

Amazon on Cloud Player: we don't need no stinkin' licenses - abraham
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/03/amazon-on-cloud-player-we-dont-need-no-stinkin-licenses.ars

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CaptainZapp
I like the license part, bear with me.

I grew up with the vynil lp, which definitely was a product. You went to the
record store and bought an actual physical product, 30 cms of diameter with a
play time of usually 20 minutes per side. I could play it, lend it to a
friend, gift it to somebody. The product was independent of location or
device; devices playing LP's where standardized.

The RIAA was actually founded to standardize the equalization curve
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization>) for the playback of music
and not as a money grubbing -, mob like -, thuggish organization suing
teenagers and dead people.

Then came the CD. Still a product. With different specifications and playback
devices then the LP, but still interchangeable, playable everywhere and in
every country. Definitely a product, which you bought, owned, could lend,
gift, use as a coaster, whatever. It was yours to own.

Then suddenly the product turned into a license. CD's where no more actual
CD's, but some crippled data container, to prevent copyying, _licensed_ to you
for use. Possibly the licensed product contained some dreckware, which wrecked
havoc on your computer and was stealthily installed without your knowledge or
consent (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit>).

When you download a song (legally) nowadays you only license it. Ideally the
copyright owners would like to charge you on a per country basis.

Going to Amsterdam for the weekend? That's an euro, sir, since your song is
only licensed for Germany.

I'm aware that we're not there, that the licenses are in fact more open now as
when Apple started to offer music downloads. But I'm pretty certain that this
would not be the case if the music industry had their say (see 3 Euro ringtone
downloads).

Where the hypocricy comes in that a license would imply that you only pay
once.You pay for the right to use a song. Reality however, and I leave that as
an excercise to the reader, looks very, very different.

I close my rant with the link to this interesting essay by Steve Albini
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_albini>) :

<http://www.negativland.com/albini.html>

~~~
StavrosK
Are you German? I don't know who would say "an euro" unless you pronounce it
oi-ro.

~~~
Tichy
What do you say in the US/UK? (I am German)

I only know the rule to say "an" if a word starts with a,e,i,o or u, so why
not Euro?

~~~
StavrosK
Because Euro is pronounced you-ro, and the rule for using "an" is if the word
starts with a vowel _sound_ ("you" is not a vowel sound). I'm Greek, so we say
Ev-ro, but we have no "an" :P

~~~
Tichy
Thanks - it's new to me that "you" is not a vowel sound. Isn't it pronounced
exactly like "u", which is a vowel? So generally never use "an" if a word
starts with "u"?

~~~
ElliotH
It's the 'y' sound that pronouncing 'u' like 'you' causes.

Your rule is too general though.

A uniform. An understanding.

(note that the u in understanding doesn't have a y sound to start it)

~~~
Tichy
That makes sense, thanks!

~~~
jakewalker
Just to make things more complicated, in the U.K. and certain parts of the
U.S., you will often here people say things like an historic, because they
tend to drop the "h" sound when they pronounce historic; it sounds fine when
pronounced that way. If you pronounce the "h" in historic, it sounds awful to
say anything but a historic.

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forsaken
When they launched this product, it didn't even cross my mind that it would
run afoul of anything. People are doing what they want with the data that they
own.

~~~
sliverstorm
My guess is everyone involved, on every end, is aware of this. Certain people
just want a cut of _everything_ , and will try any argument they can.

~~~
al_james
...in particular people from industries that were once more profitable than
they are currently. There is nothing like decreasing revenues and companies
going to the wall to make people get greedy.

~~~
lallysingh
Well, either you find new revenues or (a) people's salaries stagnate or (b)
fewer people receive salaries.

~~~
al_james
Well, you have to admit that the perceived option (c) "sue some people to make
them pay you more for doing the same" would look appealing.... If short-
sighted.

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tybris
I guess lawsuits have become the record industry's core business, rather than
selling music.

~~~
shadowpwner
Wow, that's a really profound statement for me. Mind blown, thanks to you,
dear sir.

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prsimp
The fallout, or lack there-of, from this will be interesting to watch. Any
legal battles fought over this will certainly further shape precedent as more
and more of our digital media moves to personal online storage and streaming.

(Not to mention that I'd love to see Amazon and the Record Corps duke it out
over this!)

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lancefisher
The funny part is this will likely help album sales, but I'm sure the record
companies will rush to cut down the money tree Amazon just planted for them
before it grows too big.

~~~
kemayo
It's already helped album sales a little. I bought 5 albums browsing through
Amazon MP3 this morning after seeing the announcement.

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oniTony
Wait, so use of partial downloads (say reading from a stream buffer) is
legally different than the same use of a full download? (If my connection is
fast enough for the second song to _fully_ buffer before the first one
finishes playing, does this change anything, since the player is now reading
from effectively a "full download"?)

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edge17
_Only then did Amazon allegedly begin to address licensing issues before going
ahead with the launches—licenses or not. "I've never seen a company of their
size make an announcement, launch a service and simultaneously say they're
trying to get licenses," the anonymous exec said._

If I recall correctly, Apple announced the new name change to iOS, launched
iOS4, and then made the deal to license the name with Cisco after the cat was
out of the bag

[http://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco_and_apple_agreement_on_ios...](http://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco_and_apple_agreement_on_ios_trademark/)

~~~
glhaynes
I believe it was the same deal with at least "iPhone", which was also Cisco-
owned at time of announcement. Maybe one other, too.

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JonoW
I think Amazon and Apple should just start their own record label, save a
fortune by cutting out the sleazy middle-men and give artists a much bigger %
cut from albums to attract hoards of artists. Why wouldn't it work?

~~~
jokermatt999
Apple is probably barred from doing this due to the issues with Apple Records.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer>

~~~
JonoW
Ah yeah forgot about that. Maybe they should buy Apple Records :) Clear up all
sorts of confusion in the process

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andrewpi
Anyone remember MP3.com (specifically my.mp3.com) from about 10 years ago? The
lawsuits eventually shut that useful and efficient service down.

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thirdsun
I thought about this when reports of Google music started to appear and the
way Amazon sees it is completely my point of view. If it is my content that I
upload to that service, then it really isn't Amazon's duty to care about
licensing deals. The analogy to an external harddrive mentioned in the article
explains this very well. You could even go one step further and replace the
external harddrive with your own webspace to make that analogy even more
similar to Amazon's service: Imagine you upload your music to your own
webspace to be able to listen to it wherever you are. Not very practical, but
there's no way one could argue that there have to be any additional fees
involved. This shouldn't even be news.

So when Google has to negotiate with record labels this tells me that users
apparently don't simply have upload their media collection. There have to be
more features, similar to former lala.com maybe. Otherwise Google shouldn't
even feel the need to contact any record labels. After their music is bought
it's none of their business anymore. At least that's my opinion.

~~~
stoney
Uploading your music to Dropbox would be a good example. As far as I know
nothing stops me doing that, and it achieves a fairly similar functionality to
the proposed Amazon service. Dropbox even use Amazon's servers to store their
data (I believe).

~~~
nl
There is actually a (minor) difference. Amazon really is streaming the MP3s,
while if you play one from Dropbox it downloads and plays and plays
(technically it could be played while downloading, but this is actually
uncommon).

There are slight technical differences - in streaming MP3s there is metadata
embedded inside the files - see, for eg the second part of
[http://nicklothian.com/blog/2009/03/18/random-
mp3-metadata-c...](http://nicklothian.com/blog/2009/03/18/random-mp3-metadata-
code/)

Exactly why this would make a difference for licencing purposes I'm not sure,
but I would note that there is a special "streaming" licence.

~~~
arthurschreiber
The Dropbox client for iPhone also "streams" MP3s, as far as I can tell.
(Streaming as in playing while downloading)

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panarky
Step 1: Threaten Amazon to try to extort license fees.

Step 2: Spread FUD in the press to scare users away from Amazon.

Step 3: Get a judge to compel Amazon to disclose user identities and their MP3
watermarks.

~~~
rmc
Step 4: Amazon drops all your CDs from their web shop

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ryanisinallofus
I am really excited for an actual lawsuit but I'm afraid Amazon will just
settle out of court.

Comparing it to a hard drive may actually work in court but trying to explain
the server optimizing code that grabs copies of the exact same song locally on
the server rather than re-upload 30 million copies of the same Ke$ha track
would be tough.

Still. I'd love to see this in court. I'm going to go buy some Amazon MP3
albums now to support the service.

~~~
Raphael
Amazon probably does treat all copies separately in order to maintain the
distinction of a personal backup service and not a music broadcasting service.

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alsocasey
If the music industry goes after them for this, they apparently completely
missed the boat on pogoplug and the service they offer.

I stream movies/music and view files remotely via an external drive hooked up
to my pogoplug server at home. Supposing I moved it to a friend's place in
following the 3-2-1 rule of backing up, would I then need a license to play my
songs?

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dman
They only care about trends that threaten to go mainstream. Why do the leave
usenet alone for instance?

~~~
alsocasey
Or they only worry about trends that have a forerunner with deep pockets.
Suing amazon is probably much more appetizing then suing pogoplug...

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jawee
Did no once else even consider that there would be a problem with this? I
figured it was just access of my data that I upload to a server and that only
I can access. I already do the same with MediaTomb, but I didn´t know it would
make a world of difference to move to a third party instead of my own private
server.

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sigzero
I think Amazon is right. This is just another form of "backup" for the user. I
hope that they win the stare down.

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latch
slightly OT, but anyone know why lossless formats aren't available yet?

I'd assume it would be a good deferentiator from the ITune Store, Also, given
that they are now charging for storage space, it would seem to align itself
with this model too.

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rmc
_why lossless formats aren't available yet?_

The general public doesn't care

~~~
k7d
Judging by the amount of "pirated" lossless downloads available I don't think
that's entirely true.

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iconara
Um, so if Amazon doesn't think they need a license to stream _my_ music to
_me_ , how come I can upload music, but not listen to it if I'm outside the
US?

~~~
JeremyBanks
Their interpretation is of American law, and so doesn't apply to you. They
probably want to keep the legal complexity down to a minimum for now since
they'll already probably have a battle on their hands.

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joelrunyon
_applause_

Well done Amazon

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sankara
Apple should follow suit.

