So why is everyone whining about the new "downgrade" version of iTunes. The original version had a feature to easily stream music over the internet to anyone else using iTunes. The newest version update has removed this feature and now you can only share over the same local network. It was a cool featured designed, according to Apple, so that you can listen to your own music from a different location. However, most of what people were using it for was stealing or listening to music they didn't own. Apps to easily download music from iTunes and services to find out where you can stream songs from appeared. It was being abused, so Apple pulled it, did you expect that they could get away with pissing off the record companies and maintaining the Music Store at the same time? Codepoetry brings up a good point:
The “problem” is that Apple is a company. That’s it. End of story. Apple does not want to be sued, does not want to be yet another martyr for free music, and does not want to cause trouble. They fixed a bug that turned iTunes into a P2P music sharing device because copying music you don’t own is illegal and made it do what it was supposed to do: stream music locally for people you know.
Stop complaining and accept reality.
I agree. Apple is trying to drag the music industry kicking and screaming into the digital age, legitimately. It's too bad Apple users are trying to undermine the effort.
I guess I didn't even notice it... I don't use iTunes that much. How, though, did they limit it to local networks?
Mike, they use rendezvous for local sharing.
You should look at the Slashdot discussion on this subject. Every time someone criticized Apple, three people jumped in to defend it. It was so sweet!
You can't just "use rendezvous for sharing". It still uses IP, it just disconnects people whose IP isn't on the local network.
Besides, all you have to do is mount ~/Music remotely.
They limit the music sharing to local subnets only, as per the description for the 4.0.1 update.
This is going to be an ongoing battle between Apple and some of its users:
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,59127,00.html