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August 19, 2004 11:49 AM PDT
Hackers revive iTunes music sharing
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OurTunes works only among computers that share a network, however. That means that students or employees can swap songs on a local network but cannot use it to browse computers on the Internet, as happens with file-trading programs such as Kazaa. Still, the software is likely to ring an alarm at Apple and among record company executives, who have waged war against file swapping since Napster's heyday.
"I'm a Linux guy. I expect my software to be extensible," Blackman said in an instant-message interview. "I really think that this will encourage people to join their local iTunes communities, and that's a good thing."
An Apple representative declined to comment for this report.
Apple has spent much of the past two years trying to balance its own desire to expand the way people use their music with record companies' requests that songs be protected against unauthorized copying. iTunes' ability to stream songs throughout a home network has been one of the sources of this tension.
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Since iTunes' release, Apple has increasingly touted it as the core of a home music system. It initially allowed streams to flow between Macintosh and, later, Windows computers on a network and ultimately released the
Outside programmers quickly turned this capability into a way to stream songs over the Internet, and a host of iTunes-based Net radio stations emerged.
Apple blocked the Net streaming capability but retained the ability to stream inside a single network. Trinity College student
However, in April, Apple
Other programmers continued to test Apple's code, however. A Mac-only program called
More broadly, an Australian student named David Hammerton
With OurTunes, the developers have expanded on the earlier tools, writing the software in Java so that it will work on Windows or Macintosh computers and adding a search tool that MyTunes lacked. The software has been released freely under an open-source license.
Blackman said he drew heavily on Hammerton's work and on another piece of software called
"This isn't the first bit of software to do this," Blackman said. "We just do it better and in a more friendly way."
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It allows full downloading of those songs from one PC to another and then -- worse still -- the songs can be taken off that PC and / or shared via Kazaa.
The name of this tool? WINDOWS.
Truth is.....this whole idea of digital music being so controlled is laughable.
People will find a way. Even if it uses older or already existing means. It's all just 1's and 0's.
Apple has gone out of their way to make things fair for everyone. When people do things like this, it just makes the record companies pull back, insist on tighter conrols and ruins things for everyone.
When someone hacks MS systems, that's one thing. The idea of not being able to play a CD on your computer, or do what you want with Music you've bought is ridiculous.
However, when a company has fought to have looser restrictions so we can do what we want with our own music, people are just cutting off their noses to spite their faces by doing things like this.
Like I said, they are going to ruin things for everyone else.
for computers on the same network. Today you can easily find
the mp3 files in an iTunes folder and with exisiting search
technology even search for the song of your choice.
The important thing here is that they could not hack into and
share iTMS purchased songs. It seems that you carried a non-
story to create a stir where none exists.