Arrogant, Ignorant, Both ... ?

"Rendezvous music sharing...has been used by some in ways that have surprised and disappointed us," Apple said. "We designed it to allow friends and family to easily stream (not copy) their music between computers at home or in a small group setting, and it does this well. But some people are taking advantage of it to stream music over the Internet to people they do not even know."

So says Apple. I say, to anyone developing or managing this product who really is surprised by this, you lack understanding of your users and should be fired. That is a ridiculous statement to make.

Of course people are going to use it to stream to whomever. It's a no-brainer. What Apple, and any company would really cares to work in this "new age," needs to do is stop blaming the people who abuse the technology -- not that they are not deserving of blame, but it is unproductive to -- and come up with better ways to give freedom to users.

iTMS and the sharing in iTunes 4 are a good start, but if Apple thinks it is OK to take away freedoms because they may be abused, or to compromise on freedoms, they will end up regretting it. They can't solve the problem of widespread Internet sharing by taking away the ability of friends to share music. They can't solve the problem of copying by disallowing users to copy via iTunes. These things in the long run will make people use other systems that do allow more freedom.