
Music industry will force licenses on Amazon Cloud Player—or else - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/#!/media/news/2011/03/music-industry-will-force-licenses-on-amazon-cloud-playeror-else.ars
======
cal5k
There was a brief period in history when recorded music was a money-printing
business. Record once, sell over and over again around the world.

That period is over. The fact that the music industry is arguing over where
and how you should be allowed to listen to a piece of digital music you paid
for is the height of absurdity. Music is, by its very nature, a shared
experience. It has always been thus throughout history. All of these arguments
about "licensing", whether it's on the radio, streaming services, or in a
cloud locker should be seen as what they are: a cash grab.

I personally and sincerely hope that record labels die out completely - I
would not miss them one bit.

------
ChuckMcM
I think that once again someone inside of Amazon understands the information
economy pretty well. This does seem like a lawsuit 'honeypot' (talk about
mixed metaphors) since it cannot help but provoke a response (see mp3.com [1])

The thing that confuses most people is the emerging doctrine of information
sale. What the music companies would like to be true, is that selling you a CD
(or an MP3) is equivalent to selling you a ticket to hear the performance
once. And as you could not reasonably expect, having bought a ticket to a
musical performance, to be able to change the venue for that performance, the
industry would like to equate that absurd request to transliterating a
recording into a different medium or access method.

Consumers on the other hand have expressed a strong belief that they "own"
that instance of the music and that transliterating it, listening to it from
different devices, and/or putting it on a mix tape and having it play as
background music for their housewarming party are all 'well within their
rights' of things they can do with what they own.

The legal tool is of course copyright and many cases have focused on what
exactly does it mean to make a copy (which would have been more obvious had
the original case against magnetic tape gone the way of the record labels) and
what is fair use, and what is the greater good.

The motivating force is of course money. Given the physical challenges of
having copies and even with tape carrying them around, the record labels were
still able to extract a lot of money out of the system. With digital copies
and network access it is a lot harder and they can see a time (or fear we are
already in it) where the economics don't support the existence of a heavy
weight 'middle man' in the music business.

Amazon is clearly positioning Cloud Drive with the assumption that the
consumer's conceptual model (I bought it I can do what I want with it) is
correct. The music companies will counter with "How can you know they bought
it? Maybe they just borrowed it from the library?" Amazon has a stronger claim
if they have a receipt (and its one that Apple uses with iTunes).

Best case, Amazon provokes a lawsuit that gives us a bit more clarity, worst
case Amazon can only stream music from a Cloud Drive that you've purchased
from the Amazon store (and perhaps to only a single IP address). It would not
be a bad outcome (for Amazon) if lots of people were willing to re-license
their music through Amazon's mp3 store.

Perhaps we should start a pool for when the last record label that existed
prior to 2000 goes out of business. I strongly believe the outcome is
inevitable, only the roughness of the journey is left to ascertain.

[1] [http://techliberation.com/2006/04/19/why-the-mp3com-
decision...](http://techliberation.com/2006/04/19/why-the-mp3com-decision-was-
never-appealed/)

------
trotsky
_If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than
it is to get permission.

\- Admiral Grace Hopper_

~~~
falcolas
But much more expensive...

~~~
metabrew
Not necessarily, with the amount of money the labels would want as a
bribe^W"non recoupable advance" to sign the contract in the first place, after
months of negotiating and nitpicking.

------
bradleyland
I hope the RIAA challenges this to the highest court possible, because it
would seem blindingly obvious to me that judges would rule in favor of the
consumer in these scenarios. This is music that I've bought and paid for. The
RIAA is taking this too far, and any sensible person can see that.

~~~
mhb
What any sensible person can see is not always dispositive. Viz: the
justification that the federal government can regulate essentially anything
since it affects interstate commerce -
<http://reason.com/archives/2003/12/19/pot-luck>

------
mrspandex
This article mentions a Google product in development that would "scan a
user's computer and automatically add any tracks that Google has licensed to
that user's online locker" and an Apple product that would allow "unlimited
music redownloads and streams to iOS devices" and then implies that since
these would require licenses, so would Amazon.

I think there's a fine line that's crossed when you have to upload your own
bits rather than re-use their bits.

~~~
jameshart
The line gets even finer when you take an MD5 of your bits, look it up in a
set of MD5s of bits they already have, and they say 'we already have those
bits. No point wasting network capacity shipping them to us'...

~~~
Pahalial
S3 explicitly does no deduplication at all, last I heard. This is somewhat
corroborated by the pricing for cloud player - it would be a lot lower per GB
if they did.

~~~
trotsky
S3 doesn't do de-duplication, but many platforms that work on top of it do.
The pricing for Cloud Drive is lower than native S3, and they don't charge for
transfers - so IMO they are doing dedupes. It'd be kind of crazy not to with a
consumer service where the point is to hold a lot of duplicate data.

------
jrockway
I think Amazon is going to win this one. The RIAA can't even win cases against
grandmas or John Does. I doubt that Amazon's legal team is going to be easier
to beat.

(The key argument? "We just transfer the bits." The ISPs' routers don't need
music licenses, why should S3?)

If Amazon loses, I hope the RIAA goes after AT&T next for all the music that's
inevitably caught in their illegal wiretaps.

~~~
boredguy8
Much will depend on A) the details of existing agreements between Amazon and
labels; B) the details of Amazon's implementation.

It matters, for instance, if the cloud storage creates a unique file for each
song a person uploads or if it creates 'efficiency' by pointing to a single
file if you and I were to upload identical .mp3 files. It probably also
matters if their online .mp3 auto-storage is moving a copy of the .mp3, or if
it's only storing that you have a license to listen to that song.

These details will matter for determining if Amazon is actually offering
storage or if they're actually offering streaming, if their existing
agreements speak to streaming.

------
mayank
This is a really old cartoon, but it's finally coming true. In many ways, this
is the showdown a lot of us have been waiting for since Lars Ulrich went up on
the stand:

[http://www.caglecartoons.com/images/preview/%7Bac7d2177-a870...](http://www.caglecartoons.com/images/preview/%7Bac7d2177-a870-418e-acb8-abf0ebd1e9b3%7D.gif)

------
hsmyers
Given the number of articles about NAS tech (new and old) I fail to see how
what Amazon is offering is in any way different--- but then I'm not a lawyer.
I firmly hope that Amazon takes this to court so that the issue of ownership
can be established more clearly. Even if they were to lose, that would at
least provide a target for legislative change.

~~~
alsocasey
Precisely - I do this with a pogoplug already. Cloud player simply means
higher uptime/reliability for me.

------
orky56
Whenever companies try to innovate and expand the music listening experience,
record companies are all over them. The record companies never take the first
steps to improve things but are always the first to threaten legal action and
get their fair share of new trends with music. Gross.

~~~
tomjen3
They are loosing this battle and I doubt they will be around for much longer.

Now if only it was possible to hasten their demise (legally, there is no
gloating in prison).

------
gizmani
That's one reason why I haven't used Amazon Cloud Player yet. I'd rather wait
a year or so to see how all this pans out before uploading massive amounts of
"borrowed" mp3s...

~~~
Raphael
I wouldn't expect Amazon to rat people out. There is a small chance that in
the future they stop accepting songs that appear to be borrowed.

------
marcomonteiro
Can't we just start a startup to eliminate record labels entirely? Perhaps a
YC for musicians?

~~~
threepointone
Would be great. According to my buddies, CD Baby + iTunes is rather painless
if you want to get your album out as an independent artist. The problem that
has to be solved isn't so much getting the music to the market, but with
associated costs and legwork like promotion, tours, associated expenses before
you're profitable, etc. As an example, in India, Only Much Louder
(<http://oml.in/>) is trying to fix this.

~~~
marcomonteiro
A few years ago we used CD Baby to distribute records right about the same
time that they began offering digital distribution to the iTunes store. It was
an awesome tool for us as an independent label. It sure beat consignment
agreements with record stores.

Artist have a pain, record label greed and shady business practices. Amazon,
Apple, etc. have a pain, record label greed and shady business practices. The
question I have is how do people discover new music now? There was a time when
radio airplay and MTV was a major contributor to a record's success but what
ways are most effective today?

I wouldn't be surprised if those kinds of questions weren't Apple's reasoning
behind Ping.

