There’s an interesting online discussion about Apple’s introduction of an iTunes Ministore feature as part of its latest iTunes update. At Macworld, Rob Griffiths explains:
What [the iTunes update] also offered, but didn’t bother to disclose, was the addition of a bit of potential spyware to the iTunes interface…the new iTunes MiniStore, which appears directly below the song list area in the main iTunes window, watches what you click on in iTunes and sends that information across the Web to a remote server. When you double-click a song to play in your Library or playlists, the display in the mini-store changes to reflect ‘matches’ based on what’s been selected, as seen below.
In order to do this, the music store must obviously know what you’re listening to. It learns this information via a packet of information sent each time you play a song via a double-click. This data is sent without your explicit permission, and as far as I can tell, there are no Apple privacy policies that cover that transfer of information. It’s also unclear exactly what data is being sent. (Is it just song and title? Or does it include your Apple music store ID, which would tie the song info directly to your personal data?) And although Apple now assures us that the data is not collected, that information is not made clear to users when they begin using iTunes.
Rob notes that the MiniStore can be disabled relatively easily and, along with it, the unauthorized transmission of data. But that’s not the point, he says:
However, this isn’t about the MiniStore itself. It’s about Apple’s attitude in rolling this change out to the millions of iTunes users, without as much as a peep about what’s going on behind the scenes. Consider, for example, if Microsoft had done such a thing with a minor Office update—say they started collecting data on the names of the files you were editing, in the hopes of selling you preformatted templates to help with future similar projects. If they did this in a minor update, and without telling anyone that the data were being transmitted, there would be universal outrage over this potential attack on our privacy. And now Apple’s gone and done basically the exact same thing. Personally, I am quite upset with Apple’s decision-making in this case, and I hope others are as well.
Cory Doctorow, who was one of the first to pick up on this issue, expressed similar concerns here, and in a followup post here.
A post by Tom Coates, along with the comments it generated, also address—from a range of perspectives—the various issues raised by Apple’s MiniStore. These include privacy and privacy policies; opt-in vs. opt-out features; user-interface design; Apple’s strategy and reputation and; how best to offer “recommendation” features that some customers may appreciate but that others may find intrusive and perhaps even offensive. Given the importance of these issues in today’s increasingly Media 2.0 marketplace, the discussion at Tom’s plasticbag.org blog is worth a read.
Mitch Shapiro at 3:34 PM|Comments(0)
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