UPDATE: Possible fix to the 5 different users each day limitation.

If I were you, I would think twice before upgrading to iTunes 4.7.1.30. After I upgraded to this version, playlists I try to connect to over our LAN report that:

The shared music library “foo” accepts only five different users each day. Please try again later.

iTunes has, in the past, limited sharing to 5 users at a time, but not 5 users per day. Now, all my favorite playlists that folks share are virtually unaccessible. They all are displaying this error (and I checked them at 7:15am this morning!).

I re-read the click through EULA that accompanied the iTunes upgrade and I couldn’t find any mention of this new limitation. Is this legal? Perhaps there is wording in the EULA that allows these types of changes without the need to notify the end-user?

Is the RIAA worried that their sales will decrease if iTunes users can easily listen to music over iTunes shares instead of buying it? Maybe. If so, this hurts folks like me who are sharing out my own music. Music that I own. Music that I have performed and recorded myself.

I am thinking that this new restriction in iTunes would be like allowing only 5 unique folks to use a photocopier per day, because it can be used to duplicate copyrighted material. That doesn’t sound like it would go over too well at the office. iTunes sharing is very similar. It can be used to distribute copyrighted material, but it can also be used to copy and distribute non-copyrighted material, like my songs.

Interesting. I’ll have to think more about this.

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