Friday, February 08, 2008

Who is Edward Phillips?

Over the last few weeks I've noticed a strange thing in iTunes. Occasionally a shared music library will pop up called 'Edward Phillips's Library'. I'm even able to connect to it and listen to music. It's great, he has over 11000 tracks, not all to my taste but still something else to listen to. I did wonder where this new source of music was coming from and tonight I figured it out. I had a look at my router's web interface and noticed a few unknown computers listed in the DHCP active IP table, in fact four computers (although I suspect they aren't all connected right now).

ever since I figured out what was causing our wireless issues I've switched back to an insecure wireless network and I've never bothered to filter out MAC addresses this time around. So it looks like people are taking advantage of the fact. Am I bothered? Not really. I've not noticed any particular performance problems and it seems like my generosity has been repaid by having access to some different music.

On another note, I wonder what the music industry makes of all this? I'm guessing they don't want people sharing out their music collections to all and sundry, we should be good consumers and buy all the CDs instead. But then it's Apple doing this and they make plenty of money for the music industry with their DRM downloads. So perhaps they'll turn a blind eye?

Currently listening to Purple Rain by Prince from the album Purple Rain

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