Oh Sure, Blame Apple

Lots of people are bitching about Apple nixing Internet-bound iTunes Music Sharing. Huh. So now Apple, who was just a few weeks ago encouraged by many of these same folks to pursue an utterly innovative approach to distributing major label music, is now supposed to be the role model for copyfight rebellion? Wake up and smell the economics, kids. Apple has no obligation to make it easy for people to share music, and little incentive when they already provide samples and (to a degree) recommendations within their Music Store. They threw in the worldwide Music Sharing as a friendly bonus and users took advantage of it with little thought or, better yet, contribution to a legal defense fund for when Apple inevitably would get sued for facilitating piracy.

I think Apple was right in covering its collective ass and if you don’t like it, go elsewhere: there are plenty of other ways to stream your music library to the world, open source ones even. Apple doesn’t owe you squat. All y’all haters can go eat a tarball.