Bug in 7.629 iTunes

Question

iTunes has been running on distructive auto ever since my daughter opened a new music download account at apple. When we open iTunes now we are logged into the Apple iTunes store automatically it seems.
If we click on an old MP3 song, iTunes on it's own checks the song fields and before our eyes, fills in any blank fields it sees (track #, year, etc). It also before our eyes dumps the existing artwork we spent many hours creating. The song file gets rewritten and the artwork is dumped.
Other people have mentioned strange artwork substitutions (like compilation covers) by apple. It seems our art is dumped because we have "look for artwork" turned off in preferences, just to avoid this problem. iTunes dumps our old artwork and follows our "don't look for artwork" instruction and the result is blank artwork.
When I first noticed a problem, I clicked more and more songs to see if they had lost artwork. Then I saw the tag field changes happening.
I closed iTunes and unplugged my cable modum, then restarted iTunes. Without access to the web and the Apple store, the changes stopped.
I openeed a blank iTunes library on another computer and used "Aadd to Library"
to add a music file that had been clicked by me and changed by apple, and one that wasn't clicked, from the first computers Music Library Folder.
AS I expected, no artwork showed on the problem song, the other was fine. Apple erased the artwork.
First question - Is there another way to stop the apple store from connecting. Is there a cookie or something I can delete on my computer that Apple access.
Second question - all my songs with artwork intact are on my iPod Classic. Can I somehow load the music back into an empty library on my second computer, then copy / paste the artwork into Photoshop to make a jpg.
I find it ironic, Apple is known for not having viruses, Now they created their own.
Thanks Apple, way to sell more music and computers.

Answer 1

Apple suggested I restore my library. That's too drastic and I can't see why that would help. The song files have been rewritten. It's to late to get anyhing back.
Good luck with the reinstall, but I don't see why that would help, The key here is to turn off the automatic correction mode apple is running and to rewrite the software to recognize existing artwork and use it before substituting apple's own artwork.
I understand apple is trying to convert everyone's artwork to their new cover flow technology and pull out artwork embedded in the music file, then put it in a seperate Cover Art Cache folder. But to destroy what I have spent years building in this matter is just insane.
I hope more people complain and maybe we can get Apple to at least listen.