording anything being played on your computer, captures sound output from anything.

        Also useful for getting fair use out of DRM cd's by hooking up your stereo and using hijack to get the audio-in.
    • by Blic ( 672552 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @12:04PM (#5931222)
      How is this any different than Winamp Shoutcast that has been around for years? If you go to shoutcast.com they have a listing of 4,000 streams you can listen to. Has the RIAA tried to bust them? Here's the legal bit they have up there if you're curious... http://www.shoutcast.com/download/broadcast.phtml# copyright
  • by Jrod5000 at RPI ( 229934 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:15AM (#5930398)
    we all know about the lawsuits slapped on the college kids concerning LAN search engines. at first i figured the RIAA will surely sue Apple. Now i'm not so sure. Anyone familiar with the size of Apple's legal department?
    • by wfmcwalter ( 124904 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:31AM (#5930459) Homepage
      Corporations generally don't use their own legal departments to engage in litigation. The corporate legal folks are used for contracts, NDAs, employment law, intellectual property (patents, trademarks, copyright), government relations, and compliance (SEC, FTC, EPA, etc.).

      Either to engage in, or to defend, litigation a large corporation would generally engage a law firm specialising in litigation, and probably one specialising in the particular type of litigation - employment, competition, IP, environmental, etc.

      So the question should be "how big is apple's legal budget?".

    • It is unlikely that a court case against apple over this would be successful. One of the reasons why the case against Napster was successful was it was clear that Napster was designed, from the start, to encourage copyright enfringement. There are plenty of legitimate uses for iTune's streaming capability... Also it is an unintentional side effect thta people are able to stream/download from all over the internet.

      Not to mention that if it became an issue, Apple could just disable the sharing feature in fut
    • at first i figured the RIAA will surely sue Apple.

      Yeah, that would be a good bussiness move. Attempt to stop piracy by sueing the only company that's made a successful go at legal music distribution on the net.

      Come to think of it, this is the RIAA, so you're probably right.

      £;-)

  • by kaamos ( 647337 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:15AM (#5930400)
    ... This is simpely an extension of what was provided by apple : You can have ANYONE with iTunes 4 stream your music over if you wish to, they only made an online DB with it... Guess it's time I finally afforded a mac...
  • It's streaming (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ericdano ( 113424 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:16AM (#5930402) Homepage
    It's not sharing, it's streaming from what I understand. I'm wondering if people who have it active will have to pay royalities to artists since it might be considered "broadcasting".
    • Re:It's streaming (Score:4, Insightful)

      by spoonist ( 32012 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:46AM (#5930510) Journal

      Yeah, and how hard is it to capture the stream and write it to disk?

      (BTW, this is a rhetorical question. The answer is: "Not hard at all.".)

      In my book, "saving a stream" ~ "sharing".

      • Re:It's streaming (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        (BTW, this is a rhetorical question. The answer is: "Not hard at all.".)

        Sorry for answering your rhetorical question, but I would argue the answer is "harder than it is worth." iTunes doesn't let you grab the stream at all, so you'd have to capture it via AudioHijack. After dumping the section you want you'd have to load it up in Audacity or Spark ME to edit the wave down just the songs you want. Then you'd have to encode the songs as mp3s and manually edit the ID3 tags. Or you could just go the the

        • IANA gui programmer but I saw some c once that would watch internet explorer's status bar and print what was there to console if it changed, through some win32 stuff I dont know about. Does OSX not have a similar thing? ex: rewrite audio hijack to save a file each time the song field changed in iTunes?
      • I'm assuming there's probably a fairly easy way to do it.

        When mp3.com had their whole streaming system where you would "beam" your cd's to verify you owned them. They claimed the system could only be used to stream, but by simply identifying yourself as something like WinAmp, it would let you download the entire file. I'm talking at speeds of like 100KB/sec (much faster than streaming). You could literally download the MP3, unmodified.
  • Awesome! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wazzzup ( 172351 ) <astromac@f[ ]mail.fm ['ast' in gap]> on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:17AM (#5930405)
    Let's give record companies reason not to go with Apple-style DRM and come running into the arms of Microsoft-style DRM.

    I hope Apple patches this hole quick before the kiddies ruin it for music-loving adults. You know, I kinda like being able to burn a protected song to a CD whenever and however many times I want as well as uploading it to my iPod.
    • Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Informative)

      by dfj225 ( 587560 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @09:23AM (#5930605) Homepage Journal
      I hope Apple patches this hole...

      Actually, this is not a hole in Apple's software. It is an advertised feature. If you want to blame someone, blame Apple, not the people using their software in a way it was designed to be used.
    • Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by feldsteins ( 313201 ) <scott AT scottfeldstein DOT net> on Sunday May 11, 2003 @10:41AM (#5930880) Homepage
      I'd personally like to backhand the geniuses behind at spymac for doing this. Jesus, don't they see that this is the first good thing that's happened to the music industry in ages? This - the humble iTunes Music Store - is the wedge in the door of getting the RIAA to actually do business with us online in a way that doesn't ....suck! This is what we've been asking for!

      We should be building on this model, making it better rather than undermining it. What they are doing is going to give the RIAA the jitters and make them think twice about letting Apple and others expand the model. What spymac is doing is irrefuckingsponsible.
    • Let's give record companies reason not to go with Apple-style DRM and come running into the arms of Microsoft-style DRM.

      That's so true. This SpyMac thing really pissed me off cause it totally justifies the "treat the user as a criminal" approach that Apple is condeming.

      It's just so lame - as other posts have mentioned, it's ineffective because it's streaming, so no one is gaining anything, but it is generating a ton of badwill for the "DRM light" approach that Apple is taking among the execs. It just

  • How long? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Quixote ( 154172 )
    I wonder how long this will last

    Oh, I'd hazard a guess and say not as long as this [napster.com] did?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:18AM (#5930411)
    ...The server just says, "Hey, this guy posted his music library index online - take a look. By the way, his IP address is X.Y.Z", When I tried to test it out, his address was not responding. No different than Google if you ask me. But the users might start getting sued.
    • Right, this will be seen as the same as the college kidz that got slapped with the recent lawsuit by the RIAA for developing a local search engine on their campus. all this did was index files and provide links to material. It did not store the files, but this did not stop the RIAA from going after them. The SpyMac server, and others, basically do the same thing.

      It's safe to say that if you do anything similar to this and it's public, then your gonna get served by the RIAA at some point; which is their who
  • by Lysol ( 11150 ) * on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:18AM (#5930412)
    There were already some posts about this here [macslash.org] a few days back.

    I did try some other sites listed in those posts and I have to say that this is balancing on the dangerous zone. I could see the RIAA going after this specifically for that fact that there is little difference (if any), as far as they're concerned, with users 'broadcasting' stuff via iTunes vs. any other streamer.

    I will not be suprised to see a few things happen:

    1. all these public iTunes sharing sites will be shut down (or at least the biggest ones) via RIAA court orders
    2. most of these public iTunes sites will simply turn off due to bandwidth limitations
    3. Apple with either disable this feature in an update or publicly state that it is not meant for public sharing. Or some statement to that affect

    That said, coupled with Rendezvous on a local lan, this is a pretty kick ass feature. :)
    • by stego ( 146071 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @10:18AM (#5930802) Homepage
      Which is also a free download for Mac OS (but also for Linux AND Windows) and with which you can stream MP3s (or video). The new iTunes 4 isn't any different, in that it is up to the user to use the technology as they will. I mean if I buy a Real streaming server or set up whatever MS offers and then streamed a bunch of questionabale content it isn't either of those companies that would be targeted by the RIAA laywers. Apple has just made the entry barrier to streaming much lower, but the basic thing here isn't new. This will be neat to watch play out.

      Like with that Canadian site that was streaming US television shows as a rebroadcast a while back -- nobody considered suing the people that they got their software from.
  • sahreitunes.com (Score:5, Informative)

    by subrama6 ( 157306 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:18AM (#5930413)
    something else along these lines came out a few days ago

    www.shareitunes.com [shareitunes.com]
    • Ever since those bastards ran a hoax to launch their site I simply refuse to follow any link there (video of an Apple handheld, running some OSX lite, claimed they were there, then said Apples lawyers made them take it down) . "Journalistic integrity" may be a joke on the web but I still wont stoop to being the sucker for a "bait and switch."

      And ill sign my name to this.
  • by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:18AM (#5930415) Homepage Journal
    I wonder how long this will last.

    My guess: 10 minutes from the start of the slashdotting :)

  • by cshotton ( 46965 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:18AM (#5930416) Homepage
    This site is just a public registry for people who are using the STREAMING capability of iTunes to play music for others. This is nothing more than a "guestbook" app that lets you publish a URL for your Mac running iTunes 4.

    This is not P2P file sharing, it's not piracy, and it has already been discussed to death in the media over the past 2 weeks.

    • by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:25AM (#5930436) Homepage Journal
      so if i made a internet radio and streamed stuff to my friends i wouldnt need to worry about anything, and i could play any song i wanted without retribution? hmm... i wonder what the buzz about internet radios having to pay royalties was last fall/winter... must have been a bad dream.

      or if i made a p2p program that called downloading 'streaming'(that it just HAPPENS to write to disc 'cache')..

      sure if they were broadcasting their own stuff(or somethinge 'free' like machinae supremacy, a great band btw) it wouldnt really matter.. but how does it differ from an internet on demand music service _really_, because that's what it would be?

      it would be ok if the itunes price included royalty for providing such access to the tune, but i doubt it doesn't?
      • by Textbook Error ( 590676 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:34AM (#5930465)
        so if i made a internet radio and streamed stuff to my friends i wouldnt need to worry about anything, and i could play any song i wanted without retribution?

        iTunes does limit the number of clients that can connect (to 5 I believe), so I imagine this has already been taken into consideration. I find it hard to imagine that streaming between two arbitrary IP addresses (rather than just the local subnet) would get into a product as significant as iTunes now is for Apple if they weren't 100% sure that the record industry was OK with it.

        I suspect the client limit was specifically to turn this from a "internet radio" situation into "play your CDs to a couple of your friends, just as if they'd come over to your house".

        It took about 5 minutes after iTunes was released to people start sharing stuff across the net, and about 10 minutes before people were writing apps/php scripts to list active servers, so this has to have been cleared beforehand.
        • Somebody MOD UP (Score:4, Insightful)

          by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @09:20AM (#5930595)
          Parent is totally correct. iTunes limits # of streams to something like 5-6 people. It's just a tiny chunk of QuickTime Broadcaster running in there.

          So to summarize: nothing illegal, no hole to patch, no piracy, nothing to see here. Apple knows what they are doing.

          • Most people are limited to just a couple streams by their upload cap anyway.
            • Re:Somebody MOD UP (Score:3, Insightful)

              by nilepoc ( 7329 )
              I know that my sharing capabillities are hampered by my bandwidth. Even without advertising my stream, I have as many as four users at a time.

              I cannot imagine why you would want to advertise your collection, if you plan to use this yourself.

              I use it primarily to save the battery on my ipod, when I am at school, with wireless everywhere. Its great, I no longer need to store mp3's on my laptop, and am not limited to what I can carry.

              When it is just me streaming, I get no interuptions, but the stream is

    • This is not P2P file sharing, it's not piracy...
      Let's assume that you're right and that publishing your iTunes library to stream files to five people you may not know at all [apple.com] is still "for personal use" (which is debatable). Ok, so that's not piracy...

      ... but I'm pretty sure this is. [h3q.com]

  • Bad Karma (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gryphon ( 28880 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:20AM (#5930423)
    1. This is bad karma. I would share my iTunes music with my immediate circle of friends; this is just like them coming over to my place to listen to a new album. Posting my iTunes Library URL to something like Spymac Music is like leaving my CD collection outside my house, with a sign that says "Copy Me".

    2. It probably won't work well anyway. Most cable and even some DSL links have upload speed caps of 20 to 30 kpbs. Even an MP3 encoded at 128 kbps will have trouble getting through that pipe quickly enough.

    In short, I hope this Spymac Music "service" dies a quick death. Some may point out that not everybody will have copyrighted music in their iTunes Library, to which I would reply "Yeah. Some. Like 0.01% of the population."

    In closing... maybe Spymac itself will die a quick death. Most Mac users recognize that it's rumor predictions are consistently way off base, the content is juvenile, and overall, it is just plain bad.
    • Re:Bad Karma (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mike Schiraldi ( 18296 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @09:57AM (#5930722) Homepage Journal
      Posting my iTunes Library URL to something like Spymac Music is like leaving my CD collection outside my house, with a sign that says "Copy Me"

      No it's not; it's like leaving your CD collection outside your house with a sign that says, "Listen to me."

      You know, like libraries do with books. Like was generally accepted as the norm from the start of civilization until about 100 years ago.
      • Re:Bad Karma (Score:3, Insightful)

        by GlassHeart ( 579618 )
        it's like leaving your CD collection outside your house with a sign that says, "Listen to me."

        That's different. In the Real World, doing that will mean your CDs will be stolen, or perhaps damaged by users who are not careful. On the Internet, you can share without risk.

        Point is, a publisher of a book or CD can count on the human nature to treasure one's own belongings to not do that. Publishers of on-line music cannot.

        • What does that have to do with legality or morality?

          I hope Apple does fix things so that it's not easy to make copies of people's shared music. Then people would be able to share their music with the rest of the world when they're not using it, and it would be true sharing, since copies couldn't be made.

          Yes, i know that people willing to make a serious effort will always be able to copy anything, regardless of protection, but you could say that about books in libraries. Just because it's possible for an e
          • What does that have to do with legality or morality?

            Nothing. I'm pointing out that traditional publishers have "selfishness" (by that I mean the will to keep stuff you bought in good condition) to not just give it away freely. It works well enough for them to make money, even though in theory one book can be read by thousands of people.

        • That's different. In the Real World, doing that will mean your CDs will be stolen, or perhaps damaged by users who are not careful. On the Internet, you can share without risk.

          My local library has been lending (for free) compact discs for years. Just like books. (For what it's worth I'm in Canada, which may or may not be considered part of the Real World.)

          • My local library has been lending (for free) compact discs for years. Just like books.

            Libraries have different concerns than individuals. Their mission is to spread information. An individual who paid for something is less likely to just leave it outside to "share", if the item can easily be broken or stolen.

            Even then, every library I've been to requires you to get a borrower's card, which they use to track which books are with which borrowers.

  • by HighOrbit ( 631451 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:27AM (#5930444)
    Apple had a hard time convincing the music companies to support iTunes in the first place. People doing things like this might cause the music companies to withdraw support from iTunes. Just when something was finally starting to go right with download music, some knothead wants to srcrew it up for everybody.
  • by Seth Morabito ( 2273 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:42AM (#5930498)
    Repeat after me:

    You can't copy this files. It's streaming. It's not sharing in the sense of sharing files, it's sharing in the sense of sharing music that can be listened to only while the person sharing is online.

    You can NOT copy the files.

    Got it? You're not sharing files, you're sharing a playlist of streamable music, that's it. Person turns off sharing or goes offline, you can't play them. You can't copy them to your local disk. You just can't.

    You can NOT copy the files.

    So please do a little research before you jump all over this as music piracy. It's not a bug, it's a feature that Apple has proudly advertised.
    • by CausticWindow ( 632215 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @09:01AM (#5930545)

      Why do you think it's any more difficult to save anything you stream to disk, than it is to write anything to a disk?

      Streaming isn't some kind of magic ritual. It's only packets arriving on your computer, just in time for you to play them.

      • by Seth Morabito ( 2273 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @10:14AM (#5930784)
        But it is magical! Because while you can easily get around it, iTunes is not automatically giving you permission to copy the files.

        I stick by my statement, "you can not copy the files", but I'd better modify it because everyone's missing the point. "You can copy the data, but you can't use iTunes to easily copy the files to your disk without jumping through some third party hoops." There, happy?

        You can use all sorts of hacks and workarounds and custom tools copy the stream and save it to your disk. But in all those cases you're working around the existing implementation.

        If I don't have a deadbolt on my door, just a handle lock, am I giving you permission to enter my home without asking me? You can come in a window, or jimmy the lock, or slide down the chimney, it doesn't matter, you're still breaking the law. The point is, Apple is not giving you an easy way to copy the files. If you want to break the law, you have to go out of your way to do it.

        Sheesh, nitpicky people.
    • Well, with a product like Audio Hijack [rogueamoeba.com], it's trivially easy to capture the streamed audio and make your own file. /p>

      As other posters have noted, it's clear that this feature was intended for people to share among their family and friends, not to let the whole world listen to (and, using something like Audio Hijack, copy) someone's iTunes library.

      Why do people feel the need to do things like this anyway?

    • OH YES YOU CAN!!! (Score:5, Informative)

      by jzaw ( 179823 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @09:13AM (#5930581)
      as long as the iTunes share is not passworded
      then yes you can dl the mp3's directly from iTunes
      its basic but works ok and creates fully tagged mp3s
      queue up files

      google for "itunesdl" or "itdlgui"

      anyone who thinks that you cant ALREADY do this with iTunes ... didnt do their home work

      for testing purposes only ... ive done this from canada to the uk ... it defo works!

      [wink][tongue]
  • by I Am The Owl ( 531076 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:48AM (#5930514) Homepage Journal
    You know, Apple was putting their asses on the line w/ the recording companies when they rolled this thing out. The recording companies thought it couldn't be done safely. Apple thought otherwise, and rolled out a fairly permissive system. Now, the system that everyone's been clamoring for as a legit replacement for the traditional sales of whole albums is getting pissed on every which way.

    You have set out to bite the hand that feeds you. I hope you assholes starve, because there were a lot of people out there who saw this as a useful service.

  • by class_A ( 324713 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @08:55AM (#5930533)
    Remember, the files are streamed and not copied to the client. There is no way within iTunes to copy music from a shared library to your own machine.

    iTunes Music Sharing is limited to five concurrent clients, whether using Rendezvous or IP. I believe that this means it is exempt from the RIAA webcasting restrictions.

    Tools such as Audio Hijack will allow you to record the audio stream to an AIFF in real time, but this isn't Apple's problem. Audio Hijack has many other legitimate uses.

    Do ./'ers not think that Apple would have thoroughly investigated this before allowing sharing over the wider internet? "I know, lets negotiate with Universal, BMG, RIAA et al and then when we've got everything sorted, we'll really piss them off with a sharing feature!"

    Think before posting :-)
    • Think before posting?

      READ before posting. Others have already pointed out that the streams can be copied.

      This is the same as software piracy...the people that do it justify it to themselves however they like, but it's STILL STEALING.
      • Yes, streams can be copied, but that involves real time recording which is not an iTunes feature. Of course recording streams is stealing, but recording streams is not Apple's problem. Nor is it an OS problem, as you could just as easily run SPDIF out to SPDIF in (or Line Out to Line In)

        Recording a stream from a shared library, which forces you to browse for each song or use the server's playlists, is little different from going to the library, borrowing a CD and dubbing it to a cassette/MiniDisc.
        • It's much easier than that to copy songs from an iTunes library.

          For obvious reasons I won't spell it out, but when you've done it right, a simple URL like http://your.mac.com:3689/somestuff/file.mp3 is all it takes. You just type it in your web browser and you've downloaded the file. Then you do it again, and again, and you've downloaded someone's entire music collection.

          The fact is, Apple has built in a trivially easy-to-exploit mp3 downloading feature into their flagship music application. It was a stup
          • Simply Incorrect (Score:3, Interesting)

            by pneuma_66 ( 1830 )
            Where did you get this information from, I just tried it on my machine, and any url with the port 3689 just comes up blank. Files dont get downloaded, nothing happens. Maybe you should verify things before posting.
  • That service gives up all those's peoples public ip addresses. Wonder how many of them know that.
    • by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot@nOsPam.stango.org> on Sunday May 11, 2003 @09:56AM (#5930717) Homepage Journal
      Contrary to what the headline says this is NOT P2P, it's basically a client-server connection via iTunes-- so how the hell ELSE do you expect people to connect to a server if they don't have the IP or domain name, brainiac? This service is basically a message board for people to say, "Hey, check out my music library, it's at [address]."

      You're also forgetting that these are all Macs running OS X we're talking about-- this is not the 'major security hole found every week' Windows crowd putting their boxes on a "Soon to be 0wn3d" list.

      ~Philly
    • That service gives up all those's peoples public ip addresses. Wonder how many of them know that.

      Um, yeah, they all know, and none of them care, because they're all running Mac OS X, which is secure by default (all services turned off) and comes with a nice easy-to-configure firewall (a GUI front end for ipfw). Who cares if you've got their IP addresses? What are you gonna do to them, besides slashdot their bandwidth with iTunes?
  • This is great, I find an artist on a buddy's shared playlist, but I flip over to the iTunes Store, and that artist isn't in their selection. Foiled! Guess I'll have to fire up Kazaa.

    I think this streaming thing is pretty good for music proliferation, but it would help if Herr Jobs would kick up the Store's encoding crew a notch or two. Many of the artists I'm interested in aren't there, but the feedback function gets used frequently.

    Also note that it has been said the streaming feature has a maximum of 5 connections. I don't think this was an overlooked loophole in the DRM plan.
  • by bbum ( 28021 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @09:19AM (#5930589) Homepage
    I read the license [pycs.net] and did some research. I am not a lawyer.

    However, it appears that the library sharing feature is legal. And there is precedent -- Microsoft's ThreeDegrees has a similar feature.

    iTunes streaming does not appear to fall under the "webcasting" laws/tariffs as the potential audience is limited, it is not live, and the client has the full ability to browse the contents of the server.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 11, 2003 @09:30AM (#5930624)
    This topic has already been discussed, at length, over on MacSlash.

    Large-Scale Music Sharing With iTunes 4 [macslash.org]

    Quick summary:

    Sharing with friends/family (for personal use) is cool

    Sharing with total strangers isn't legal and violates the iTunes license

    Yes, streaming != downloading, but your rights to stream have some limits.

    Spymac Music and others sites will be shut down by Apple and/or the RIAA

    Sharing music with friends is cool -- let's not ruin a good thing, people!

  • by DougM ( 175616 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @09:48AM (#5930683)
    When you elect to share your music library within iTunes 4 a pop-up is displayed:
    • Reminder: Sharing music is for personal use only
    I don't know the legal definition of "personal use" but in these terms I would consider it to be about limiting streaming in much the same way you would limit distribution of your purchased CD collection.

    I really like this feature and I thank Apple for treating its customers like grown-ups. I'd hate for abuse to force them into dropping it.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 11, 2003 @10:17AM (#5930797)
    I've been looking into this a little bit (and reading Pudge's remarks on Perl.org)

    The files are streamed as standard mp3 files, over http. Because of this, you can capture them, just as you can capture a "mp3 radio" station.
    Using ngrep [packetfactory.net] (which compiles cleanly on OSX), you can watch the network traffic.


    192.168.1.101:49186 -> 192.168.1.102:3689 [AP]
    GET /databases/35/items/289.mp3?session-id=11720 HTTP/1.1..Host: metadata:1..User-Agent: iTunes/4.0 (Macintosh; N; PPC)..connection: close.. ..


    T 192.168.1.101:49187 -> 192.168.1.102:3689 [AP]
    GET /databases/35/items/290.mp3?session-id=11720 HTTP/1.1..Host: 192.168.1.102..Cache-Control: no-cache..Accept: */*..x-audiocast-udpport:49177..icy-
    metadata:1..User-Agent: iTunes/4.0 (Macintosh; N; PPC)..connection: close.. ..


    T 192.168.1.101:49188 -> 192.168.1.102:3689 [AP]
    GET /databases/35/items/291.mp3?session-id=11720 HTTP/1.1..Host: 192.168.1.102..Cache-Control: no-cache..Accept: */*..x-audiocast-udpport:49178..icy-
    metadata:1..User-Agent: iTunes/4.0 (Macintosh; N; PPC)..connection: close.. ..


    T 192.168.1.101:49189 -> 192.168.1.102:3689 [AP]
    GET /databases/35/items/292.mp3?session-id=11720 HTTP/1.1..Host: 192.168.1.102..Cache-Control: no-cache..Accept: */*..x-audiocast-udpport:49179..icy-
    metadata:1..User-Agent: iTunes/4.0 (Macintosh; N; PPC)..connection: close.. ..



    File order (ie, the XXX.mp3) appears to be keyed on Date-Added. If you add the Date added field to itunes, and then stream the files, you can see they continue almost sequencially.

    The ID of the music is continuing (XXX.mp3) is continuing, nearly sequencially.
    One thing to note is that in some cases, this order might be screwed up slightly. This is because if a song is deleted from the user's libraby, it appears to keep it's number reserved.

    The other thing that can screw the order up is songs that were batch-imported in the same minute. It seems that iTunes only tracks down to the minute, so the order within that minute is arbitrary, as far as I can tell.

    If, after determining the URL via ngrep, and taking the IP, you retrieve it using curl (or wget), you add it to iTunes, it retains the id3 information.

    ie- wget "http://192.168.1.102:3689/databases/35/items/311. mpg?session-id=11720"

    It would be an interesting test to see if iTunes is adding information to the file before streaming it. (for identification, as Pudge suggested)
    This would be possible by doing a binary diff on the two files. I don't have two macs with iTunes 4 installed (yet!, but I intend to install iTunes on the others soon), so I can't test this theory. Any volunteers?

    (Side note- It would be trivial to write a perl script that parsed the ngrep output, and fed it into wget automatically, to download any songs you double-click.

    [similiar to http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/ ]

    You wouldn't even need to listen to the entire song. Just start it playing, and iTunes will finish for you. I won't post mine, for reasons below.)

    Side note redux-
    Apple may have inadvertantly created a file-sharing utility rivaling Napster/Kazaa. This creates an interesting legal issue. This creates an interesting legal issue. Keep in mind that a student was recently sued for creating a software device that searched Network shares for mp3 files.

    Given the RIAA's stance towards piracy, and that they want to work with apple, I suspect they would sue whomever wrote the 4 line perl script, rather than Apple. They are also likely to ask "index" sites like spymac to shut down, and send a cease-and-desist, or a lawsuit..

    I sure hope this Anonymous Coward thing works. I don't want to be sued today. I've done enough other questionable things.
    -Crutz
    • Each track in the iTunes Library is assigned a unique ID number; it makes sense that these would be assigned sequentially in the order that tracks are added - so, if you sort by ID number, the Date Added will also be in order. It also makes sense that there could be gaps in ID numbers if tracks were deleted.
    • For those of you that don't have macs, the same thing can be achieved by googling for the specs for the daap protocol specs, looking for ip#'s on the macspy website and then using wget for the rest.
      for example:
      wget 10.0.0.1:3689/login
      The session id is coded into the four last bytes
      wget 10.0.0.1:3689/databases?session-id=1234
      The bd-id is encoded into the bytes after "miid"
      wget 10.0.0.1:3689/databases/32/items?session-id=1234
      Gives you a list of items, the item id(a number) is used to download the file
      wget
  • by aliens ( 90441 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @10:22AM (#5930814) Homepage Journal
    I read this article
    MacNet article [macnet2.com]
    And they mention that AAC is crap quality compared to Mp3, and that others have said the same. Any slashdot comments on this? Certainly no point in paying $.99 for crap. The entire article is good.
  • Overreacting. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mikedaisey ( 413058 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @10:35AM (#5930861) Homepage

    1) The files aren't copied, they are streamed.

    2)It isn't covered under the internet broadcasting laws as each iTunes client can not send to more than 5 clients at a time.

  • Protocol? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Phroggy ( 441 ) * <slashdot3NO@SPAMphroggy.com> on Sunday May 11, 2003 @12:35PM (#5931418) Homepage
    Is the Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP) documented anywhere? It would be nice to see an RFC on this. The port number it uses is registered with the IANA and the protocol appears to be mostly identical to HTTP. I'd like to see 3rd-party clients and servers that are compatible with iTunes...
  • It's not like anybody needs extra piracy tools. They are copious and readily available.

    The difference with iTunes is that it makes obtaining music convenient, efficient, and legal. Running iTunes doesn't feel like hacking into something. It feels like buying something. And a million downloads the first week suggests that a lot of people would rather get their music without feeling dirty and without having to wade through the bad connections, dubious rippings, and intermittent availablity of a P2P netwo
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 11, 2003 @01:12PM (#5931596)
    This is not illegal for Apple to provide or for users to take advantage of. It is illegal to use a third party app to record the streamed music. That is not Apple's problem. Most people will find this a hassle to do. It would be easier and probably faster to log onto Kazaa and download your stuff. Apple isn't required to provide a solution that completely elimnates all forms of illegal music trading. They are just required to make sure that what they do provide is legal.

    Given the rather limited restrictions even placed on purchased music (the ability to burn the songs and then rip them as unprotected) means that Apple's agreement with the RIAA was simply to provide a SIMPLE legal ALTERNATIVE to the P2P networks that would encourage people to purchase music rather than obtain it illegally. The initial success of the service shows that most people will use such an alternative if it is SIMPLE and PAINLESS. A lot of people used the P2P networks because they were more convenient than going to a record store. I now find the iTMS more convenient than the P2P networks and I don't have to infringe on copyrights. That's the deal Apple made with the record companies (I don't realy know what the deal was, but that's how it seems given the limited restrictions in the service). They convinced the RIAA that people don't really want to do something illegal, they just want to do something convenient. It's just that before, the convenient thing to do was illegal. :)

    Back to the streaming. It's a pain for MOST AVERAGE people to record a stream. The kiddies will do it no matter what, but the rest of us will listen to a friends tunes and then buy it for ourselves because it is MORE CONVENIENT and good karma.

    Here's the best idea of all. Apple should add a 'buy song' button next to the songs that you are streaming from your friend (or complete strangers). If the song was originally purchased from the iTMS, it could have an identifier in it, so that it can be matched back to the Music Store and you could then purchase the song for yourself directly. You listen to your friends music, hear a song you like, and presto you can purchase it for yourself and have it in your collection and take it with you on your iPod or burn it to CD easily. This would require Apple/RIAA lifting the current restriction on streaming purchased music to only macs with your .mac ID, but if they added in the ability to purchase the music that you are streaming, I bet the RIAA would go along with it. It would just be another way to make sampling and purchasing music convenient.

    kman
  • This is hilarious...seeing Mac zealotry smash head long into P2P fanaticism. I never would have dreamed that Mac users would be espousing almost the exact same arguments as windows users just a couple of years ago for P2P, sharing music, and the limits of copyright. This is going to be an interesting year.
  • heretofore known as ShiVern (think KaZaa)

    Sclemeel, schlemazel, hasenfeffer incorporated!!

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