Dave Winer points to an article by Cory Doctorow about how Apple broke the iPod Download plugin in the iTunes 4.7 release:
'Apple just devoted some expensive engineering hours to updating iTunes to version 4.7, with the "improvement" of breaking iPod Download. That's right — Apple's spending money seeing to it that features are removed from your iPod. Thanks a whole lot, Apple.'
He also has provided some "pre-rebuttal", in anticipation of the responses that he thinks he will get. What he's failed to mention is that the iPod Download plugin most likely didn't adhere to the iTunes licence agreement, as well as that of the plugin SDK. As a result, Apple had the right to force sites to take down copies of the iPod Download plugin, and since that didn't work completely, to prevent it working with iTunes. It might also be important to consider the legal ramifications of allowing the plugin to continue to work with iTunes, since it effectively allows a user to (potentially) pirate thousands of songs, using Apple's own software.
Besides, is it that big a deal if you can't use iTunes to grab songs off an iPod? There's plenty of third party software that does the job (and more): iPodRip (disclaimer: I work for the company that makes iPodRip), PodWorks and iPod.iTunes. Apple has also made no attempts to stop them (and I doubt they will).
On a similar note, Michael over at the darkerside to rants suggests that Apple changed the format of the XML files used to store data on the iPods. I doubt this is the case, as iPodRip still works after using iTunes 4.7 with my iPod. (UPDATE: It is come to my attention that the iPod and iTunes database files are not stored as XML, but rather some other format.)
