Dear iTunes, butt out!

Dear iTunes, I am just a mild mannered old former scientist but you managed to arouse my ire today. Here's how.

Being elderly and tired, I decided to start one of my iTunes playlists and lie down on my bed to rest awhile. It didn't work - for the first time. It seems that the first three tunes in my list, which had been there for a couple of years, now decided to balk and returned the message, "This computer is not authorized to play (name of song). Would you like to authorize it?" This was followed by a request for my wife's password.

Because this had never happened before, I conclude that it was caused by the latest iTunes software "upgrade." Now, I have no recollection of ever authorizing YOU to put such intrusive, Nanny style software into my computer. My computer is my property and what I do with it is a private matter and none of your business. This software is intrusive and it violates my right to privacy. If you want to put such crap into my computer, you have the obligation to explicitly notify me and to ask my permission. Naturally, that would not be granted.

I suppose that some genius with a college degree thought this up as a means of defending someone's intellectual property rights. On the other hand, things like this have caused endless annoyance to multitudes of people who use software responsibly but who would like to be allowed use their computers without being forced to jump through hoops to do it. In this case, I was asked to enter a password I had long forgotten while my wife, who is not well, was sleeping.

There are a number of things you can do for me. One of these is to remove the objectionable part of the software. If not that, please instruct me how to remove the tunes in question from my computer and cancel any account that I may have established with the iTunes store.

Drifters