tangent4ronpaul
04-02-2011, 11:23 PM
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/04/music-industry-cloud-player/
Amazon’s decision to launch its new Cloud Player without securing additional music licenses has been described as a “bold move” by many observers. It takes serious guts for Amazon to simply declare that it doesn’t need licenses — especially when even casual observers know the music industry thinks otherwise.
Still, this isn’t a one-dimensional issue, and the law has yet to deal much with services like Amazon’s. Record companies fantasize about huge revenues from streaming services, and they fear digital lockers like the plague.
If the record labels don’t come to a licensing agreement with Amazon soon, they will either be forced to take legal action or implicitly allow other music companies to ditch cloud licenses too.
Amazon vs. the music industry
Amazon launched two new services, Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, earlier this week. U.S. Amazon customers can get free online storage from Amazon to use for whatever they please, but users are heavily encouraged to upload their local music libraries. All Amazon MP3 purchases are automatically synced to the user’s Cloud Drive without counting against the quota, too.
...
If Apple and Google are dutifully trying to hammer out licensing deals, why did Amazon go ahead and launch Cloud Player without them?
Amazon argues that Cloud Drive and Cloud Player are just services that let users upload and play back their own music, just like “any number of existing media management applications.” After all, licenses shouldn’t be necessary for users to play their own music, right? The labels seem to disagree — they expressed shock following Amazon’s announcement, with a Sony Music representative implying that the company was looking into legal options.
...
“The word ’streaming’ and the word ‘download’ are nowhere in copyright law,” MP3tunes‘ CEO Michael Robertson told Ars.
“It may be a very logical, common sense position, but all that matters is what the law says. Can you store your own music? Can you listen from anywhere? What if your wife or kids want to listen to it? All those things are completely uncharted territory.”
...
Amazon has likely agreed not to allow, for example, music redownloads after a user has purchased a song (a complaint that often crops up about music purchased from the iTunes Store as well).
...
“All were or have been wrapped up in years of litigation over the same essential issue: to what extent is it permissible to allow consumers to time, place and/or device-shift ‘their’ media?”
...
“The record labels believe a cloud license is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, over the next decade,” Robertson told us. “And, the record labels are really infatuated with the notion that cloud lockers are going to be used for pirating.”
...
“It’s interesting to note that Amazon tells users of its MP3 music download service they have the right to ‘copy, store, transfer and burn the digital content only for [their] personal, non-commercial, entertainment use.’ Though they may sound benign, those are some pretty broad and potentially controversial assertions,” she said.
“Perhaps Amazon has been positioning itself, in anticipation of this new service, to argue users do indeed have all these rights in their digital music?”
Amazon’s decision to launch its new Cloud Player without securing additional music licenses has been described as a “bold move” by many observers. It takes serious guts for Amazon to simply declare that it doesn’t need licenses — especially when even casual observers know the music industry thinks otherwise.
Still, this isn’t a one-dimensional issue, and the law has yet to deal much with services like Amazon’s. Record companies fantasize about huge revenues from streaming services, and they fear digital lockers like the plague.
If the record labels don’t come to a licensing agreement with Amazon soon, they will either be forced to take legal action or implicitly allow other music companies to ditch cloud licenses too.
Amazon vs. the music industry
Amazon launched two new services, Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, earlier this week. U.S. Amazon customers can get free online storage from Amazon to use for whatever they please, but users are heavily encouraged to upload their local music libraries. All Amazon MP3 purchases are automatically synced to the user’s Cloud Drive without counting against the quota, too.
...
If Apple and Google are dutifully trying to hammer out licensing deals, why did Amazon go ahead and launch Cloud Player without them?
Amazon argues that Cloud Drive and Cloud Player are just services that let users upload and play back their own music, just like “any number of existing media management applications.” After all, licenses shouldn’t be necessary for users to play their own music, right? The labels seem to disagree — they expressed shock following Amazon’s announcement, with a Sony Music representative implying that the company was looking into legal options.
...
“The word ’streaming’ and the word ‘download’ are nowhere in copyright law,” MP3tunes‘ CEO Michael Robertson told Ars.
“It may be a very logical, common sense position, but all that matters is what the law says. Can you store your own music? Can you listen from anywhere? What if your wife or kids want to listen to it? All those things are completely uncharted territory.”
...
Amazon has likely agreed not to allow, for example, music redownloads after a user has purchased a song (a complaint that often crops up about music purchased from the iTunes Store as well).
...
“All were or have been wrapped up in years of litigation over the same essential issue: to what extent is it permissible to allow consumers to time, place and/or device-shift ‘their’ media?”
...
“The record labels believe a cloud license is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, over the next decade,” Robertson told us. “And, the record labels are really infatuated with the notion that cloud lockers are going to be used for pirating.”
...
“It’s interesting to note that Amazon tells users of its MP3 music download service they have the right to ‘copy, store, transfer and burn the digital content only for [their] personal, non-commercial, entertainment use.’ Though they may sound benign, those are some pretty broad and potentially controversial assertions,” she said.
“Perhaps Amazon has been positioning itself, in anticipation of this new service, to argue users do indeed have all these rights in their digital music?”