Or more fully put, should the 18,000 people sued by the RIAA be starting up a return class-action to get that money back because of this rather lovely new feature in iTunes 9?

As Apple describes it:

A better way to share. iTunes makes it easier to share music, movies, TV shows, and more. With Home Sharing, you can browse the iTunes libraries of up to five authorized computers in your house, import what you like, and automatically add new purchases made on any of the computers to your own library.

I have tried it and it is excellent - it really makes being a music fan that uses iTunes a lot easier.

But as far as I know the law hasn't changed about what copyright is and how it affects anyone sharing their music. It seems that attitudes have.

If you were one of the people that settled for a few thousand dollars to avoid going to court you may well be looking at the new iTunes in a state of bewilderment. Are Apple now saying that if one person buys a track they can give it to four other people without risk of litigation? Can that person then 'share' the track within another 'home' to another four people? Who knows, but something has changed.

Strangely enough when I looked around to see what people were saying about this issue, I found out that lawyer Kiwi Camara is joining forces with Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson to file a class-action lawsuit against the recording industry right now, but on quite different grounds.

Odd times indeed.

Do you think it is really possible that RIAA will have to pay the money back? And does anyone understand how Apple have managed to make their new functionality 'alright' by the industry?
Justin