a copy of ourTunes (version c) is available at http://www.webpages.ttu.edu/mroth/tunes/ourTunes1-7c.jar (links directly to the file, not a webpage!)

Notes on version c:
1.  I reworked a few of the networking aspects to increase compatibility among all the Operating Systems.  Unfortunately, I had the most trouble with Mac OSX.
2.  Thanks to abandonedhero for creating the program icon!  It’s a tad blurry for 32×32 resolutions, but I had the icon drawn elsewhere in the container so it could be clearly seen.
3.  Thanks to secret_squirrel for providing MP3 tag-reading support.  I also incorporated the jaudiotagger project for aac metadata and consequently, the format ouput filename pane is now functional (albeit, click enter after changing the text-field!)
4.  Certain people mentioned that the program just crashed without reason.  This was due to the fact that the Operating System could not resolve link-local addressing.  ourTunes resolves the link-local address to IP addresses.
5.  Speed Downloading! Many others could not download a single song because iTunes would break the socket connection.  OurTunes will now continue the download when the socket connection breaks.  Furthermore, ourTunes will speed the download up considerably when this happens.  (iTunes will break a socket connection if the user pauses the song while listening to it).
6.  ourTunes will now say if you’re downloading an mp3 or an m4a file.

Tips to getting ourTunes working better:
a.  Start iTunes before starting ourTunes.
b.  It helps to fully listen to the first song; “speed downloading” often causes iTunes to disconnect from the share which is an inconvenience.
c.  I’m having huge headaches with ourTunes on Mac.  I am to connect and select a song for downloading, but iTunes disconnects the share shortly after selecting a song to download.  This causes the speed downloading (thus I ultimately get the song I want), but on a few occasions, the file was corrupt after download.  I think it has something to do with the Apple VM, but I have no idea why iTunes on Mac is so fickle.

Significant challenges left in the program:
a.  Unicast mDNS queries.  I’m caught in a rut on this issue, because I can’t use apple’s library (it’s OS-dependent last I checked), and without mDNS, iTunes will never see the duplicate share.
b.  Smoothing out the pass-through service, especially for mac osx.  If anyone cares to try, I’d like to know if ourTunes is more successful when registering a ._dacp._tcp.local. service on the network.
c.  Sometimes java doesn’t close out ourTunes correctly which prevents future versions from operating correctly (In windows, one would need to terminate the javaw.exe process).
d.  The list doesn’t always populate with shares.  If this happens just close out of ourTunes and try again in a few seconds).

Please leave comments, ideas, suggestions, etc. in the thread.

Hello everyone, this is my first post on the site. I feel welcomed already.

I come along with a load of bad news. Like at least 50,000 other people, I woke up Tuesday morning to find a gaping hole in the internet that was not goatse.cx. OiNK DOT CD (formerly OiNK DOT Me DOT UK) had been raided, taken down, and replaced by an advertisement for two fascist organizations. I was a member of OiNK for over a year, and a fairly prominent forum user for the last six months. The matter was widely mis-reported by the mainstream media, and it’s a good thing that they spent their time and money getting the facts wrong on OiNK, because San Diego wasn’t on fire or anything.

This is a major blow for the file-sharing community, especially the section devoted to music. I could go on and on about what is wrong with OiNK’s shutdown, but it’s been discussed to death in the past few days. I will say this, though: I wish more than the best to Alan, the former administrator of the site, as well as to the other other admin and the rest of the staff. I also hope that the user-base turns out okay, as I suspect they will. As The PirateBay’s brokep said in his response to the shutdown, the answer to this problem lies not in a single site, but in many sites to ease the burden and the feeling of emptiness should take-down attacks be successful in the future.

So where does this leave OurTunes? Well, it means that the need for a new means of sharing music is just that much more needed in our society. Apple has a responsibility and an obligation to stop filesharers from abusing the network system. We can see this in the release of iTunes 7. We as the users, have an obligation to get around their efforts. With the loss of OiNK, OurTunes is all the more important to music fans. We no longer have a nearly-complete database of artists’ catalogs to browse at our leisure, but we at least have each other’s iTunes libraries. And that’s a start.

I have been tied up with other projects, namely school and work, of late and while our forums are hot hot hot I have not been able to give time to this blog. So here is an open casting call for bloggers!

If you are passionate about DRM, music, ourtunes, or anything related to being able to use our music our way (Hence “Save Our Tunes”) shoot me an email at saveourtunes {at} gmail [dot] com