Looks like some folk have found a way to extract playlists from people’s iTunes 4 players, thus letting anyone see what you have in your iTunes collection — but then some other folk have figured out how to let others download your music — voila, instant p2p app. The burning question is did Apple know about this initially undocumented functionality, and if they did, did they want it to be exposed? Perhaps Apple are attempting to take a stand against the big guns of RIAA, BMI, ASCAP, NMPA, etc.
The discussions:
The apps:
The reason this won’t kill iTunes is that whether or not you can save the incoming streams, unlike Napster you can still only stream to 3 users at once and there’s no global searchability.
Also, if you’re streaming tracks you’ve bought from the iTunes store, you need to use up one of your (total 3) authentications for each recipient machine.
These mechanisms may be subvertable with effort, but the subversion isn’t in the app by design, which shifts the liability from Apple to the person who puts in the effort.