Among other additions Apple Computer made to its iTunes software, the Mac maker has plugged a hole that allowed some people to download music from another computer.

Apple’s iTunes allows Macintosh and PC users to play music stored on other PCs on a network. The music is streamed off the other computer. But file-swapping enthusiasts quickly created other programs, such as MyTunes, to capture the songs and allow them to be saved to the computer’s hard drive. With the latest iteration–version 4.5–Apple appears to have plugged that hole.

An Apple representative on Wednesday confirmed that with the new version of iTunes, the company has “strengthened” the music-sharing feature to make sure that song sharing is limited to personal use and that only another copy of iTunes can access the music stream. Also, once iTunes users have upgraded to the newest version of the software, they are no longer allowed to stream music from computers running older versions of iTunes. Apple imposed a similar restriction earlier, after some people used the music-sharing feature to swap files over the Internet.

News source: C|Net News.com