This weeks announcement by Apple that the new version of iTunes has a ring tone maker has people wondering if they are getting a little too greedy.

Before you say "Hey Mike! There's nothing wrong with asking people to pay for a ring-tone!" understand that Apple are essentially asking you to pay twice. Here's how it works.

You purchase a song on iTunes and say "Man, I would like that as my ring-tone on my iPhone!". The software creates a 30 second version of the song, complete with fade-in and fade-out, but you have to pay for the song again. You heard right. Apparently buying the song once only affords you a licence to listen to it, not publicly broadcast it in the form of a ring-tone.

To be fair, forcing users to pay twice for a song might not have been Apple's idea, if the typical actions of a certain organisation who 'look out for artists interests' is anything to go by. But two things you can be sure of is Apple will be seeing some of the money from it, and Steve Jobs must be giggling like a giddy school girl to know just how utterly sweet it is to charge someone for something they have already purchased.