EMI Says Online File Storage Is Illegal

WiglyWorm writes "MP3tunes CEO Michael Robertson sent out an email to all users of the online music backup and place-shifting service MP3tunes.com, asking them to help publicize EMI's ridiculous and ignorant lawsuit against the company. EMI believes that consumers aren't allowed to store their music files online, and that MP3tunes is violating copyright law by providing a backup service."

Comments

Unfortunately

[ricebowl]

EMI believes that consumers aren't allowed to store their music files online, and that MP3tunes is violating copyright law by providing a backup service.

Sadly, in some markets, he's probably correct. I can't speak for America, though I'd assume the Fair Use doctrine would apply, but in the UK I'm fairly certain that it's still, albeit perhaps only technically, illegal (sorry, I couldn't find a more authoritative source) to copy CDs for any purpose, whether for transfer to an iPod for practical purposes or simply as an archival backup.

I'd hazard a guess, insofar as I'd want to try and infer reason in the minds of music executives, that online storage is probably perceived as being equal to distribution via p2p. I hope that, some day, a music company might at least try to employ someone familiar with IT. Presumably it'd save them a little time and money.

Re:Unfortunately

[Ed Avis]

IMHO this makes a lot of sense. You can do whatever the hell you want with the CD you purchased - the only thing you cannot do is make a copy of it, with limited exceptions for fair dealing. That's traditionally how copyright law worked and it's how it still applies to books. It just needs to be explicit that the temporary copy made in the memory of the CD player or the computer to play the music does not infringe copyright.

Of course, the publishers want to have it both ways - at some times to insist on a strict interpretation of traditional copyright, and at others to insist that what you bought is a 'licence' rather than a CD or computer program, and they can restrict you even further than copyright allows.

Re:Unfortunately

[Kjella]

I'd hazard a guess, insofar as I'd want to try and infer reason in the minds of music executives, that online storage is probably perceived as being equal to distribution via p2p Ah, but there's a vital difference because with P2P you transfer the copy to a different legal entity. If I rent a bank deposit box, the bank may be handling the copy but it remains my copy. Is MP3tunes allowed to offer a "mp3 vault" for my music? Apart from being a much more specialized service, it is any different than any other online backup solution? I haven't bothered to read the specifics but I hardly think it'll be the same case as P2P.

Re:Unfortunately

[will_die]

There is no fair use about this.
EMI is saying when you upload a file to an on-line site you are lossing posestion of the file and it is entering the possestion of the site you uploaded the file too. It the uploader is still claiming rights to the file then a copy was made. Making an additional copy of the music is a right that only EMI can give. Never mind that all the music upload was not from EMI.
mp3tunes case was that they were not sharing the files, only available to the uploader, and they did nothing with the files except provide backup protection and allow the uploader purchaser access to them.
The lower court has already decided on this in favor of mp3tunes. This was back in March, the item released today was more in the area of a press release.

Then as you say this will boil down to laws not keeping up with the way technology is going. Chances are in most states in the US and most other countries EMI is probably right in the law.

Rippling Ramifications

[frkbros44]

I submit that the most siginficant aspect of this story is that it demonstrates now the artificial market interference of the "anti-piracy" enforcers is already being used to arbitrarily restrict user freedoms in areas that are only incidentally related to the purpose of copyrights.

This kind of rippling ramification will become ever more common as the legacy duplication and distribution industries get ever more desperate in protecting their obsolote business model from technological progress.

Re:Well, piracy hurts real people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite sure what you mean by "hawked" (please feel free to elaborate), but the product a blacksmith was involved in was a method of transit (making the components of it) designed to make moving between two distant points more easily. Cars do the same thing, without the blacksmith - thus while its not their own product that they don't get a return on directly, they've been overtaken in the market and they'll stand to lose alot or all of their return on their own product anyway, since nobody's buying it.

It's not a perfect analogy - there really is no such thing as a perfect analogy - but you can quite easily say a similar situation is occuring in the music business. If we sidestep piracy/theft/whateveryouwanttocallit for a moment, there once was an old music sales model revolving around a storage device called the record. The record was mostly overtaken by the compact disc for music storage and delivery because it has various advantages which make a record "obselete" to the general consumer, though not totally, and it can still thrive in a more specialist market (just like the horse and cart, funnily enough). Now the CD is being overtaken by downloads, because its a more appealing and easier point of sale for the consumer, or it's becoming as such at least.

CDs aren't surviving so much though because they're the same data as that which is being sold via downloads. Specialists (or, most specialists) will want records for (supposedly? I don't know, I've never looked into it) better quality sound and so on, which CDs don't provide. The only thing a CD does which a downloaded MP3 doesn't do is provide a more "real-world" method of storing the data out of the box, but with CD writers people can backup their own music if they want to.

There really seems to be a less caring attitude about the ability to listen to recorded music too. If someone is interested enough, listening to that music live is more appealing usually - the same applies for movies. Of course, if someone can't they'll usually be quite happy to buy it anyway if they like it enough, but right now they don't need to go to a record store to buy it...they can just pay for a download. It's cheaper, quicker, less travelling, less physical world clutter and easier portability between devices.

From this point, to looking at piracy, we could go anywhere. There are too many factors to really determine what the cause and effect of piracy is (at least as far as I'm concerned - I'm sure many people will happily claim to know more about the situation, even if they don't have a clue), but that last point is something record companies (look, I'm going to call them publishers from now on, because that's what they are) keep wanting to take away from people, not really caring about the objections or the unintended effects of their actions. Will taking away device restrictions and letting people use their paid-for music how they want (even if its not in a way you like) really have an effect? Allow me to bounce out of the music discussion for a moment and to a little anecdote from the games industry...: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1311

There's text in that link, and some people wont bother, so here's the abbreviated version:

To paraphrase brutally, Piracy doesn't matter. Only sales matter. ...
That's the problem with piracy. What gets made targets people who buy it, not the people who would never buy it in the first place. When someone complains about "fat borders" on some popular WindowBlinds skin my question is always "Would you buy WindowBlinds even if there was a perfect skin for you?" and the answer is inevitably "Probably not". That's how it works in every market -- the people who buy stuff call the shots. Only in the PC game market are the people who pirate stuff still getting the overwhelming percentage of development resources and editorial support.

Or, in shorter for the people that seem to have trouble reading

Re:Well, piracy hurts real people.

[ozmanjusri]

It lacks an adequate production arm.

Live music and self publishers.

The cost of releasing a track has dropped to almost nothing. With an $800 Boss solid-state recording deck and a laptop, we have tools that are an order of magnitude better than whole recording studios from a decade ago.

If the majors had reduced their prices to match the drop in costs, they might have kept a place in the market. As it is, their greed and stupidity means they deserve to die.

Oddly enough though, our band still produces CDs for local fans to buy at gigs, and they sell well despite the tracks being freely available on the web. A little goodwill goes a long way, I suspect.