[Reader-list] NYT: Apple Finds the Future for Online Music Sales

[Menso Heus]

On Thu, May 29, 2003 at 02:47:02PM +0530, Rana Dasgupta wrote:
> notice the absurd role that "friends and family" are playing in some of
> these arguments.  and all the different kinds of "disappointment" described
> in this article.

Notice also that people for some reason didn't figure out that if you stream
bits to a computer and play them, these bits can be saved to a harddrive. 
 
> In a statement released yesterday, Apple said Rendezvous had been "used by
> some in ways that have surprised and disappointed us."

They should have known better. For windows there have been applications for 
quite some time (undoubtedly for other OS's also) that install themselves 
as a 'virtual soundcard' What this does is basically sit between the output
send to your soundcard and the real soundcard. This circumvents several 
problems one could encounter when just trying to fetch the datastream, since 
that might be encrypted and useless to other player applications. 

When capturing the actual output though, it is already decrypted and ready
to blast from your speakers. You sit in between, you save those bits to 
your harddisk and you're done. These applications have been quite popular
ever since RealAudio didn't allow you to save the streams to your harddisk,
and they're semi-smart also (they notice gaps in the stream for example,
when your player is rebuffering, and don't save the silence during this 
period).
 
> "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," the statement said. "But some people are taking advantage
> of it to stream music over the Internet to people they do not even know.
> This was never the intent." A spokesman for Apple, Chris Bell, said the
> company made the decision by itself.

So they took out the option (for which a workaround will be found). The 
striking thing about this is that it completely bypasses the fact that 
it was *also* used for legitimate purposes. They're not shutting down CD
shops because some people steal CD's (or nowadays, the booklets to put 
in their burned copy jewel case). The amount of risk they are willing to
take seems little still, even after the big success.

I hope this isn't a first in a series of steps to reduce the freedom of
the end user. iTunes also allows purchased music to be burned on CD-ROM
as many times as you wish for example. This cd can be ripped by anyone.

Menso
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