The nature of the internet is such that within a few days, if anyone besides Cory truly cares, you'll have a perfectly easy to use VPN solution that will let you listen to all the music you want.

I'm with, however, the people who think it's more than a little stupid to call a fix of a feature to be in line with the documentation an attempt to 'force feed customers shit'.

Apple is under no obligation to stand on the barricades waving the Red Flag of Righteousness on Cory Doctorow's behalf. Cory spending his $15 or whatever never got him the job as Apple CEO. Screaming like my toddler is neither going to magically bring back the feature nor bring Steve Jobs stumbling into a press conference apologizing for not having seen the One True Way of Cory Doctorow and enlisting in the People's Army of Music Liberation; and howling that Apple is feeding him shit and 'this is not a world that I want to live in' over the most minute and trivially remedied nuisance of a sub-$100 purchase of a luxury item is not bringing me to the rally either.

Apple elected not to take the bullet. Their software can still be used to do everything Cory wants, with a tiny (really, tiny) amount of effort on Cory's or anyone's else's part. The only change is that it becomes equally less trivial to commit casual piracy, which we can all obviously agree would have quickly become the number one function of the software.

"And all this tech shit people are spewing about opening up tunnels and using other solutions...why should your average person have to deal with that. Yeah...I got VPN...but most people don't know anything about that. I should have the right to connect to my own music no matter the geographic location or the subnet."

Wow, it went from a brand new software feature to being in the Bill Of Rights in about ten seconds flat. Nice.

I'm interested in knowing: before iTunes 4.0, which vendors were you pounding at the door screaming about force-feeding shit because they were violating your 'rights' by not permitting you to 'connect to your own music'?

Ever think about buying, say, a discman or an iPod to 'connect to your own music' without spamming the Internet?

Edited by author 05-28-2003 04:38 PM
Wait wait wait! The guy who decided that using "Hollywood" as a synonym for "the mainstream American film industry, largely headquartered in Hollywood, California" was defamatory to people who weren't film execs but happened to live in or around Hollywood has dropped in to tell us all that we're overreacting and being self-righteous because a company that we bought stuff from has removed our freedom to lawfully use that stuff, calling it an "enhancement?"

Now, *that*'s irony.

(and don't even get me started on the irony of criticising my post's persuasiveness by comparing it to an infant's whining -- clearly, you are some expert on how to win friends and influence people)

As it so happens, I own an iPod. Why is that relevant?

We've just learned that Apple is ready and willing to "enhance" the tools and media we buy from it by removing legal features from it. If iPods start to displease the music industry tomorrow, why shouldn't I take yesterday's "enhancement" as a sign that Apple will gladly "enhance" my iPod in much the same fashion?

This was written by John Manzione, publisher of MacNETv2 on May 14th, two weeks ago;

"Despite Napster, Aimster, Kazaa, Limewire, Acquisition, and other P2P applications out there, CD’s are still selling. If record companies really wanted to make some serious money they might try giving the customer what they want. Treating the customer as a criminal only pisses of the customer and when someone cracks the DRM on Apple’s music files it will spread like a virus on a PC. There will be no one to blame for this but the record companies who insisted that Apple cripple the files, that CD’s sell for twice what they should, and most of the money spent on promotions are spent on tried and true artists. If you ask me the record business is doing everything it can to assure that the battle continues, and they will never win. Software hackers are too good and too numerous. Give a hacker a reason to crack something and you can rest assured it will be cracked. "

The rest of this excellent piece can be found here: http://www.macnet2.com/more.php?id=339_0_1_0_M

Cory's point is well taken, Apple caved instantly to the record companies. Today Apple even expressed 'sadness' that people were abusing their precious itunes software. What bullshit!

Regardless of the fact that the software was or was not supposed to do what it did, it did it! Period. And because the record companies bitched and moaned about it Apple took steps to prevent it. Apple Aplogists see nothing wrong, what's unual about that? Suddenly it's okay to steal software and other things on Caccarcho, Limewire and eDonkey, but not from precious Apple? Fuck that! You apologists sicken me because you are all so delusional.

As long as Apple continues to take baby steps in strict DRM the apologists will support it, all the way up to and beyond anything M$ ever thought of. Won't you be surprised?

It took Apple less than a month to ADD to their own DRM, what's next?

We all, indeed, joust with our own windmills. I'm not sure *that's* irony, though. Irony would be if I had complained that you were 'force feeding me shit'.

So, on to the 'shit' -- Apple 'removed your freedom' (wave that flag!) in what way? They fixed their app to be in accordance with their original design, as per the documentation. Your freedom to lawfully listen to music in your home or office is completely unchanged from before iTunes 4.0.0. In fact, as you own an iPod (a device which, get this -- you can carry! from home! to office!), it's unclear how iTunes 4.0.1 irrevocably shattered your rights and, y'know, pried your protesting jaw open and so on with the poop and the pushing and the oy gevalt.

As far as comparing you to my infant's whining: it's not just me (and that's not 'ironic', either); obviously several people in this thread just don't get why you think that Apple is committing a brutal, sadistic, poo-based assault on the mouths of its unwilling customers. Many have gone on to offer you real free solutions, one of which appears to require about 4 cut and paste operations in order to provide an even higher level of functionality;
and yet you continue to rail about the injustice and the damage to your rights. Even my infant stops howling when I give him a free lollipop.

As for the scales falling from your eyes and the sudden realization that the Corporate Interests _don't necessarily have your best interest at heart_ (!) and aren't willing to leap onto the barricades to receive their sucking chest wound as a sign of their courageous commitment to your cause...well; yeah! You've written about hackers for some time now -- welcome to rule number one of our world.

"rule number one" -- eat number two

hrm; had people not abused the functionality in the first place, would Apple have reverted it? i don't think so. that wasn't their initial goal. they tried a more liberal approach, and it was broken. that's a shame.

I'm weighing in with MiskatonicU on the infantile whining issue. The very topic of this thread should have been my first warning. Get real. All the actions you take issue with were voluntary and the so called problems are all easily solvable.

Earlier in the thread, Cory Doctrow said:

"If Apple hadn't shipped iTunes 4.0 with WAN sharing, I wouldn't have bought as much music as I did."

Let me see if I understand this right. You based your spending on a bug (undocumented feature) which caused the program to behave in a way which contradicted the features advertised in the readme. When this bug was fixed in a voluntary software update you decided to start this troll of a thread?

If not for the brand value of your name as a writer, I really doubt this sort of foolishness would have gotten so much attention. You will have to work a bit harder than this to get my attention from now on.

I'd be delighted to get less attention from you, Chris.

In honor of Cory's decision to continue branding the city of Hollywood as evil for the deeds of a few who don't even live there, and in light of the importance of making sure the Cory Doctorow brand reflects that which it truly stands up for, I hereby call that we from now on refer to Cory as 'Cory "a corporation made me eat excrement" Doctorow'.

It may be a little extra typing, but that's 'digital identity management' I can get behind. So to speak.

To summarize the best bits of this thread so far:

1. The proper order for posting to BoingBoing is 1)coffee and smokes first, *then* 2)long screed on Apple's betrayal. Because it has been clearly established that the BoingBoing editorial collective is *never* allowed to make a mistake. Ever.

2. Independent artists who want their music shared should pester Apple. Kind of a cool idea, but wouldn't it be easier to do this with Bit Torrent, a central web page highlighting artists, and some sort of Amazonian evaluation system so you don't get tricked into downloading ukelele covers of Pearl Jam. It would be awesome and truly revolutionary to have a p2p app that enabled consistent distribution of uncopyrighted works of art with measurable download stats (sort by popularity) and collaborative recommendations.

3. There are a bazillion other ways to share your music. Perhaps the simplest is to drag your tunes into a web-enabled folder and let people paste the URL into Winamp (a windows app). It just isn't hard to turn on Apache in OS X. Even non-geeky bad writers can do it. (I include myself in that group). Heck, everyone who has OSX could do that right now and post the URLS to this topic. Come on, I dare you. I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU.

4. "Cory would be a better writer if he were more of a geek." Then he could achieve "the next level." History has provided us with many, many examples of hard core geeks who wrote great stuff. One that comes immediately to mind is William Gibson, who got on the internet about ten minutes ago, and now even has a blog. A blog! Frankly, I wish he didn't because it totally kills his authorial mystique. You can't be the next Pynchon if you have a blog, for crying out loud. The corollary to this is "People who tone down their arrogant geekiness are offered more sexual encounters with strangers." This sounds like one of those unsolvable, "tying buttered toast to your cat and throwing it in the air" kinds of problems, because everyone knows that even bad authors are getting nooky from book groupies. So who gets more Nookage? Nice geeks or authors? Obviously, the answer is nice geeks who are *also* authors. Rarely does the list of people who do the nasty on a consistent basis include Mean Little Nerds who make allusions to anything Ayn Rand-ish.

One thing (among many) that I don't understand: are you prohibited from *streaming* across the country or *sharing* across the internet? I.e. making local copies. The question you have to ask yourself is, "Am I bound to keep laws that I don't agree with, that are generally stupid and have no real victims?" It seems to have been historically proven that few will obey a law that is a) inconvenient, b) has no apparent victim, and c) little chance of enforcement. Does anyone actually drive 55 on the freeway? What constitutes moral behavior among the digeratii?

Given the number of posts that contain strike-through text I'd say the boingboing editorial staff often make mistakes but more importantly own up to them, often quite happily it seems. Craniac: you write well and interestingly but your jabs leave much to be desired.

Edited by author 05-29-2003 01:35 PM
Chris Barker: "You based your spending on a bug (undocumented feature) which caused the program to behave in a way which contradicted the features advertised in the readme. When this bug was fixed in a voluntary software update you decided to start this troll of a thread?"

blind leading the blind...Chris...you should do your research before making such a silly post.

A lot of people here are working on the premise that Apple, by mistake, included sharing across any subnet. Everyone keeps talking about how it was a bug. If you know ANYTHING about programming and can imagine the type of quality control that goes on over at Apple, you know why this could not have been a bug. The pulldown menu binded to the sharing feature was no accident.
 
The first thing that pisses me off is that they stretched the truth...twice.

Truth Stretch #1: Oops, that wasn't suppose to be there

Here is why it WASN'T a bug...from Apple's iTunes Help file:
"...that's being shared in the same subnet as your computer and have it appear in your Source list. If you know a computer's IP address, you can also see shared music on that computer even if it isn't in the same subnet."

I suppose this text was also a bug?

Truth Stretch #2: iTunes 4.0.1 has "network access enhancements,"

enhance
1. To make greater, as in value, beauty, or effectiveness; augment.
2. To provide with improved, advanced, or sophisticated features: computer software enhanced with cutting-edge functionalities.

Removing features is not an enhancement. We now know the feature was intended to be there, and then removing said feature and calling it an enhancement...constitutes in my mind, "Apple force-feeds customers shit, calls it sunshine"


MiskatonicU: "I'm with, however, the people who think it's more than a little stupid to call a fix of a feature to be in line with the documentation an attempt to 'force feed customers shit'."

MiskatonicU, your arguement is weak...and now...wrong. They did not fix the feature...they removed it. You talk about how geeky you are...I think you'd realize the difference.

In another section of the help file, Apple says that sharing is for personal use only...and guess what...that is just what I want it for. Now one way Apple could have handled this was to ADD A FEATURE...not REMOVE ONE (which is how MiskatonicU fixes software). They could have put a security feature that would make it possible to stream, but only to authorized machines or machines with a certain password...there are any number of ways to handle this. Instead they allow folks to infer it wasn't suppose to work that way and yank it. Of course it wasn't suppose to allow people to steal, but why not actually make an ENHANCEMENT so that you still get to stream, but you don't get the theft...that would be progress.

I'll say that many people here have posted good arguements. However, what is at stake here isn't just shared music...it is the premise (and a dangerous one) that fair use is only defined by whatever the music industry defines it to be. The courts have already ruled on this folks. If Apple was pressured, they could even break the OS to prevent people from using third-party streaming solutions. If you start to compromise on one issue, next thing you know you've compromised yourself into OS RIAA.

Apple is the one who has constantly propped themselves up as the defender of fair use. They got me to Think Different. I have every right to call them on their hypocrisy.

Mr. Happy wrote: " Craniac: you write well and interestingly but your jabs leave much to be desired"

Thanks, I think, although not much jabbage occured in that post. And of course, I think that the employees of the BoingBoing pop culture sweatshop can make all the mistakes they want. I grow tired of the odd presence and mean comments of some of the neo-libertarians in this space.

The real crime of the RIAA/etc. is not that they are attempting to prevent illegal copying, but that they have *changed the terms of the argument* to the degree that we can't even imagine leaving the streaming option in place. And that's the best way for them to win anything--not arguing directly, but gradually changing the terms of the discussion.

So ultimately I see Cory's rant as an attempt to restructure the argument a little. Changing our discussion of legal media sharing will probably bring about greater changes than learning to set up a VPN. Or not, just speculating.

MiskatonicU: do you write anywhere else besides here?

Paul: all over the place. Why, is my style a dead giveaway for somewhere else?