Snooping fears plague new iTunes

Ok Apple, WTF is going on? There was a time when your organization and hardware was a symbol of counterculture. (Do you remember the Superbowl 1984 Ad?) So what the hell has happened?

You've gotten big, you've gotten arrogant and you've turned into the Man that you once fought against. The ministore feature might be a good thing for some users, but any other piece of software I've used that performs a similar function provides an explicit warning to the user before turning the feature on. You don't.

I'll admit that the Ipod has the best interface of any portable music device out there, but if you keep running down this road, there will be a backlash.

Someone else continue this rant for me....I'm tired.

if they snoop my itunes, they won't find any music downloaded from their store.

Big deal.

i am just glad i now get sweet discounts under the apple employee program

They don't collect the data. Chill, you ignorant slut.

I personally don't care about whether or not they collect the data. What I do care about is whether or not they ask me before they use the data. If you install any app by a mainstream company (microsoft, realaudio, adobe) and they are going to transmit information about your machine and/or data across the internet, they warn you explicitly. They do not bury the information in the agreement, but actually ask you whether or not you want to turn on the feature during the install.

Apple has chosen not to do this. They didn't mistakenly forget, but they intentionally chose to. In addition, they have made design decisions regarding the Ipod that limit its functionality, while furthering their business goals. DRM is one example of this. Because Apple has decided to stick with a proprietary DRM system, Ipod users are effectively locked out of the 'Unlimited music to go' programs offered by Rhapsody and Yahoo. There are limitations to Ipod video transfer that were not necessary, but were apparently made solely to make it a PITA to perform, so users would simply buy video from Itunes.

Apple once provided an alternative to the Microsoft way of doing business, and earned respect and a user base because of this philosophy. Now that they've achieved some measure of success though, they are emulating the rival that they once decried.

Or as my brother put it:
"At one time they fought The Man, now they are The Man"

If you don't like crippled MP3 players with restrictive DRM security thingies in them, don't buy them, and encourage others to do the same. That's what I do. Unfortunarely, not enough people care.

However, when a program has a recommendation feature built in, it's obvious that the program is sending information to the recommendation engine in order for it to know what items to recommend. It's not based on magic.

This is obvious to us, but as much as it annoys you, it's not obvious to even most Internet users.

I know, but that's why it's likely that it slipped Apple's mind to put up a warning somewhere. What they did was harmless, and obvious to a significant amount of people.

Does Amazon warn you that it keeps track of every item you view and purchase? I've never noticed such a warning. Should we care?

That's an open question. Sorry to be a lawyer about it, but one thing that some are concerned about (Daniel Solove writes about it in "The Digital Person") is that as companies collect seemingly harmless data about people, they also may sell that data legally to others who have other harmless bits, and that the end result could be that someone could end up with a complete profile on you through a series of individually harmless, legal steps, and you would never know or have assented to any such thing.

Well, I dismiss this whole thing so easily because they aren't collecting the information. They're discarding it.

Or maybe I'm so trusting of Apple because I don't really care (I'm not currently using any of their products).

By the way, Haq, what field of law are you studying?

Well, I'm not actually specializing, but my main interest is in (shock!) Internet and information law. Of the public interest/not-for-profit variety.

also:



This cannot be true. Even if it's only temporary, they're storing the data (this sounds like nitpicking, but it's actually an important issue in, for example, copyright law). Also, they may be storing data about this data without technically lying about storing the data (e.g. "N users from X zip code listened to Y song in month M").

could it not be that itunes sends apple your purchased info when you log in?

i'll have to check this out tomorrow when i go to work....i've never purchased musak at work so if it tells me what i've bought then....oohhhhhh

oh, well they almost certainly do this. in fact, to some degree it's advantageous to you for them to do so. i mean, if a download was corrupted and they didn't keep any record of your purchase, there could be trouble. the question is to what uses you agreed when you made the purchase.

99 cents a song? outside of that, i think im screwed