Shoutcast.com Internet Radio Stations removed from latest Amarok release & Info from Shoutcast

[S G]

To whom it may concern,

I have been asked to send the info I received from AOL after complaining to
them about their apparent heavy-handed changes to their ToS, which was
stated as the "legal reasons" Amarok would not include Shoutcast.com Radio
stations listing in the current or future releases.
I refer you to the following as way of background:
(ref. http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?p=137073#p137073)
(ref. http://amarok.kde.org/en/releases/2.2/rc/1#comment-12421)
(ref. http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=83718)
(ref. http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=83874)

I challenged Shoutcast.com on the statement about the "legal reasons" for
Amarok not including shoutcast.com listings in its latest version. I had an
email exchange with Faisal Sultan <faisal.sultan at corp.aol.com> who set me
straight on some of the other info about why SC stations were not included
and to quote his last email to me:

"The main problem is that Amarok is totally misreading the entire issue.
They are reading the End-User TOS not the Application Developer / API TOS.
Its unfortunate that this knee-jerk reaction on part of the Amarok
developers is causing frustration for end-users like yourself.

If Amarok simply reached out to us they would know that other Open Source
developers continues to use the SC Apis without any restrictions from our
end. It seems like Amarok discontinued the SC feature on their own accord,
which is a shame."

So it is somewhat disingenuous for Amarok to state this position of "legal
reasons" for not including the SC feature in the latest release. I tried to
find out more about this on IRC #amarok but it seems no one there is
interested in including SC in future releases. As a matter of fact, <marky>
suggested to one user they write a script to get the listings, similar to
the post by Mamarok. Huh?? Why doesn't Amarok do it once and make it
available again to its many users who find this feature useful and
convenient? There seem to be more reasons than are being divulged by Amarok
for it not to be included. This is too bad because there are other options
that continue to include SC listings such as Exaile, VLC, Tunapie, to which
I for one have turned. I think Amarok has underestimated the user base on
this one.

I really liked the feature, found it very useful, and I believe that other
users did too.  I would like to request that it be included in future
releases, please.
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