Well, there's the end of that little fracas... No sooner does the Mac community work itself into a seething, frothing, foaming-at-the-mouth state of righteous indignation at Apple's misdeeds when suddenly Apple has to go and spoil everything by doing the right thing. We must say, we're mighty disappointed-- a one-day scandal? That's hardly enough drama worth getting up for in the morning.

We speak, of course, of iToolsgate, the promising new scandal that lurched its way upon the scene a scant two days ago when an eagle-eyed iTools subscriber showed a remarkably high tolerance for legalese and actually read the iTools Member Agreement. (Somebody call Ripley.) What he found was a clause that granted Apple "a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (though multiple tiers) right" to appropriate anything an iTools member might post in a "public site." Shades of Yahoo! It was all open to interpretation, of course, but it appeared that anything publicly available on one's iDisk is, in fact, fair game for Apple to use, sell, and exploit forever and ever. (It's the "perpetual, irrevocable" and "sublicensable through multiple tiers" bits that really give us the heebie-jeebies.)

But doggone it, only one day after the outcry, Apple's gone and quietly reworded the agreement to make it less... well, less "reaming" is the best word we can think of. According to MacCentral, Apple's corrected several problems. For one thing, that vague "public site" wording has been dropped, and the affected content is now described as "content on areas of iTools accessible by the public." By using iTools, you're still giving Apple a "worldwide, royalty-free" license to use the material, but at least the company can only use it "solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting the area on which such content is posted." So they can't turn around and sell your pet photos to Cat Fancy Magazine, for instance. Plus, now they can only use your content until "removal of such content from the public area or when you are no longer an iTools member." Bye-bye "irrevocable."

We admit it; we're a little steamed at Apple for putting things right (or, at least, more right) so quickly. C'mon, at least after the Great G4 Speed Dump of 1999 it took the company a good solid week of missteps and waffling before reinstating just about all of those unceremoniously cancelled orders. Ah, what a week that was... scandal, finger-pointing, threats to leave the Mac platform-- the stuff that dreams are made of. But we suppose we'll just be strong, bid iToolsgate a bittersweet adieu, and look forward to future scandals instead. So long, iToolsgate; we barely knew ye. Rest in peace in that great scandal sheet in the sky.