Mmmmm, cookies!
Interesting issue, maybe QuickTime Pro is less civilized than QuickTime Player? Mine is not running anything in the background, and the installation routine was quite more polite than that of QuickTime Player 6, which by default hijacked Windows (not like RealPlayer of course), stealing all media related file types, and adding autostart entries and such. QuickTime Player 7 was exactly the opposite, asking about everything and registering a sensible subset of media types.
Besides, how I were going to see the new iPods speech by the very same Steve Jobs without QuickTime?
*hides in another planet*
EDIT: Oh, man, today is not really my day. You were talking about iTunes
. Now there you have an uncivilized app...