Just three days after it was released, the PyMusique application has reportedly been disabled by Apple. The company released a terse statement to that effect:

“The security hole in the iTunes Music Store which was recently exploited has been closed, and as a consequence the iTunes Music Store will now sell music only to customers using iTunes version 4.7,” the company said in a statement.

The need to upgrade to iTunes 4.7.1 will likely annoy a significant number of users still on earlier versions of the software, as the new iTunes version places further restrictions on sharing music over a local network.

Where previously up to five people could listen to a user’s Shared iTunes Library simultaneously, now only five individual connections can be made per day. Critics of Apple claim that their rights in this regard have steadily been curtailed with each successive major iTunes release, while Apple’s supporters contend that Apple is not to blame for these restrictions, rather its record label suppliers are responsible. Many critics of the latest restrictions in iTunes 4.7.1 simply refused to upgrade to the new version. It remains to be seen how those users will react to the latest requirements.