Yea. Sorry about that. Had to blow of some steam. Would much rather have a constructive discussion that leads somewhere though.
Back on topic! Considering the ideas of this thread I would suggest the following. I'll add long term steps here as well but I'm not asking for all to be introduced in MC 17 or 18. It's just for consideration.
Step one
Users tied to libraries
This would allow you to create several users, and tie them to features we have today. Like Party Mode and Access Control. Add this users to the sync, so you don't have to manually add users on each client, and it would be both effective and easy to manage. If local Party Mode or Access Control was added, this could allow clients to add it's own restrictions. Deny setting would trump "allow" perhaps? IF this is to much, you could consider just allowing local or server settings. Not both at one time. For example only allow Library server settings if it's connected to server, and only local if it's using local library (it kind of have no choice, but yea...)
Example:
- A kids PC. You would deny settings manipulation globally by adding the Party Mode function, and then perhaps set Access Rules to block all video locally on the client. If they want to watch video, they do it in the living room. Not at night in their room.
- One user would have access to the Adult Media Sub Type globally, while the other users might not. Add a local Access rule to the living room PC to not show these items if you use your own user.
Disable Theater View exit
If you could choose whether a user is allowed to use, or even see the exit item, you could avoid lots of trouble in MC and the OS. And MC would suddenly be much more interessting for businesses, as customers are locked in the interface. I would also consider blocking the shortcuts to jump to other views. (CTRL+1 and so on)
Step two
User based library fields
This would be an evolution of the earlier user access control system. Adding individual Play counter, play dates, skips and so on to each user account. A master account could have access to all of them. This would solve a lot of issues we have today with users sharing the same stats, and people want different things. Views could also be tied together with user accounts, making it much more personalized. It could make a lot of the cases where users have to have several libraries go away.
Step three
More granular access control
Access control today just disables items in Theater View. There are cases you don't want certain users to see, access or write stats or tags to media. There are cases where you would want only access to Music in certain rooms, and full access in others. this could be done by evolving the user based access even more. Allowing Read, Write, Modify, Delete rights for each user or computer. It would help in bigger media networks as well as well as businesses.
This could get complicated. But it does not have to. Either set a few logical combinations for access, or you could experiment by using the windows users perhaps? IF you could tie the access to the servers files, depending on the actual NTFS rights on the disk, you could save a lot of trouble here. User names in MC and Windows local users or domain users would have to be the same, and you would need clients to read the access rights on the server somehow. I know I'm reaching here, but it might be a feasible way.
Step one and two are the once I hope will get some attention soon. I think they are doable, and that it would not take that much development time to add. The third step however might be a bigger job, and a bit more out there when it comes to how many who needs it today.